Random chat: how we match you with a stranger

1. You start a search and join the queue for your mode: text or voice. The two queues are kept apart.
2. If you added interest tags, you are only paired with someone who shares one for the first 20 seconds. Someone else who is still in their own tag window needs a shared tag from you too.
3. After that window, or straight away if you added no tags, anyone waiting in your queue can match.
4. Among the people who fit, Premium members are offered first, then whoever has waited longest.
5. You are paired with one person. Nobody else can join that chat.

A text search only meets other text searches, and a voice search only meets voice. Text is the busier queue: between 7 October and 5 November 2026 there were 132,233 text searches against 13,502 for voice, so a text search is the better first try. If no voice partner turns up, the voice screen offers to switch you to text.

Pick up to 5 tags, or type your own. The ready-made chips sit in two groups, hobbies (music, movies, gaming, sports and others) and life (late night, vent, study, making friends and others), and a tag counts as shared if it is the same one or from the same group. So Music can meet Movies, but a word you type yourself only meets someone who typed the same word.

Tags are a head start, not a filter. They hold for 20 seconds, because a small queue split into narrow tags would leave people waiting; then the search opens to everyone in your queue. Language names are not used for matching, so say in your first line which language you want.

Premium filters work inside your queue. A women-or-men choice is tried for 45 seconds and a country choice for 20 seconds; if nobody fits by then, the search widens to everyone. A filter improves your odds; it does not promise a match. Free vs Premium lists what each plan adds.

A skip has no undo. In text chat, Skip asks for a second tap, ends the chat for both of you, and you start the next search when you are ready. On a call, Next is one tap and your next search starts straight away. Either way, the person you left is not told why.

For 5 minutes from the moment you were matched, your last partner is tried after the others, so you are unlikely to meet them again straight away when anyone else is waiting. Block stops you being matched with them; how Block works is on the home page.