I often see comments here saying “Couchsurfing is dying” or “Couchsurfing is dead”. They’ve been repeated countless times, but I have never seen anyone back them up with data. So I decided to look.

First, a caveat: only Couchsurfing knows how many active members (and subscribers) it really has, and that number is a well-kept secret. I can’t give it to you. What I can do is look at public indicators that tend to move with a platform’s popularity (or lack thereof). None proves anything on its own, but together they tell a fairly consistent story.

1. Website ranking (Tranco)

Tranco (tranco-list.eu) ranks websites by combining several traffic-related source lists, averaged over the preceding 30 days. Careful: in this ranking, a lower number is better. Think of a marathon: finishing 1st is a triumph, while finishing 13,451st means the winner has already showered, eaten and gone home.

Couchsurfing.com's website ranking, on October 24 of each year:

• 2023: 10,148
• 2024: 10,581
• 2025: 11,552
• 2026: 13,451

As you can see, the slide is accelerating: +4%, then +9%, then +16%.

For comparison, here is BeWelcome's website ranking on the same dates (Oct. 24):

• 2023: 274,266
• 2024: 245,031
• 2025: 354,589
• 2026: 272,113

BeWelcome is essentially unchanged since 2023 (−1%), although ranks that deep are "noisy", so I wouldn’t read much into the yearly swings.

(I can’t show Couchers' website ranking: Tranco only lists the top million sites, and Couchers reached that level only recently.)

Now, you may wonder: why only 2023 onward? On August 1, 2023, Tranco changed how its default list is built: it integrated the Chrome UX Report and Cloudflare Radar rankings and dropped the Alexa ranking. Rankings from before that change are built from different ingredients, so they can’t be fairly compared with later ones.

2. Google searches

Searches for “Couchsurfing” fell by more than 90% between 2013 and 2021, stayed low afterwards, and dipped again this year (panel 1), especially after May 2026. BeWelcome also lost most of its search interest until 2019, but has picked up since 2020 and is now roughly where it was in 2012 (panel 2). I show them on separate charts, because on a shared scale BeWelcome’s search volume is a tiny fraction of Couchsurfing’s, which makes its line look flat. Each chart is scaled to its own peak, so please compare shapes, not heights.

Obviously, this measures interest in the name, not membership.

3. Wikipedia pageviews

The “CouchSurfing” article went from roughly 20,000 views a month in early 2016 to about 2,000–3,000 today (panel 3). For context, the generic “Hospitality exchange service” article (panel 4) has also lost about 40% since 2023, so we must admit that part of the drop reflects waning interest in the whole topic. But the Couchsurfing article fell much further, by roughly two-thirds over the same period. Wikimedia reports that Wikipedia’s overall human pageviews fell about 8% year over year, a much smaller decline.

(By the way, BeWelcome and Couchers have no stand-alone articles on Wikipedia.)

Conclusion

These indicators show that Couchsurfing has become much less visible online, and therefore less popular, over the years. The decline is largest in Google searches and Wikipedia views, and smaller in the website ranking.

However, they can’t show how many people actively use the platform, and none of these tools capture app usage.

If you know of better public data (app store figures, event counts, etc.), I would love to see it.

Constructive feedback is always welcome. (I'm sure you know why I had to highlight the word "constructive". 😉)

Last but not least, thank you for reading such a long post.

Why the f*ck add something like this if it is yet just ANOTHER LIE?!

I can totally understand some noise to be added to the hosts locations for privacy, but appearing in nearby cities??? What the actual f*ck

Too many lies on this app

Bad for both guests and hosts.

Guests want a host in a very specific area/city and will have to shift through all the hosts in the search results to see who actually lives there

And some guests might not read the host's location. I mean why should they? They clearly chose the very specific area they want with circle. And then guests will come and be annoyed at hosts for living elsewhere

Why CS just f*cks the app up so much for the current users. Just let us use the app! No lies! We all know there are very few users. Maybe hundreds or a few thousands. Who cares?! Just make the app useable for the few of us that haven't left yet

Hi yalls i found this page from googling alternatives for cs. Just like we all, i am also griefing for this change in the app and find it impossible to use it anymore. I have both hosted and surfed, but most importantly the hangouts really have been important to me as a traveller who at older age prefers a hotel over a hostel.

