Anonymous chat in Pakistan — free, voice or text

Pakistan on HearMe shares an evening with India, the Gulf and, an hour later, Bangladesh, which puts the Pakistani evening in the middle of the South Asian hour on the site. At 10pm PKT India, the Gulf and the UK are awake by the clock, and the site's no-camera, no-sign-up design suits chatting from a shared family phone. The interface is in English for now; there is no Urdu interface yet.

The table shows 9pm PKT: India is at 9:30pm, Indonesia at 11pm, the UK at 4pm, Germany at 5pm, the US East Coast at 11am. The Philippines is at midnight and Australia at 2am. The Gulf is one to two hours behind, so a Pakistani 9pm is a Dubai 8pm and a Riyadh 7pm. How many people are on HearMe at your hour is the live count at the top of the page, never a guess.

Times are standard time; daylight saving shifts some of these by an hour for part of the year. 'Evening' is 6pm to midnight. This table is only about clocks: how many people are on HearMe right now is the live count at the top of the page, and we print no other number.

Urdu, typed as Roman Urdu in text or spoken on voice; English with strangers from outside Pakistan; Punjabi, Sindhi and Pashto on voice. There is no Urdu interface yet; the site's menus and buttons are in English, or in Hindi or Arabic if you prefer those scripts.

Urdu and Hindi speakers understand each other on a voice call, and India shares the hour. For English practice with a native speaker, the UK afternoon is the Pakistani evening by the clock.

Nobody can tell you what a stranger will say, but the interest tags people pick and the topics that recur in the General room give a fair idea. If you want a conversation on one of these, set the tag before you start; the matcher prefers someone who picked the same.

• Cricket, the PSL, and every match against anyone.
• Exams and admissions: CSS, MDCAT, ECAT, and the year after them.
• Jobs, the move to Karachi, Lahore or Islamabad, and the plan to go abroad.
• Dramas, music, and what is on this week.
• Family, marriage conversations, and the things you cannot say at home.
• Late nights on a shared phone. Late-night chat has more.

The site is built for a phone on mobile data: text costs nearly nothing, and voice is audio-only, a fraction of a video call, so a call on a Jazz, Zong or Telenor connection holds up where video would stall. If two phones cannot connect directly, which is common on Pakistani carriers, a relay server carries the audio without storing it, and a dropped connection tries to reconnect for 30 seconds. Wired earphones fix echo. Nothing to install; the site runs in Chrome and can be added to the home screen.

From Pakistan, the evening is South Asia and the Gulf, and the late afternoon is the UK. India is half an hour ahead and shares the hour completely. Dubai and Riyadh are behind by one and two hours. The UK is five hours behind, so a Pakistani 9pm is a British 4pm and a Pakistani midnight is a British 7pm, The US is nine to twelve hours behind, so the American evening is the Pakistani morning. Use the Premium country filter for one place; free users match worldwide.

HearMe is 18+ and enforces it. Guests give no name, email, phone number or CNIC; the flag comes from the connection and shows the country only, never the city. Text is held for 24 hours so a report can be reviewed, then deleted; voice is never recorded and every 1:1 call is private; only a report sends a short clip from just before it for review. There is no camera on the site, which on a family phone can be the point. A block stops you being matched with that person again; bans hold by account, device and network. On a shared phone, clear the site's cookies to drop the guest session and its nickname.