GetFriendly is a calm, private app for adults to make real, platonic friends — the kind you actually meet for a coffee, a walk or a pint. Matched on what you share, never on how you look.
📱 In beta on iPhone now — scan the QR code to try it before we’re live on the App Store.
Why GetFriendly exists
You move for work, you have children, you change careers, you retire — and one day you notice the easy friendships of school and your twenties were never replaced.
Somewhere between work, screens and busy lives, friendship stopped happening by accident.
Dating apps judge faces. Social media sells your attention. Neither helps you find a mate for Saturday’s walk.
No feed, no likes, no followers, no endless scroll. Nothing designed to keep you on your phone.
Matched by what you share. A coffee. A walk. A proper conversation.
How it works
Email and password. Look around straight away — no phone number needed.
Interests, things you’d like to try, your values and where you are in life.
A small, considered set of people nearby — each with plain-English reasons why.
A short, warm note — not a swipe. Once they accept, a private chat opens.
Pick a place from the Friendly Map, make a plan, and it lands in both calendars.
Shared interests, values, hobbies, life stage and how close you are. That’s it. No photos to judge, no mystery percentages.
Every connection starts with a short, human note. They can accept, or simply let it be — no awkwardness, no pile of unread requests.
The Friendly Map shows welcoming local places and real events — walks, games nights, groups run by local charities — so there’s always somewhere easy to start.
The best thing GetFriendly can do is help you put it down. So it nudges you gently towards actually meeting — then gets out of the way.
“You’re a person here — never a product.”
Who it’s for
Any adult can join. But GetFriendly takes extra care with the moments that quietly shrink a social circle, so “same-boat” people find each other.
Someone else who’s also up at 3am, and fancies a walk with the pram at 10.
New town, no one to call. Find the people who were new here once too.
Matched by work pattern, so your friends are free when you are.
More time, fewer colleagues. Fill it with people, not just plans.
After a break-up, a bereavement or a big change — a gentle place to begin again.
New course, new job, new chapter. Meet people beyond your timetable.
To celebrate our launch, everyone gets complimentary access to all GetFriendly Plus features — finding brand-new friends near you, hosting events, co-hosts, the lot. No payment details. No catch.
We’re building this with you, so please tell us what works and what doesn’t. Your feedback genuinely shapes what comes next.
The honest bit: later on, Plus will become an optional subscription — expected to be £4.99 a month or £49.99 a year. That’s how we keep GetFriendly running with no adverts and without ever selling your data. We’ll tell you well in advance, nobody is charged automatically, and nothing you’ve saved is ever lost.
Features to come
We’d rather be honest about how this works. GetFriendly grows organically — we add new features as we grow and as funds allow. As subscriptions grow, services can grow too.
Send pictures and short clips to your friends, protected by the same end-to-end encryption as your messages.
Talk to a friend inside GetFriendly before you’re ready to share your phone number.
See a friendly face before you first meet, or catch up when you can’t get together.
Behind every friendly hello there are services running around the clock, and each one has a real cost. We checked the published prices of the major providers for each type of service. Here’s roughly what each one costs us, per member:
| Service | Roughly costs us |
|---|---|
| Cloud database & serversAccounts, matching, encrypted messaging and notifications, 24/7Running now | 1–3p a month |
| Secure photo storageStoring and delivering profile photosRunning now | 1–4p a month |
| MapsThe Friendly Map — a paid map service as we growRunning now | about 2p a month |
| Account & safety emailsVerifying your email and important updatesRunning now | under 1p a month |
| Reviewing reportsReal people checking every report — we cost this at a fair living wageRunning now | about 10p a month |
| Automatic photo safety checksScreening profile photos and reported contentComing | about 1p a month |
| Photos & videos in chatStoring and delivering them, end-to-end encryptedComing | 1–10p a month |
| Voice callsTalk without sharing your phone numberComing | about 5p per 30-min call |
| Video callsSee a friendly face before you meetComing | about 20p per 30-min call |
| Photo ID verificationID document and selfie check, optionalComing | about £1.30 per check |
| Running GetFriendly todayPer member, before any new features | about 15–20p a month |
On top of that come the fixed costs of running a company properly — developer licences, insurance, accountancy, data-protection registration and company filings — about £1,000–£4,000 a year, whether we have ten members or ten thousand.
That £3.54 keeps the core app free for everyone who doesn’t subscribe, pays the fixed costs, and is saved towards each new feature — calls, photo sharing and ID checks only switch on once we can afford to run them for everyone. Figures are estimates from major providers’ published prices (October 2026) and will change as we grow.
Most apps pay for all this with advertising or by selling your data. We won’t do either. So we’re funded by members’ subscriptions and we grow slowly — paying for each new service before we switch it on. It’s slower, but it’s honest, and it keeps GetFriendly yours.
Built in, not bolted on
Privacy isn’t a setting in GetFriendly — it’s the architecture. We simply left out the data-hungry machinery other social apps run on.
Messages are encrypted on your phone. We store only text we can’t read, and content never shows in notifications.
No advertising SDKs, no engagement algorithms, no behavioural profiles to sell. Ever.
Your exact location is never shared or stored. Distance is worked out at town level.
Choose whether you’re discoverable and exactly what you show. Delete your account any time.
Report a person, event or organisation in two taps. A real person reviews it, and reporters stay anonymous.
Confirmed at sign-up, with an email check before you contact anyone new.
For everyone who brings people together
Charities, community centres, libraries, councils, NHS bodies and support groups get a verified profile, a teal pin and free events on the Friendly Map — and we’d love your help shaping the community section, rather than building it blindly.
Find out more → Cafés, clubs & venues · Free during launchVerified organisations host real-world events with attendance limits and waitlists, and reviews only from people who actually turned up. Businesses never see members’ private details.
Find out more →Built in Scotland, by someone who knows what lonely feels like.
Dunblane, Scotland
A note from the founder
I’m a marine engineer. I’ve spent long stretches of my life at sea — months away, then home to find life has moved on without you. I know what loneliness feels like, and I know it isn’t just seafarers.
Making friends as an adult is hard, and the apps that promised to connect us somehow made it worse. So I built something about it: a small, quiet app that matches you on what you share, then gets out of the way so you can go and meet.
If something’s broken, confusing or missing, tell me. I read every message.
Good questions
No. It’s strictly for platonic friendship. There’s no romance, no swiping on looks, and matching never uses appearance — only what you genuinely share.
Yes. It’s free to download, and during our launch every Plus feature is free for everyone too — no payment details needed. Messaging the people you already know will always be free.
Plus will become an optional subscription, expected to be £4.99 a month or £49.99 a year. We’ll tell everyone well in advance, nobody is charged automatically, and nothing you’ve saved — profile, friends, messages, plans — is lost or reset.
GetFriendly is 18+ only. Before you contact anyone new, you confirm your email once. Anyone can be reported or blocked in two taps, every report is reviewed by a person, and suspended accounts are blocked at sign-in. Read more on our safety page.
Not yet — we’re starting on iPhone, and Android is on the way. Want to know when it lands? Drop us a line.
We started in Dunblane, in central Scotland, and we’re growing town by town — because friendship is local. The more people near you who join, the better your matches get, so telling a friend genuinely helps.
Free to download. Every Plus feature free during our launch.
iPhone first · Android on the way · Adults 18+
The beta is here until we’re live on the App Store — your account carries straight over when we launch.