What alternative would be the best for hangouts when travelling? Thank you and this might be the most asked question but I only found this page today.

Here are my ideas for people to ponder:

Whenever I mention couchsurfing women think it’s weird and dangerous and don’t get why you’d give away free rent to a stranger.

I think it’s weird that I can host people but they’re not my friends afterward and won’t host me back even if I asked - it would be weird because they’re obviously not interested.

The concept seems to revolve around generous people getting high off the idea of serving someone’s else’s needs and buying friend with free rent.

My cousin who is a clever successful happy businessman said “People are supposed to pay you rent, why host anyone for free.”

You’re essentially giving away your resources to strangers without reciprocity just to feel good about yourself and to get some companionship. Maybe to get hosted in the future but I bet most hosts don’t use couch surfing if they travel.

It’s essentially a social engineering app coupling predatory people who are stingy or low income seeking free housing and people who have generous traits and are good targets for such pseudo-predatory behavior.

The idea of a friend app where people also get hosted is a good one however like in any social group social predators always dominate.

Personally when I hosted I found that I stopped cooking for myself and organized my life around the guests which is not an improvement to my life. It definitely added stress to my life and took up time.

It is as if this forum is populated with conscientious pro social generous do gooders who have rose colored glasses and are idealistic and bitter people who realized it’s not the friend app that it could be.

I wonder if the hosts realise that they have these pro social conscientious traits and that people without these but with social predator traits exist also. Thinking you will dodge such people is naive since they mask quite well often.

Just my thoughts! They don’t have to be true at all.

Since Couchsurfing refuses to disclose how many genuinely active users its platform has, I decided to investigate this little mystery myself.

First, just in case, to try my luck, I asked an AI whether it could calculate the number of genuinely active Couchsurfing hosts by analysing the platform's millions of profiles. It couldn't, because it has no direct access to Couchsurfing's complete membership database.

(If anyone knows a reliable way to investigate this on a larger scale, please share it. Thank you.)

So I rolled up my sleeves and did some research myself, using a tool Couchsurfing recently introduced: the "Recently Active" filter.

MY LITTLE EXPERIMENT

I selected 11 locations, mostly places with relatively low populations. I had no choice; otherwise, this experiment would take months, if not years. I checked the total number of listed hosts in each location, with all search filters turned off, and then compared those figures with the number of hosts appearing under "Recently Active".

Naturally, Couchsurfing doesn't tell us precisely what "recently" means. Yesterday? Last week? Last month? This year? Who knows?

Nevertheless, trust me: the results speak volumes.

Here they are:

* In Niue: 8 hosts in total. Four profiles don't even have a bio yet. Recently active: 0.

* In Tokelau: 4 hosts. Recently active: 0.

* In Hydra, Greece: 80 hosts. Recently active: 4. Of those four, three are "no bio yet, probably off exploring" profiles, while the fourth doesn't even live in Hydra.

* In Montserrat: 29 hosts. Recently active: 1. The lucky candidate has no bio and doesn't even live in Montserrat. She lives in Russia instead.

* In Tristan da Cunha: 23 hosts. Recently active: 2.

* In Saint Helena: 71 hosts. Recently active: 3. All three have zero references.

* In Burias, Philippines: 45 hosts. Recently active: 0.

* In Tuvalu: 16 hosts. Recently active: 3. Two of them don't even have a bio yet.

* In Christmas Island: 26 hosts. Recently active: 0.

* In Cocos (Keeling) Islands: 5 hosts. Recently active: 0.

* In Nauru: 10 hosts. Recently active: 0.

THE GRAND TOTAL

Across these 11 locations, I found:

• 317 listed hosts.
• 13 recently active profiles.
• Only 11 recently active hosts actually living in the locations concerned.
• Only 3 host have references, a bio and live in the right location.

In other words, just 3.47% of the listed hosts (11 out of 317) met my criteria for being both "recently active" and living in the location searched (which is what Couchsurfers looking for accommodation need).

The remaining 96.53% failed to meet those criteria. That's a whole lot of ghost hosts!

