13 Best Free Hookup Apps (2024)

Free hookup apps are the way of the future, and millions of people are embracing the casual dating lifestyle.

Movies and TV shows often depict singles as desperately wanting to find a relationship and/or get married. That’s not the reality for all singles though. Some singles are happy to keep their freedom and independence, thank you very much. According to Psychology Today, 45.2% of Americans 18 and older are unmarried. This includes those who have never married, are divorced, or are widowed.

Additionally, only 58% of never-married adults say they want to get married, while 14% say they don’t. Everyone else is on the fence when it comes to matrimony.

Today, we wanted to give some attention and love to the people who aren’t interested in a committed relationship or marriage. Where should they go to find prospective partners? Hookup sites and apps are a great option, especially the dating apps below, because they’re easy, convenient, and affordable (or absolutely free).

OkCupid is a mainstream dating site and app that helps local singles find romance, build relationships, make new friends, and have casual sex. It does it all, and it can definitely be a handy online dating wingman if you download the dating app (available for iOS and Android) and set up an account.

The OkCupid profile has a “what are you looking for” section where singles can state their intentions. Some say they’re interested in friendships and serious relationships, while others lean more toward casual dating and hookups.

With OkCupid on your side, it’s pretty easy to chat up new people and find a potential partner in the local dating scene — because chatting is 100% on this hookup website and app. Everyone with a free account can send an initial greeting and engage in conversations with any OkCupid member who likes their dating profile.

Just keep in mind that not everyone on OkCupid is in a hit-it-and-quit-it mentality, so you should definitely make sure you make your intentions clear when trying to flirt your way into a one-night stand or discreet hookup.

Yes, though it may seem old-fashioned to some, the bar scene is still a popular place to flirt and match in real time. Some singles enjoy the random chance of running into a hottie at the bar and striking up a conversation on the spot. The pressure is on, and you can tell that a person is legit (not a scammer or catfisher) at a glance.

Online dating hasn’t replaced picking up dates at a bar or club — it’s augmented it. A free hookup app can be a good wingman at the bar scene, and it’s not unusual to see singles take out their phones to swipe on people in the area in hopes of attracting a local person to share a drink with them — and then who knows what could happen?

Yes, Grindr is a gay dating app that is supportive of queer people in the LGBTQ+ community. The only catch is that it’s specifically designed for meeting men, so it works best for singles looking to date and hook up with a gay man.

As a local sex app, Grindr provides a constantly updated list of prospective partners within a user’s immediate vicinity, and single men can take that opportunity to start a private chat or group chat that leads to an instant hookup.

Grindr is famous as a local hookup app, and it’s constantly looking out for the well-being of its users by providing security tools, liking options, and dating filters that make the online dating process a little easier.

In June 2020, the gay dating app made a point of standing in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter Movement and removing the ethnicity filter from the dating platform completely. Grindr’s filter no longer allows users to decide if they only want to date a certain race or within the same race — and the online dating community is much better for it.

The CasualX app is free to download on Google Play and the App Store, and you can start swiping on profiles as soon as you set up your account. A free member can also randomly pick one mutual match to chat with per day. However, that’s where the free ride ends because messaging is a premium feature on this app.

If you want unlimited chatting with all your mutual matches, then you’ll have to subscribe to the a paid membership on CasualX. A one-month subscription currently costs $15.99. All subscriptions will automatically renew unless you go into your settings and turn off the auto-renewal feature more than 24 hours before your subscription is set to renew.

One of the biggest complaints we hear from today’s online daters is that they run into a lot of fake profiles or inactive accounts while browsing a casual dating site’s membership base. Not all platforms are diligent about clearing out the riff-raff and making sure that all new users are legit. However, some of the biggest names in the space do have a good reputation for highlighting active users and authentic profiles.

BeNaughty has become one of the leading platforms for casual sex by consistently putting users first and providing security tools and verification systems that make everyone feel safe and add a layer of trust to the casual dating community.

BeNaughty has strict rules about what is and is not appropriate on the hookup site. For instance, all dating profiles must have a valid profile picture (stock photos are flagged and removed) to appear in search results, match suggestions, and the Like Gallery.

The BeNaughty team also has proactive reporting tools that empower singles to help police the site and make sure unsavory characters don’t cause trouble for very long.

