Sites Like Backpage

Online Dating

7 Best Dating Sites Like Backpage (2024)

Hayley Matthews

Written by: Hayley Matthews

Hayley Matthews

Hayley has over 10 years of experience overseeing content strategy, social media engagement, and article opportunities. She has also written hundreds of informational and entertaining blog posts. Her work has appeared in numerous publications, including Bustle, Cosmo, the Huffington Post, AskMen, and Entrepreneur. When she's not writing about dating news, relationship advice, or her fantasy love affair with Leonardo DiCaprio, she enjoys listening to The Beatles, watching Harry Potter reruns, and drinking IPAs.

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Edited by: Lillian Castro

Lillian Castro

Lillian Guevara-Castro brings more than 30 years of journalism experience to ensure DatingAdvice articles have been edited for overall clarity, accuracy, and reader engagement. She has worked at The Atlanta Journal and Constitution, The Gwinnett Daily News, and The Gainesville Sun covering lifestyle topics.

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Looking for adult personals sites like Backpage? We don’t blame you. Before the website was taken down, Backpage was the second largest classified ads site in the US, where you’d find listings for things like cars, furniture, jobs, houses, yard sales, and dating personals.

Now that this easy hookup site is no longer on the web, you’ll need to use a Backpage alternative to peruse personals in your local area. Below are seven Backpage-like sites that are our top picks for finding hookups, dates, and even lifelong partners — and best yet, they’re all 100% free to try.

To become a part of the Adult Friend Finder community, all you have to do is complete a few steps. 1) Choose your gender and relationship status. 2) Select the types of people you’re interested in. 3) Provide your birthday, country, and zip code. Then you’ll click “Register Now” to post your profile. A free basic membership will never expire, and you can post and look at videos as well. If you want more features, you can upgrade, but it’s not necessary.

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BeNaughty is a great alternative to Backpage because it’s just for personals, particularly the adult kind. You can post a dating profile for free and find hookups, threesomes, swingers, affairs, or other kinds of sexual encounter. The casual hookup site has millions of members from all over the world, and it uses your location to connect you with like-minded, frisky men and women in a matter of seconds. You don’t have to worry about your safety on BeNaughty because it’s SSL encrypted, which means your information is secure, and it’s extremely difficult for scammers to hack this dating website.

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FriendFinder-X has been around for years, and it’s often called one of the best hookup sites. It doesn’t matter what type of sexual relationship you’re looking for — you can probably find it on FriendFinder-X. Just provide a few pieces of information about yourself, and then start browsing and communicating with millions of hot men and women. The online dating site doesn’t charge you anything to do that as well as access several other features.

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Match isn’t a new name in the dating industry — it’s been around since the 1990s. Because Match is responsible for the most romantic connections, the majority of us know someone who’s found a date or partner on the site (or know someone who knows someone). It won’t cost you anything to join, and Match will search for compatible people based on your criteria (distance, appearance, age, lifestyle, type of relationship, etc.) and send you match suggestions every day. Then you can view these profiles and either “like” them or send them a message.

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Ashley Madison is one of the more unique sites on our list because it mostly focuses on helping people find affairs. It’s been around since 2002, and it’s been the topic of millions of conversations ever since. Ashley Madison also welcomes couples to join the site together if they’re interested in a poly relationship, a threesome, or other types of encounters. You can rest easy that Ashley Madison has your best interest at heart because the team has stepped up its game in terms of security.

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Flirt.com is an audacious online dating site where users can mingle under an anonymous name and without uploading a profile picture. More than 70 million people have given Flirt.com a try since its launch in 1997, and this hookup site has stood the test of time (unlike Backpage) because it looks out for singles in the casual dating scene. If you see a potential date you like on Flirt.com, you can send a virtual like or greeting for free, and start a real conversation with a real person.

7

ClassifiedAds

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Launched around 2001, ClassifiedAds.com looks and acts just like the adult ads you’d see in newspapers. It’s a completely free service, unlike some other classified sites, and you can be as general or as specific as you want in your profile. ClassifiedAds.com has a personals section for casual dating, men seeking women, women seeking men, men seeking men, women seeking women, and missed connections. All of these classified listings have been automatically checked and approved before being published. The team says: “We invest a great deal of time and effort in monitoring and filtering the content posted to the website, so you can be confident that you’ll find only quality, relevant listings.”

URL: https://www.classifiedads.com/

FAQS: Why Was Backpage Shut Down?

The Backpage website was shut down by the U.S. federal government in 2018 because it was overrun with sex workers, and law enforcement agencies had discovered the Backpage team was manipulating its classified listing to aid and abet prostitution and child sex trafficking. Also its executives were caught embezzling money.

Basically, they were bad people who let the Backpage website operate as an escort site without taking meaningful action to check, report, and stop the criminal activity.

What Happened to Craigslist Personals?

Once law enforcement went after the Backpage executives, it was clear that online classified ad sites would be held to a higher standard and could no longer turn a blind eye to the human trafficking and escort services that operated in these open and anonymous forums. That spelled trouble for the Craigslist team.

Craigslist chose to close its dating personals section in 2018 due to concerns that it could be held responsible for supporting human sex trafficking.

Screenshot of Craigslist

Craigslist is a classified ad site that no longer supports dating and sex personals.

Craigslist still has community forums, online auctions, housing lists, job openings, and other services available to locals, but the Craigslist personals section is gone for good.

“Any tool or service can be misused,” the company said in a statement. “We can’t take such risk without jeopardizing all our other services, so we are regretfully taking craigslist personals offline. Hopefully we can bring them back some day.

What is the Communications Decency Act?

