We Spent 3 Months Testing Every Popular Way for Gay Men to Actually Make Friends. Here's the One That Works.
Having a phone full of guys and still nobody to call on a Sunday.
That's the number one thing gay men told us in our recent survey about life after coming out.
Second place?
"Being told to just go to the bars," when that stopped feeling like you a long time ago.
And here's the part nobody says out loud. It isn't that gay men are bad at friendship. It's that almost everything built for us was built for something else.1
Finding someone for tonight is easy. Five minutes on the grid and it's sorted.2 But finding real gay friends, the guys who text you on a Tuesday for no reason, that's the part nothing was ever designed to do.
So we ran a 3-month test with gay men who all said the same thing: they wanted real friendship and connection, not more taps.
The goal: find the one option that actually builds a friend group, instead of just filling your screen.
We tested:
- Grindr
- Sniffies
- Scruff
- The gay bars
- Mingleo
Each person spent weeks with every option. We tracked results using real outcomes and honest self-reports.
We measured:
- Real friendships actually made
- Conversations that went past logistics
- Effort required to make one real friend
- Ghosting, dead chats, and no-shows
- How they felt afterward
#1 — Mingleo
The only option that produced real, lasting gay friendships, and it did it without asking anyone to give up the fun.
Mingleo isn't a hookup app and it isn't a dating app. It's a friendship-first dinner club for gay men. You take a two-minute quiz, they match you with a small group of gay men your own age by personality, they book a real restaurant near you, and you just show up.3
This was the one option that had guys saying "these are my people now." No profiles, no taps, no grid, nothing to perform. Testers walked in nervous and, within ten minutes, it felt like they'd known the table for years. Most walked out with real numbers in their phone and a group chat that was still going weeks later. Several kept meeting the same guys every week. And nobody had to delete anything to make it happen.
Price: Free to join this week (membership fee currently waived for new members)
- Real friendships made: Very high
- Conversations past logistics: Very high
- Effort to make one real friend: Very low
- Ghosting and no-shows: Almost none
- How they felt afterward: Genuinely happier
- ✓Built specifically for gay friendship, not hookups
- ✓Matched by personality and age, not a photo
- ✓Small groups, a booked table, everyone actually shows up
- ✓Real friends and a group chat that keeps going
- ✓15,000+ gay men already joined
- ✓You keep the fun, you just finally add the friends
- ✕Popular tables can fill up fast, especially during free-month weeks
#2 — Scruff
The friendliest of the hookup apps, with a slightly older crowd, but it's still built around the grid and the hookup.
A Grindr alternative with longer profiles, a slightly older user base, and a swipe-based Match mode that feels a little more like dating.
Of the apps, this one came closest to real conversation. The profiles are longer and the pace is a bit calmer. But it's still fundamentally a hookup app built around a grid, most chats still ended in logistics or silence, and the ones looking for actual friends were a needle in a haystack. Good at what it's built for, which was never friendship.
Price: Free, with paid tiers
- Real friendships made: Low to medium
- Conversations past logistics: Medium
- Effort to make one real friend: High
- Ghosting and dead chats: Common
- How they felt afterward: Mixed
- ✓Longer profiles and a calmer pace than Grindr
- ✓Slightly older, slightly more relationship-minded crowd
- ✕Still a grid, still built for hookups
- ✕Guys looking for real friends are rare
- ✕Most chats still die in logistics
#3 — The Gay Bars
Real people in a real room, but only if the bar scene is actually your thing.
The classic option. Show up to a gay bar or club and hope to meet people in person.
For the extroverts who love the scene, this occasionally worked. But for everyone else it was its own kind of lonely, shouting over music, walking in alone, and going home having connected with no one. A lot of our testers said the bars never really felt like them, and after a certain age the late nights and the noise stopped being worth it.
Price: The cost of a night out, every time
- Real friendships made: Low to medium
- Conversations past logistics: Low
- Effort to make one real friend: High
- Ghosting and no-shows: N/A, but easy to get lost in the crowd
- How they felt afterward: Mixed
- ✓Real people, in person, not a screen
- ✓Great if you genuinely love the scene
- ✕Loud, late, and not for everyone
- ✕Walking in alone is its own barrier
- ✕Easy to go home having met no one
#4 — Sniffies
Excellent at exactly one thing, and that thing was never friendship.
A map-based cruising site for gay and bi men, anonymous, direct, and built entirely around meeting up fast, tonight.
It does its one job well. But that job is the opposite of building a friend group. There are no real profiles to speak of, the whole thing is anonymous and immediate, and not a single tester made anything resembling a lasting friendship through it. Keep it for what it's for, just don't expect it to give you a Saturday crew.
Price: Free
- Real friendships made: Very low
- Conversations past logistics: Very low
- Effort to make one real friend: Very high
- Ghosting and no-shows: Very common
- How they felt afterward: Empty
- ✓Very good at what it's actually built for
- ✓Free and immediate
- ✕Anonymous and immediate, no real profiles
- ✕Built for tonight, not for friendship
- ✕Produced zero lasting connections in our test
#5 — Grindr
The biggest name of all, and the worst fit for anyone who actually wants gay friends.
The original location-based grid, and the largest gay app in the world, built around seeing who's nearby right now.
Nobody doubts Grindr's reach. But for making real friends it was the loneliest option we tested. The grid is endless, the chats mostly die or turn into logistics, ghosting is constant, and testers kept describing the same feeling: talking to ten guys at midnight and still having nobody real in their life. It does exactly what it was built to do, and friendship was never it.
Price: Free, with paid tiers
- Real friendships made: Very low
- Conversations past logistics: Very low
- Effort to make one real friend: Very high
- Ghosting and dead chats: Constant
- How they felt afterward: Worse than before
- ✓The largest user base of any gay app
- ✓Fast and effective for what it's built for
- ✕The grid is endless and mostly dead chats
- ✕Constant ghosting and no-shows
- ✕Built for tonight, never for friendship
- ✕Left testers feeling emptier than when they started
The Winner: Mingleo
After three months, one option did what none of the apps or the bars could. It didn't hand anyone another grid to scroll. It put gay men at a real table, with the right guys, and let genuine friendships form on their own.
And it never asked anyone to give up the fun. It just added the part all of it was missing.
- ✓Free to join this week, membership fee waived for new members
- ✓Built for gay friendship, not hookups
- ✓Matched by personality and age, not a photo
- ✓Small groups, a booked table, everyone shows up
- ✓Real friends and a group chat that keeps going
- ✓15,000+ gay men already joined
- ✓Keep the fun, just add the friends