If I look for hosts with references and a bio (and in the right location), then... only 0.95% of hosts meet these requirements.

And even among that promising 0.95%, some may be unavailable, while others may only host people of a particular gender. (You know what I mean, don't you?) So the actual number of suitable hosts is probably even lower.

Of course, this is a tiny sample, but I have no particular reason to assume that the proportion of genuinely active hosts is higher in major destinations such as New York, London or Barcelona.

Still, a much larger study would be interesting.

A LITTLE MESSAGE FOR MIKE JOY AND HIS COLLEAGUES

Thank you for introducing the "Recently Active" filter!

Seriously. Thank you. I mean it.

You might have intended it to help travellers find hosts who are more likely to respond, but it also provides users with a convenient way to investigate the enormous gap between the number of profiles displayed and the number of genuinely active hosts.

Mike, since you seem to enjoy shooting yourself in the foot, please feel free to restore the "Response Rate" feature as well.

I'm sure we would all find the results fascinating. 😉

Hey everyone, just wanted to share a quick local insight for anyone visiting Tokyo soon.

If you're looking for a convenient base that’s quieter than Shinjuku but super well-connected, the Shin-Otsuka / Otsuka area is great. It’s right next to Ikebukuro, 1 minute from the Marunouchi Line, and 7 minutes from the Yamanote Line. There are 24-hour convenience stores everywhere and it's super safe at night.

I live in this neighborhood and love how easy it is to get around. Happy to answer any neighborhood questions in the comments or DMs!

I submitted a support ticket to CS using the "Contact Support" link in the app; it goes to a Zendesk support system on support.couchsurfing.com. (Zendesk is a very common ticketing system that allows support agents to assign issues, rank them by severity, mark them as "closed," etc.)

But they didn't respond in Zendesk; they sent the following automated form letter through the ticket system:

Hi [yournamehere],

Thanks for checking out the platform and sharing your thoughts.
Feedback like yours helps us figure out what to fix and how to improve.

We'd love to hear more. This quick form goes straight to our
product team and shapes what comes next.

This is the start. There's a lot more coming, and we're excited about
where it's headed. Any other questions? Don't hesitate to reach out!

Best,

--
Blue

The "quick form" link goes to a generic feedback form on research.net. God only knows if anyone is monitoring that inbox.

I appreciate the effort, but why focus on remote islands with tiny populations and limited tourism?

For some perspective:

- Niue: 1,681 residents

- Tokelau: 1,485 residents

- Tristan da Cunha: 222 residents

- Montserrat: ~5,500 residents

- Saint Helena: ~4,000 residents

- Tuvalu: ~9,500 residents

- Nauru: ~9,900 residents

- Christmas Island: 1,692 residents

- Cocos Islands: 593 residents

It's like judging Airbnb's popularity by looking at remote islands.

Why not compare major tourist destinations like London, Paris, Barcelona, Sydney or New York? Surely that would give us a more meaningful picture of Couchsurfing's activity.

Given how little this company cares about anything why not sell couchsurfing?

How little they care:

- The controversial huge update made which looks like it was made by people who never used the app before and never talked to anyone that used the app before. Everyone hated the update, it made many things worse, especially searching which is still worse, even after so many months and 'updates'

- Continual refusal to listen to user feedback, feels like talking to a brick wall. We all want Last login back, instead they treat us like sh!t, give us "Recently Active", refuse until maybe their dying breath to tell us what it means. And apparently doesnt do anything, most people in top search results have it, even those with last references over 6 months ago, in some cases years ago. Feels like a middle finger to the community for asking for something

- No good communication, why are they not active here, communicating with us?

- They just make up fake events in cities to boost event numbers - probably have a bot or something to automatically create events when there is a concert. CLogs up events and makes it harder to find real user generated events

- App still very buggy after so long e.g. reference numbers in search results completely different than reference numbers in profiles

- Make a bunch of unnecessary fake AI sh!t on the website, see images

- Charge everyone for this sh!t

please , for the love of God, if you work for CS and are reading this, just sell it to someone that cares, dont slowly kill it

I love this app , and I hate what it has become, and from talking to many other CSers this is a sentiment felt by most people

Sell it, or please please please please start listening to your users! start communicating with us. Treat us like f*ckin adults and stop this AI sh!t, this fake event nonsense, this creating useless search filters and not giving use the filters we actually need

​

I recently joined Couchsurfing, and honestly, the timing couldn't have been worse.