If you’re looking for a casual hookup, you can trust the BeNaughty platform to hook you up to genuine date prospects that meet your standards in terms of age, gender, appearance, and location.

Yes, hookup sites are perfectly legal in the U.S. as long as everyone is over 18 years old and not offering any pay-to-play services, if you know what I mean. Most adult dating sites offer perfectly legitimate dating opportunities and personal ads, and singles are free to pursue sexual relations in any chat room, forum, or platform they find appealing.

However, dating sites aren’t immune from legal trouble, and they can be charged with very serious crimes. In April 2018, Backpage was seized and shut down by federal authorities because it supported human trafficking, child prostitution, and other criminal activities. Executives were arrested. Headlines were made, and Craigslist shut down its personals section just to be safe.

If you’re really eager to cut to the chase and meet a lot singles at once, then Tinder should be your go-to dating app. Seriously, it works fast, is totally free, and has one of the highest success rates in the online dating scene.

Since its launch in 2012, Tinder has created over 75 billion matches and been downloaded more than 530 million times.

A person seeking casual sex can get hung up on chats that go nowhere on other apps, but that’s rarely the case on Tinder. This dating app is known for being fast-paced and results-driven, and many of the matches lead to conversations that lead to first dates.

Every week Tinder users go on over 1.5 million dates collectively, and we’d guess that a good portion of those end with a quick romp in the sheets. After all, these’s a reason Tinder became known as a free hookup app.

Grindr may be the the biggest name in the gay dating scene, but it’s not the only name. Lots of other apps offer just as efficient matching tools and exciting date prospects, and they can be a good change of pace for the gay man who is feeling burnt out from mixing and matching on Grindr.

SCRUFF has over 20 million members and is available as a free app for Android and iOS users who identify as men seeking men. In addition to its matching features, SCRUFF features local gay events (including parties, festivals, parades, and meetups) to help gay and bisexual men socialize and find romance. SCRUFF also gives users the ability to mark themselves as “traveling” so they can look for dates outside their hometown.

The Hornet dating app is another great Grindr alternative because it promotes search filters, hashtags, discussion topics, and other interesting tidbits in one’s newsfeed to make online dating more of a social experience. Hornet currently has over 25 million members, making it a top rival to Grindr.

It’s undeniably frustrating for singles to take the time to set up a dating profile, upload photos, and search for dates only to find out that a hookup site charges users to send, receive, or read messages.

This is a fairly commonplace thing for adult dating sites in particular because so many scammers and spammers can take advantage of folks here. The paywall is the site’s way of keeping the bad apples out of the membership base.

However, charging a subscription fee isn’t the only way to police a local hookup site, and there are some free platforms where messaging is free and users are legit.

Plenty of Fish doesn’t charge anything for messaging, nor does it have any mutual matching requirements, but it does place a limit on how many first messages a person can send in a day. Plus, the team monitors online activity and removes any member that breaks the community guidelines.

Singles shouldn’t run short of people to talk to in the POF community. Plenty of Fish has over 150 million members worldwide, and it sees over 4 million daily active users.

POF users run the gamut in terms of age, race, nationality, religion, education, and income, but they all share a common desire to connect with someone special. Some are looking for a casual hookup that lasts one night, while others are hoping to find a long-term love that could potentially last a lifetime.

Whatever your dating intentions are, Plenty of Fish can provide free introductions and conversations that can easily lead to romance.

Craigslist officially closed its personals section in the wake of the Backpage scandal of 2018. As U.S. law enforcement cracked down on online sex trafficking, the Craigslist team voiced concern that the site could be at risk because of a few unsavory characters acting maliciously or unscrupulously in the local dating personals.

“Any tool or service can be misused. We can’t take such risk without jeopardizing all our other services,” the Craigslist team said in a statement. “To the millions of spouses, partners, and couples who met through Craigslist, we wish you every happiness!”

For single and not-so single people dating on the down low, discretion is incredibly important. These individuals may not feel comfortable linking their online dating profile to their Facebook account, and they may not even want to browse under their real name or with verified photos of themselves.

Which dating site is discreet enough to keep a person’s identity a total secret? The answer has to be Ashley Madison, the affair dating platform that’s helped men and women explore secret desires.

Ashley Madison has over 80 million members, and all of them are open to arranging a casual encounter with someone who’s married or in a relationship.