The Communications Decency Act (CDA) was passed into law in 1996 when the internet was still in its early days, yet lawmakers already saw a need to regulate pornographic content online. Before even before Google existed, people were looking for porn online.

In 1997, the Supreme Court struck down the provisions in the law that attempted to criminalize indecent content and obscenities posted online — hell yeah — and free speech has run rampant on the internet ever since.

Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act is the part that typically makes headlines and causes controversies today. It says, “No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.” The only exception to this immunity is in cases of sex trafficking. Passed in 2018, FOSTA made it illegal to knowingly assist or support human trafficking on a website.

Which Backpage Alternative is Legit?

The Backpage population wasn’t 100% sex workers. The classified site also had many members who were the real deal and just looking for someone to go out with them. Those singles were cast adrift when Backpage shut down, and they need a Backpage replacement to help connect when with actual dates.

That’s where Adult Friend Finder comes in. This adult dating site has been around since the 1990s, and it has attracted over 100 million members in that time.

★★★★
4.2/5.0

Relationships: Hookups Only

Match System: Search by location, interest, more

Our Experts Say: “Make no mistake: this site isn't about making friends, it's about finding hookups and casual encounters. No adult site has a larger or more active user base of those seeking discreet fun...”

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Adult Friend Finder actively polices the personal ads, videos, blogs, and content on the site to ensure that people are having fun without going to far. The sex site encourages experimentation, polyamory, and harmless flirtation, but it doesn’t not stand for fake ads or sex work.

Remember that even reputable online dating sites can attract some bad apples or unsavory characters, so it’s important to keep an eye out for fake profiles as you peruse the web for dates.

What is Geebo?

Geebo

is an online classified ads marketplace launched in 2000 to help job hunters find openings in their field. Nowadays, it’s also used buying and selling goods — though it no longer accepts ads for firearms, pets, or dating. Safety is a huge concern for this website, and it nixed these sections to ensure no harm comes as a result of a classified advertisement.

The Geebo team seems to have a strong moral compass, and this classified site promises to do what it can to remove scams, protect real people, and eliminate criminal activity.

How Does Facebook Dating Work?

In 2019, Facebook became one of many tech companies trying to dominate the modern dating scene and provide a personals section where real people could get to know one another.

Facebook Dating is a service provided exclusively by the Facebook app — singles cannot access it on the desktop version of the site. After downloading the free Facebook app, you can go to the menu, click the heart icon, and create your Facebook Dating profile, which is completely separate from your public profile.

Facebook pulls information and photos from your profile, but it will not post anything that will let your Facebook friends know you’ve joined Facebook Dating. Your online dating activity is kept well away from your social media account.

Screenshots of Facebook Dating profiles

Facebook Dating is a completely free dating service launched in the U.S. in 2019.

Facebook Dating works like a traditional dating app with swiping and matching tools. Its in-depth profiles and straightforward interface gets you into the action right away. The main difference is in the Secret Crush section, which allows singles to identify crushes among their Facebook friends. You can name up to nine Facebook friends that you’re currently crushing on, and they will only find out about it if they list your name in their Secret Crush list.

While Facebook is relatively new to the matchmaking game, it has a robust social media network and advanced algorithms to strengthen online connections and inspire relationships, so it’s worth creating a free dating profile and seeing if anyone catches your eye.

Can I Meet Someone Special on Twitter?

Believe it or not, we have heard stories of many Twitter couples who slid into each other’s DMs, made a date, and then made it official. It’s a little more unconventional than meeting in a bar or on a dating app, but you do you. If a Twitter account stands out to you as particularly charming, funny, or attractive, there’s no harm in reaching out and seeing if that person is open to a little romance.

Don’t put all your emotional eggs in the Twitter basket, but keep in mind while you’re tweeting, retweeting, and hashtag surfing that every profile you see could be a potential dating opportunity if you can send the right message.

How Do I Find a Real Woman on a Casual Dating Site?

If you’re worried about running into female traffickers or falling victim to a scam, you should do your best to seek out online dating sites and classified ad listings with rigorous verification tools. Some anonymous listings ask for nothing more than an email address to get started, and that creates an opening for sex workers to operate under the radar.

Doublelist has become a popular Backpage alternative site because it checks a person’s identity twice — hence, the name — and only approves members who can provide a valid email address and phone number. Doublelist sends a verification text to ensure that number is real, and it also checks IP addresses to make sure the location data is correct.

Screenshot of Doublelist

Doublelist is a classified ad website with a zero-tolerance policy for sex traffickers and prostitution.

The Doublelist website currently has over 3 million verified users, and it sees over 100,000 daily posts, none of which are fake ads. The moderators check every personal ad to make sure it meets the terms of service and was created by a real person and not a bot.

This classified site is available exclusively to adults over 18, and any content that contains, offers, or solicits prostitution, bestiality, or child pornography will be immediately flagged and removed. Doublelist also reserves the right to ban anyone in its personals section found to be engaging in online sex trafficking.

Singles can trust that the adult ads they see on Doublelist are legitimate and represent casual dating opportunities in their area.

Backpage is Popular, But You’ve Got Other Choices

Backpage was around for almost two decades, available in 15 languages, and served more than 869 cities worldwide, so it really made a name for itself in the online classified space — until the justice department brought it down.

Now singles need a Backpage replacement where they can find casual sex without getting entangled in online sex trafficking.

Looking back, the Backpage site was never very legit or safe, which is why we wanted to give you seven sites like Backpage to use in its place. These hookup platforms offer more security features and trustworthy tools to keep fake profiles, scammers, sex traffickers, and other unsavory types out of the network. Now all you have to do is sign up and start flirting!

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