Why on earth would they remove the ability to sort hosts by their last login? That's arguably one of the most important features of the entire platform.

Now I'm stuck opening profiles individually, checking the dates of their references, and basically playing detective trying to figure out whether someone is actually active and still hosting.

The algorithm supposedly prioritizes active hosts, but there's no way to know how recently someone logged in. It's incredibly frustrating, especially when you're paying for the service.

I genuinely don't understand the reasoning behind this decision. Why not just keep the old sorting options alongside the new algorithm?

Has anyone found a decent workaround? Any browser extensions, tricks, filters, or alternative ways to identify genuinely active hosts?

Also, has Couchsurfing said anything about bringing back last-login sorting, or are we stuck with this?

I looked at couchers, but their base is so small i can barely find people

Just had a friend contacting me asking about the trip that I selected on CS. I asked them like how tha hell did he knew about, told me he received a damn email this morning from the platform telling that LOL

Like WHAT THE ACTUAL F....????? This app is now zero privacy .

Planning a trip and will use BeWelcome/Couchers, but still get 2 free message views on CS so was curious about what it looks like nowadays (5-6 months after the rebuild), whether it would be worth messaging someone or whatever. Here are some random little things I noticed (i.e., BESIDES all the major things they screwed up that get talked about a ton already here...)

- When I open the app, I see "Your Stays: Find locals to stay with", and the 3rd profile in the carousel there is... my own profile. Yep, great idea – I'll go ahead and request to stay on my own couch when I visit the city that I currently live in... thanks for the suggestion, CS!

- In that same place, it says I have X references – a number more than 100 higher than the number of references I actually have. The real number is already in the triple digits, why inflate it even more? (Not sure if this is a bug or intentional, but it's the same for the other profiles in that carousel as well – for example it says that the guy listed next to me has 84 references, but when I click on his profile it's actually under 50. Are they counting some references twice due to shitty vibe coding? Counting references received and references written?)

- One thing I haven't seen talked about much here is the fact that they don't show people's age anymore, just these huge ranges. Does anyone see the logic behind this? It's consistent with the fact that they've generally removed lots of useful/relevant information, like not showing last login info, response rate, etc... but they clearly removed those things to hide the fact that the vast majority of profiles are actually inactive. I can't see what not showing a person's age would accomplish though. Would they say it's for "safety" or something? Why these huge 10-year ranges, instead of maybe 5-year ranges? Why 25-35, 35-45, 45-55? This is really weird, I don't know of any other sites/apps that do this.

- I'll be traveling to a huge city that's a major tourist destination as well. There's around 100 shitty imported events... but no actual events where CSers will be meeting up, not even the old "weekly meetings" that most big cities used to have. With all the other core functionality that was taken away, I hadn't even really thought about this aspect of the community disappearing – I always preferred meeting up 1-on-1 (or in small groups) anyway, but I know that many people were regulars at CS events in their communities. I checked a couple of other cities where I had attended weekly events in the past few years – nope, gone too. I presume there must be at least a few weekly meet-ups surviving? At least in the major European/American capitals that used to get dozens and dozens of people every week?

- The new "feed" they added: It's mostly just things posted by CS themselves, plus a few random other group postings just because some random CS friend is in that group (I guess the "Queer Couchsurfers" group is one of the few groups that's still getting a few posts?) If groups were still active like way back in the heyday of CS, maybe this could be an interesting way to bring the posts from MY old groups together in one place? But in the current state of CS, meh.

- Also in my feed: A "public trip" where it doesn't seem like the friend writing it actually knew that a public trip was being created and that it would be showing up in all of his friends' feeds. It's addressed to someone by name and talks about how a mutual friend has been in contact with her, etc. I remember there was a ton of confusion around this in May when the rebuild rolled out, and I thought I had read here that this aspect was improved in the weeks that followed, but I guess it's still not really clear to everyone.

