AdultFriendFinder review 2025: Features, costs, and how it works

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If you haven’t heard of AdultFriendFinder, honestly, consider yourself lucky. This online platform has seriously earned its reputation for being one of the raunchiest and spammiest “dating” sites cluttering the internet.

Sure, the name sounds wholesome and innocent enough, right? But peel back those endless paywalls, and what you find is a digital den packed with X-rated content, questionable profiles, problematic language, and aggressive marketing tactics that seem way more interested in your wallet than your actual experience. They constantly push you to spend more money for basic functions. (Oh, and did I mention it’s also visually offensive? Seriously ugly, aesthetically speaking.)

The best way to describe the AdultFriendFinder website (no app) is through its overall layout, which feels like a relic from the early 2000s. It’s a mess of flashing banners, intrusive ads, and a user interface so poorly designed it feels intentionally built to overwhelm and confuse anyone brave enough to sign up. You know that scene in Because I Said So where Diane Keaton’s character awkwardly stumbles upon AdultFriendFinder while trying to vet dates for her daughter? Yeah, that’s the energy.

But is there anything redeemable behind the chaos? In this review, we do a deep dive into the AdultFriendFinder experience to figure out exactly how it works (or doesn’t), what features it offers, and whether it actually connects people looking for hookups.

What is AdultFriendFinder?

AdultFriendFinder is one of the most well-known sites for finding quick sexual encounters, regular hookups, and literally anything else even remotely related to sex. The rowdy feed of matches, jumble of explicit photos, and stimulating calls-to-action offering all types of sex make it heaven for anyone looking for a good time with no filter — and hell for someone who wouldn’t be caught dead clicking on a “There are hot singles in your area” ad.

On AFF, you can find someone to sext via messaging or video chat (and plan to get it on IRL, if that’s what you’re looking for), watch live streams, or join niche group chat rooms to connect with other members. You can easily view photos and videos from other members, though interacting is often locked behind a paywall. Is it worth $20-something per month? Depends on how much fishy content you’re willing to overlook for a juicy sexting session and the ability to actually send messages.

So, who’s actually on this platform? According to SimilarWeb’s data for April 2025, AdultFriendFinder pulls in around 11.4 million visits around the world per month. While they might flash huge, questionable stats like “98,897,765 hot photos” and “3,495,277 connections” on their signup page (seriously, what do those even mean?), the actual traffic numbers paint a picture of a site that’s seen better days. AdultFriendFinder’s ranking has slipped significantly; as of April 2025, it was ranked around 69th in the Adult category in the U.S., a notable drop from previous years. This suggests people might be finding better alternatives elsewhere.

Specifics on the demographic that most people care about — the gender ratio — can be hard to track down. According to SimilarWeb, the audience is roughly 78 percent male and 22 percent female. This kind of imbalance is pretty common on hookup-focused sites. It means it’s likely a paradise if you’re a straight man, maybe hit-or-miss if you’re a straight woman or LGBTQ man, and probably an actual hellscape if you’re an LGBTQ woman trying to navigate it.

On the flip side, AFF does let you identify as and search for a man, woman, a couple, or trans. They’ve made some attempts to be a “sex-positive” site with blogs, groups, and even a “sex academy.” However, their language around the LGBTQ community has historically been anything but inclusive or positive. Previously, the AFF sign-up page listed “TG/TV/TS” as the “trans” gender selection — we’ll let you infer what those stand for. After reaching out to AdultFriendFinder about it, this language has improved somewhat with more gender options that are appropriately labeled, though “trans” is still a separate selection from “man” or “woman,” which feels more like fetishization than inclusivity.

To their credit, they do offer a handful of sexual orientation options beyond just straight or gay, which is a small positive. But honestly, for a site trying so hard to be sex-positive, having a variety of sexual orientations represented shouldn’t exactly be a groundbreaking surprise.

Is AdultFriendFinder legit?

As far as legitimacy goes, AdultFriendFinder is a real site with real users. However, the question is whether you can really find what you’re looking for there, or if you’ll mostly find a bunch of bots and scammers. Many users report that it feels like a scam site due to the number of fake profiles and the pressure to spend more money. Compared to other legit sites, its reputation is definitely questionable.

Because AFF is pretty spammy, it’s hard to tell how many active members are actually using the site. The Trustpilot score isn’t reassuring either.

From the start, AdultFriendFinder makes it clear that it’s not really aiming to build long-term relationships. The site emphasizes casual hookups and even allows for explicit content, so users know what they’re getting into. But if you’re looking for something more than just a one-night stand, you might want to consider other platforms.