Ashley Madison has a number of security and privacy features in place to help married people, mistresses, and other discreet daters find what they’re looking for without blowing up their spot. Users can blur or mask their faces in their profile photos, and they don’t have to provide much personal information beyond their age and ZIP code.

Plus, Ashley Madison has PIN-locking feature and icon camouflage tool to keep online daters safe from prying eyes.

This discreet hookup site and app arranges nearly 40,000 extramarital affairs per day, and it does so without drawing too much unwanted attention from the larger dating population.

The fastest way to get laid is to download a casual sex app that offers free matching and communication. Apps like Tinder, BeNaughty, Grindr, and Happn offer instant access to local singles, and it only takes a few charming messages to turn a potential match into a real-life date.

While it’s important not to come on too strong and scare dates off, you should make your intentions known by peppering your messages with compliments, sexual innuendos, and flirty invites.

If you seem to be vibing after five or so messages, go ahead and make a play for a first date by saying something like, “The chemistry in this chat is amazing. I’m wondering if it’d be the same in person, are you down?” or “I heard of a bar that just opened nearby, would you want to meet for drinks this weekend?”

Don’t waste too much time playing coy or not going after what you want. Singles who want casual sex will be open to your invite, and those who are looking for something more serious will (hopefully politely) refuse and free you to move on to a more willing sexual partner.

Online daters, especially women, tend to have some safety concerns about the online dating scene. It’s natural to wonder if the dating profile you see is legit and if the person behind it is genuine or trustworthy. After all, everyone you meet is a complete stranger and could be catfishing you.

As many as 53% of singles admitted to lying on their online dating profiles to seem more attractive to potential partners. Men tend to lie most about their height, income, and job title, while women tend to lie about their weight, age, and appearance.

These white lies aren’t harmful, and they’re easily discovered by asking follow-up questions or requesting a selfie or video from your online crush.

Flirt.com has verification features, search filters, and security tools to help online daters vet potential matches more thoroughly. This casual dating site also offers free communication with no expiration date so that singles can really get to know one another before arranging an in-person meetup.

Looking for a casual hookup on a dating site or app is just as safe as looking for a casual hookup in the bar scene or at the club. It’s definitely not a good idea to take everyone at their word immediately. You should never jump into a car with someone you just met and barely know. But that doesn’t mean one should abandon the dating arena entirely.

Singles can take precautions — researching the best dating sites, vetting matches online, looking someone up on social media, always meeting a first date in a public location, etc. — to keep themselves safe and make smart choices about who to date online.

Many online daters complain about encountering a lot of fake profiles and scam accounts while looking for dates online. These hazards can be unavoidable if the dating platform isn’t rigorous about removing inactive users, incomplete profiles, and fakers in the user base. However, you don’t have to waste time chatting with a bot or phony if you know the warning signs of a fake profile

First of all, most fake profiles will either have no picture or a stock photo uploaded, or they may use the picture of a celebrity or military personnel in hopes of tricking potential matches. Of course, sometimes it really is a celebrity with a dating account — the way you can tell is if the celeb posts selfies, travel photos, and shots that weren’t taken from Instagram or paparazzi.

Another sign of a fake profile is the language used in the bio. If it doesn’t make sense, uses extremely poor grammar, or is too generic, that can be an indicator that the person isn’t genuine and may not have the best intentions. A spelling error or two is acceptable, but sentences like “just want meet nice girl for dates relationships sex,” is definitely suspicious.

Dating profiles that are incomplete and lack much personal information may also be the product of a fake account. Sometimes a romance scammer will set up multiple generic profiles as bait, and that person generally doesn’t waste much time filling in every section or making it sound like a real person. Trust your instincts and swipe left on any profile that gives you a bad feeling.

Despite what you may see in the media, not all singles are marriage-obsessed, family-driven, and sex-deprived. Some are perfectly happy to remain single, play the field, and enjoy romances that last for a season, not a lifetime.

Free hookup apps appeal to people who know exactly who they are and what they want. These adults have sex on their minds, and there’s nothing wrong with that. They can pursue their pleasures on the 13 hookup apps on this list. These sex-positive spaces can spice up the online dating scene by helping casual daters find sexual partners on their terms. So, what are you waiting for?