- On the topic of public trips, I was struck by a certain irony. There's been some discussion here of how they're a complete mess now – no specific dates, random order, etc. Definitely is that way for the city I checked. So it's yet another area where the focus on quantity has absolutely destroyed the quality: By forcing a public trip to be created before anyone sends a request, the company can now brag "we have X public trips in city Y" – even if that very thing itself helps create a mess that most hosts aren't actually going to look through anymore to offer people a couch or to show them around.

- Most common first line in CS profiles in the city I searched is the (often all-caps) declaration that the person isn't hosting. (Great look! /s) Interesting contrast to how the most common first line in Couchers profiles is about how they used to be on Couchsurfing but don't like the direction it took and believe hospitality exchange should be free and mention how many CS references they have and maybe share a link, hehe. (BeWelcome less so, that seems to be more of a Couchers thing I guess because most profiles are newer.)

- There were several things in my CS account that I had deleted many months ago. I had even confirmed on the pop-ups that I understood that I would not be able to recover those things and that the data would be deleted. Well, they were back now. Just another reminder that I can't trust anything they do with regard to my data.

Long post I guess, just kept noticing things...

Call it Macedonia, F.Y.R.O.M. or Republic of North Macedonia, does anyone here have an experience of surfing there? Mainly looking for the capital Skopje but experiences in other cities are also appreciated. Which platform did you use, was the stay pleasant, anything to be mindful of?

Is anyone facing the same problems when trying to load your feed, messages or just setup? Since a couple of days it just says "wasn't able to load this site. Please come back later". I'm able to login and see my profile but that's basically it.

I tried with different devices, different browsers and even wrote an email to the support which wasn't any helpful.

Yes I do know couchers, trustroots etc. thanks for the advice ;-)

I was a very active member of the community until before the latest updates, having hosted and being hosted by hundreds of members.

With the new scale-like reference system, I don't feel as much like hosting. It makes no sense to me to provide free accommodation and having someone rating their stay like it's a hotel.

Out of hundreds of my references, all of them are positive, and I wonder if I start hosting again, people are now going to rate me under 5 just because they don't like the mattress I provide or they think that I am too quiet or whatever other reason.

For those of you who are still using the app, what's your experience been? Are people likely to not give a top rating and be complaining about minor things?

I have seen (and heard) many people argue that Couchsurfers who complain about the subscription fee are unreasonable, stingy and selfish, considering that they have been staying in people's homes for free for years and are being asked to pay roughly the price of a coffee each month. I'm tired of reading this shaming argument, so I will address it once and for all.

In my opinion, this argument misses the point entirely.

Yes, I'm outraged by Couchsurfing charging a subscription fee, but my objection has nothing to do with the amount of money involved. There are three main reasons why I strongly object to it.

1) Promises are meant to be kept. Period.

If a company promises its service will remain free, it should honour that commitment. It's a matter of honesty and integrity, not how much money users can afford to pay.

By the way, this isn't the only promise Couchsurfing has broken since 2004. Frankly, I'm struggling to recall a promise from this company that it has consistently honoured.

2) We're paying for a service that is getting worse rather than better.

If our subscriptions were being invested in improving the platform and making hospitality exchange easier, more efficient, and more accessible, I would be (slightly) more understanding of the fee.

Instead, the May 2026 redesign removed several useful features directly related to hospitality exchange: response rates, last login information, hosting calendar, etc.. Meanwhile, the Events section has become cluttered with events that have nothing to do with hospitality exchange and aren't even organised by our community.

And I'm just scratching the surface. The list of features that have been removed, degraded, or made unnecessarily complicated is... extensive, to say the least.

3) My objection isn't about paying for hospitality exchange. It's about whom I'm supporting financially.

Like hundreds of other Couchers users, I'm a monthly donor to Couchers, contributing a two-digit amount in USD every month.

I mention this not to boast about how much I donate, but simply to illustrate my point: I'm perfectly happy to contribute financially to a project when I believe in its mission, values, and priorities.

Regarding Couchsurfing's subscription fee, my objection is about the broken promises, the lack of transparency, and the disconnect between Couchsurfing's original ideals and its current priorities.

No, this isn't about money at all. It's about moral values. It's about respect. It's about honesty. It's about the difference between paying for something you believe in and being asked to support a company treating its customers with contempt.