One of the biggest turnoffs for potential users is that so many features are locked behind a paywall. While you can technically sign up for free, you can’t do much beyond browse profiles or view photos from other members. Free members have very limited interaction options; you typically need to upgrade to send messages or see anything substantial. There’s also a brand-new age verification feature that won’t let you past the home page unless you verify you’re actually of age. You can either take a photo of your face to confirm your age or upload a valid photo ID that confirms your birth date. (Honestly, we’re glad they’re at least trying to protect minors from seeing anything they shouldn’t be seeing or connecting with pervy older people.)

How does AdultFriendFinder work?

Signing up takes like 30 seconds. Seriously, just an email, username, password, and a quick intro will do. Of course, you’ll have to go through the age verification process too, but it’s pretty quick.

Once you’re in, brace yourself for the instant notification spam; apparently, a gray silhouette is enough to attract attention here. To even think about connecting with someone real, you absolutely have to add photos and details to your profile — essentially, prove you’re not just another bot contributing to the noise.

After registering, there are a ton of ways to personalize your account (way more than you’d expect for a hookup site, honestly). The more you fill out, the better your chances of meeting someone (and improving your sex life). There are the basic physical appearance questions about eye and hair color, and since I identified as a woman, cup size was an option. (If you identify as a man, I’m sure you can guess what question they ask.)

The site also features a Personality Type test and a “My Kinks” form where you can select whether or not you’re “curious about, into, or can’t live without” a certain kink (e.g., anal, bondage, role play, etc.). It also lets you choose whether you’re a voyeur, the giver, or the receiver.

One weird thing about the Personality Type test is that it asks several questions about whether or not you enjoy shopping at discount stores — not really sure what that’s about. It also asks whether or not “a quiet time for prayer should be allowed in school.” You can choose “strongly disagree, somewhat disagree, somewhat agree, or strongly agree.”

Once you finish the personality test (20 questions), you can opt to have your Personality Type show up on your profile or have it hidden. It will also show you which personality types complement yours.

Matching on AdultFriendFinder: What to expect

Here’s what you can expect when you’re looking for a connection:

• Like a traditional dating site, AFF throws a collage of potential matches at you, showing who’s online or nearby. But any resemblance to a “traditional” site stops there.

• You barely have to scroll before noticing that there’s no shortage of nudity. Depending on whether you set your preferences to men, women, or both, you’ll see all of that stuff up close, personal, swinging around, in action. You name it, it’ll pop up.

• You can try to refine your results by gender, age, location, race, sexual orientation, body type, etc., but good luck making a dent in the sheer volume of profiles (real or otherwise).

• The message section looks weirdly like old Gmail. You’ll get a mix of messages; some might be genuinely friendly, but expect a fair share of instant, crude ones too. It’s the online dating equivalent of creeps on Tinder, but amplified.

How much does AdultFriendFinder cost?

You can do a decent amount of looking without paying (this includes browsing profiles, getting limited messages, and hitting up some chat rooms). But hit any of that “juicier hidden content” or try to actually talk to someone, and you’ll smack into a paywall or the site’s non-monetary currency, “points.” You earn points through activity on the free version, which is kind of like playing a mini-game just to unlock basic functionality.

To really get anywhere, especially if you’re a guy looking for women (as some on Reddit noted, women prefer paid members for perceived credibility), you’ll need a Gold membership. The prices bounce around a bit, but generally, the longer you commit, the cheaper the monthly rate. Expect to pay around $27.95 for one month, about $20.95 per month for three months, or roughly $14.95 per month if you go for a full year.

The site shoves other add-ons at you, too, including features like “Voyeur” for enhanced viewing, “Interaction” for better messaging (yes, paying extra to message better), “Chat Plus,” and “Advanced Search.” These layer on costs, meaning the price you see for Gold might not be the actual price of a usable experience.

AdultFriendFinder also gives members the option to confirm their identity with ConfirmID. If you do this, the site promises to give you two weeks of Gold for free. The ConfirmID works by entering your legal first and last name, home address, gender, and date of birth, and uploading a copy of your driver’s license, passport, or other government-issued ID.

If you spend more quality time on the site than expected, springing for a paid membership is definitely something to consider. Once you’re paying, you basically become royalty on the site: Your profile will appear way higher in searches, you can use the most advanced searches, unlock profiles with private photo albums, check out video profiles, and message to your heart’s content. A general rule is that increased involvement and payment on your end generally equals more success on the website, as your constant activity and heightened searchability make it easier for others to find you.

So, does AdultFriendFinder work?

Once you get past the in-your-face sexplosion of naked profile pictures, horny AIM-era profile names, and explicit videos, the big question is: Does AdultFriendFinder actually work? Like, can you realistically log on and find what you’re looking for? The short answer is… maybe, but probably not as well as you’d hope.

Let’s put it this way: AFF might work if you are very open-minded, specifically looking to blow off steam with casual sex or explore niche kinks, and you’re completely over the slow pace of traditional dating sites. It has a ton of activities, ranging from direct messaging, sending virtual gifts and tips, watching live videos of people in your feed, joining adult chat rooms that can get very niche, or entering photo contests.

Aside from the NSFW content, the website is relatively straightforward (albeit ugly). Every feature is advertised in big letters, notifications are displayed clearly with labels, and you don’t really have to click around to find anything. This makes it super accessible for users of all ages, even those who aren’t tech-savvy and can’t even figure out Facebook. Buttons are all over the place, but you figure it out after messing around for a few minutes.

AdultFriendFinder is like a PornHub that you can interact with.

Think of AdultFriendFinder as the dating site version of New York City — it never sleeps. It’s like that booty call who’s always awake when you text them. Or at least that used to be the case… 10 years ago. What was once a hot site that a few Reddit users were quick to hype up is now one of the dating sites that Reddit users can’t help but diss — in the few instances that AFF is even being discussed at all. It’s notable that, on a site where online dating is such a mammoth topic of discussion, AdultFriendFinder has rarely been mentioned in a positive light since the early 2010s. The Reddit community is diverse and open-minded; if a dating site exists, someone on Reddit has used it and has an opinion. When an innocent soul does ask if it’s legit, AFF usually gets dragged for sketchy pricing and being riddled with fake profiles.

However, some Reddit members have praised AFF as a site for men meeting men. Even so, the site’s still buggy and isn’t exactly great for meeting real people who aren’t, as one Reddit user so eloquently put it, “busted and unstable.”

Good for: Very open-minded people looking to blow off steam

Stating the obvious, AdultFriendFinder is a space for people who want to bang with no strings attached, people who are in a sexual rut, people who are tired of porn, and people who find sites like eharmony boring. Getting to know someone for weeks before meeting up can be exhausting, and sometimes, you want to skip the small talk and do the dirty with a random. It’s gonna get kinky out there, and that’s great for those who are dying to blow off steam and want someone who will respond well to a brusque, sexy message.

As with all dating sites, catfishing is a big buzzkill. Your chances of being pursued are way higher if you have a lot of pictures of the same person (AKA you), videos, and a genuine profile that lets people know they’re not dealing with something sketchy. Even if you’ve had bad luck with online dating in the past, AdultFriendFinder is the place to be honest.

Bad for: People looking for a real relationship and the entire socially conscious community

If you’re a cynic, conservative by any means, get sketched out easily, or aren’t a fan of dick pics, you’ll probably hate it. Similarly, if you appreciate a well-crafted, aesthetically pleasing website that feels safe, no matter how badly you want to have sex, one glance at the landing page likely signals that it’s not for you.

AdultFriendFinder is not the place to be if you’re trying to make friends unless “with benefits” is tacked onto the end. Every inch of the site screams: “This website is used to have sex,” and you should really listen to that.

As illustrated by the flood of artsy activism guides on Instagram in recent years, it’s clear what content appeals to young people on the internet: Something aesthetically pleasing, shareable, and digestible. The “shareable” part doesn’t totally apply to online dating, but apps like Hinge and OkCupid closely follow this design trend by limiting the number of words (and ads) in each tab, steering clear of endless scrolling, and ensuring that important info isn’t cluttered with flashing clickbait.

AFF could do so much more to make people take it seriously

We’re not knocking a quick hookup or no-strings-attached relations. This isn’t about morals. Genitals are quite literally in your face from the moment you make an account, and that’s just not cute. There are chiller ways to go about insinuating that this is a hookup website without feeling like you’re trapped in a sex dungeon with strangers.

I could not get past the fact that the entire site looks like it’s about to invite five viruses to your computer. We’re talking terrible graphics that look like they were made on Microsoft Paint and pictures of women who look like they’re from Pornhub in 2007. (That’s when AdultFriendFinder was officially sold and rebranded from its original parent company.) Reddit user Snoo53279 summed it up in a comment from July 2020: “The people on AFF are definitely real, but there is a huge smattering of bots that also get in the way, so it can be a bit of a PITA to use.” If they’re not bots, they could be men posing as a couple to seem less threatening.