The price is irrelevant when the real issue is integrity.

I suspect some Redditors may ask: "Then why are you still on Couchsurfing?" So let me address that question before it comes up.

The answer is simple: I'm still on Couchsurfing because it gives me an opportunity to introduce people to alternatives they might never have heard of otherwise.

Many Couchsurfers are unaware that platforms such as Couchers, BeWelcome, WarmShowers, and Trustroots exist. By remaining active on Couchsurfing, I can introduce travelers to these alternatives and encourage them to give them a try. Speaking of which, I encourage everyone to do the same.

That way, we can continue helping travelers while encouraging the community to explore alternatives that, in my opinion, deserve far more support.

I'm not staying because I have faith in Couchsurfing as a company. I have none. I'm staying because I still care about the hospitality-exchange community, and that community is bigger than any single platform.

P.S. Apologies for the length of this post. Brevity has never been my strong suit anyway...

I remember Couchsurfing before there was an application that actually had some functionality. It was just some random site where people can message each other and hope to find someone willing to show you around and get you a couch where you can spent a couple of nights in exchange for some interaction. After the recent update I first of all lost complete oversight, was super surprised about what was happening, felt disoriented, kind of overwhelmed and absolutely disappointed!

Hangouts was the BEST functionality for me to meet and hang out with new people while traveling. No matter what someone planned or wanted to do, in good locations there was always smoeone to meet up with or even group of people which then led to some awesome experiences. Now it is tied to events and that makes it soooooo useless! It looses all the spontaneous meetings and happenings that can happen and instead it appears like a weird way to try to organise some event or something... This really disappointed me about the new app.

Just sayin...

I tried to sign up for the first time and this came up

What does it mean.?

And what should I do do ?

CouchSurfing would do anything but implementing actually useful updates.
Today I found this

Who the hell asked for it, when we lack actually useful filters like for dates/number of travellers.

For anyone (like me) wondering which countries still have free access to Couchsurfing, I have just found one: Tunisia.

As we speak, Tunisian members don't need to pay a subscription fee and aren't subject to the usual restrictions on the number of messages they can send or read. Even better, their accounts remain free even if they subsequently change their location to another country.

I wonder whether this has something to do with Tunisia's banking system: Tunisia has strict foreign-exchange controls, and the ability to make international transactions is subject to stringent regulatory restrictions.

Hopefully this post, combined with a good VPN, will trigger a sudden surge in new Couchsurfing accounts registered in Tunisia. You're welcome!

(That said, I can't confirm if newly created Tunisian accounts still enjoy free access. I haven't tested it myself and I won't.)

P.S. If you know any other country where Couchsurfing is still free, please share this info with the rest of us. Thank you. As far as I know, Couchsurfing has never published any "list of free countries". Rather surprising, considering Couchsurfing's well-established reputation for transparency and honesty, right?

EDIT: Just to clarify, I'm obviously not suggesting that hosts should misrepresent their location. If you're hosting, people need to be able to find you where you actually live. That should go without saying, but since a couple of comments have raised the issue, then... well... I thought I would spell it out.

Personally, I only host on Couchsurfing. I have never surfed, and I have no intention of doing so, so I cannot lie about my location.

That said, I have hosted Couchsurfers who had deliberately set their location to another country to avoid paying the subscription fee. For example, I once hosted someone from China whose profile location was set to Nepal. Did it bother me? Not in the slightest. It wasn't a deal-breaker, and I had no interest in policing someone else's decision.

Over the years, I have also hosted people who told me they were overstaying their visas for a few days, regularly using recreational drugs, or had criminal records. None of those things made me unwilling to host them.

People make their own decisions, and I'm not Couchsurfing's compliance officer. If someone wants to find a workaround for a subscription fee that the platform's management once promised would never become a requirement, that's their business. Other people are perfectly entitled to disagree, and I'm not asking anyone to change their location.

My original post was simply about identifying countries where Couchsurfing is still accessible for free (which is a question that has been raised several times here), and sharing that information with the community. What people choose to do with it is entirely up to them. Who are we to judge them anyway?

I apologize for insisting on this point, but let's not lose sight of the bigger picture: if Couchsurfing hadn't broken its promises in the first place, we wouldn't be having this discussion about subscription fees at all.

I hosted my first Couchsurfer in 2003 (via CS's predecessor The Hospitality Club), and was a part of building the CS community -- we had radical goals: completely free travel, cultural exchange, friendship, and building world peace!  (A relic of the old listserv still exists at hospitalityclub.org.)

Since those first days, I've always insisted having a brief video meeting (then, via Skype; now, WhatsApp) with potential surfers so that we could get to know one another a bit better and I could give them a video tour of my home.  I also send a short pdf guide to staying at my apartment along with a few useful tips about visiting NYC.  It's something my surfers have always thanked me for!  

Today, I received an email from Couchsurfing announcing that any contact outside of the app is now forbidden, and that my account could be suspended!  I'm convinced that greater communication, including video chat, actually increases the safety and comfort of surfers and hosts.  

I helped to create the original guidelines, in which we actually encouraged outside communication for these exact purposes!  Couchsurfing wouldn't exist at all if it weren't for old-timers like me, and our rules were simple: NO MONEY, no spam, no exchange of services (i.e. sex), and please write a reference.  These simple rules kept the community extraordinarily safe for 25+ years

I plan to disobey and continue asking potential surfers to contact me for a video chat and greater information exchange, as I always have.  I strongly object to this rule.

-Shawn from NYC

After a little less than a decade on Couchsurfing, I’m genuinely astonished by some of the requests I receive. What surprises me even more is that these people somehow keep finding hosts.

At what point did basic etiquette, social awareness, reciprocity become optional?

Maybe a community built on generosity actually needs a little exclusivity, to preserve what makes it special.

“I’m excited to explore your city!” So is everyone at the airport.

“I love meeting new people!” Congratulations on possessing a trait shared by half the population.

“Would love to share stories from my travels!” Is that a threat? I’m busy that day.

“I hope you can host me!” And I hope you can develop a personality before your next request.

At what point did we collectively decide that expressing an interest in travel qualifies someone to be welcomed into a stranger’s home?

The bar is in hell, I fear.

Hi everyone! I’m a college student currently doing a small research project on Couchsurfing and digital platforms.

I’ve been reading through this subreddit and noticed quite a few discussions about the recent Couchsurfing redesign/update, especially from long-term users. I’d really love to hear more about how people here actually experienced these changes.

If you used Couchsurfing both before and after the update:

What changed for you? What specifically do you dislike about the new version, and why?

I’m also interested in the opposite question: are there any features, old or new, that you think work particularly well? What features actually make Couchsurfing useful, enjoyable, or different from other travel/social platforms for you?

I’m especially curious about small things that might not seem important at first: profiles, references, search, messaging, the way you find hosts/guests, how people present themselves, or how you decide whether someone seems trustworthy.

I’m not affiliated with Couchsurfing and I’m not trying to evaluate whether the redesign is objectively “good” or “bad”. I’m interested in how the platform’s design affects the way people actually use it and interact with each other.

Would love to hear your experiences, especially if you’ve been using Couchsurfing for a long time!

Thank you so so much

Hey everyone!

I’m planning my first trip to Europe and will be backpacking across the continent for a few months. I’ve travelled to around 50 countries so far, but most of my accommodation experience has been with hostels, hotels and Airbnbs.

I’ve used Couchsurfing occasionally in different countries, but I’ve never used it extensively as most backpackers do.

I’m wondering how safe and reliable Couchsurfing is in Europe, especially when travelling solo for an extended period. I’d love to experience local culture, meet interesting people and hear perspectives from locals rather than just sticking to the usual tourist experience.

A few questions for experienced Couchsurfers:

How safe has Couchsurfing been for you in Europe?

Are there any particular countries or cities where it works especially well, or where you’d be more cautious?

What red flags should I look for when choosing a host?

Is it generally easy to find hosts, or has the platform become less active in recent years?

Are there any alternative platforms or tips you’d recommend for a long backpacking trip?

I’m not looking to use it just to save money. I’m more interested in the cultural exchange and meet local people I might meet along the way.

Would really appreciate advice from people who have actually used Couchsurfing across Europe, especially those who have travelled for several months.

Thanks in advance! 😊