The parade of women on the landing page is questionable for two reasons. This shouldn’t even need to be clarified, but not everyone is looking for a woman. At the least, the advertising isn’t inclusive — but this crosses into fetishization territory. The cherry on top is that the women in the photos (unsurprisingly) probably aren’t even members of the site, according to a disclaimer at the bottom of the landing page.

AdultFriendFinder’s overall outdated vibe goes past an aesthetic annoyance — it’s downright problematic at times. The lack of inclusivity for the LGBTQ+ community is nearly unforgivable, and we’d be scared to see some of the related rhetoric that AFF users feel comfortable spewing. Without even a dash of social awareness, it’s hard to see how anyone who’s not an out-of-touch straight cis man would feel comfortable on this site.

Attempting to navigate the shoddy design might be enough to smother your horniness. Three main issues can make the site borderline unusable: It looks shady as hell, an alarming portion of the user base is made up of bots and spam accounts, and the user interface itself is outdated and rife with bugs.

Adding to the sketchiness, a network hack in 2016 exposed around 412 million accounts, including “deleted” accounts that weren’t actually deleted from the database. If this is enough reason for you to fall back on Tinder for finding a friend with benefits, we don’t blame you. Signing up with a burner email and avoiding using your real name as a username are wise moves (pick a naughty word and add 69 to the end, IDK), though keeping your personal information private is hard when credit cards are involved.

In 2007, AFF was involved in a lawsuit with the FTC over allegations that the site used malware to send explicit pop-up ads to computers owned by people who hadn’t signed up for the service. Though we haven’t seen reports like this recently, so we’re hoping those ridiculous ads you see are at least confined to people who actually use the site.

AdultFriendFinder alternatives

Given AdultFriendFinder’s… challenges… you’re probably wondering where else you can look for casual connections or kink exploration online. While AFF might feel slightly more “legit” than sites with names that scream spam (you know the ones), there are definitely much better places to spend your time and money.

Here are a few alternatives that offer a significantly better experience:

• Pure: Think of Pure as a more modern, less eyeball-assaulting option for no-strings-attached hookups. It has a sleek, “hella-millennial” design (way better than AFF’s retro mess) and features like self-destructing messages and profiles that disappear after an hour, giving it a casual, in-the-moment feel. It’s basically a sexier, more private Snapchat for hookups.

• Feeld: If you’re a single or couple looking for group sex, polyamory, or exploring LGBTQ+ friendly dynamics, Feeld is a much better bet than navigating AFF’s often problematic space. It’s designed for open-minded individuals and couples and is generally praised for being more inclusive (though it had some bugs after a recent update, which seem to be getting addressed). It skips the unicorn hunting and rampant fetishization found elsewhere.

• Mainstream Apps (like Hinge or OkCupid): While not strictly hookup-focused, even mainstream apps offer a more palatable and less spammy user experience. Their design is cleaner, there’s less ad overload, and they prioritize clear information over flashing explicit content, which some users might find a relief compared to AFF’s chaos.

Ultimately, you have options that are more modern, more inclusive, and simply less likely to make you feel like you need a virus scan after logging on.

The final verdict: Is AdultFriendFinder worth it?

AdultFriendFinder is a low-pressure way to find a friends-with-benefits situation without insulting anyone. Everyone is pretty much there for the same reason, and though it’ll feel pretty unorthodox if you’ve only ever used Tinder to scope this type of thing out, AFF’s blunt advertising at least means you won’t have to explain that you’re not looking for a relationship. It’s niche-friendly and has a ton of interactive outlets to indulge your primal urges.

But that freedom comes with a price — the price is feeling like one of those people who fall for the ads that pop up before a free Pornhub video. It’s not that a site dedicated to sex and sexting is inherently scammy — it’s that AdultFriendFinder drowns you with explicit photos on profiles that might not even be real people while asking you to pay for a subscription with every click.

Unfortunately, no matter how in the mood you are, some people aren’t cut out for the nothing-left-to-the-imagination approach with grammar mistakes all over the place. It wants to be sex-positive so badly, but the language the site has used in reference to the trans community is the furthest thing from that.

The site’s functionality and safety aren’t where they need to be in 2025. If security measures were tightened, graphics and photos were cleaned up to feel more relevant, and decision-makers behind the scenes were given a lesson in inclusivity and pronouns/identities, AdultFriendFinder could be a handy tool to find attachment-free hookups and connect with a community that’s down for anything.

This isn’t a dating or hookup site we would personally use, but if you’re feeling brave, you can register for AdultFriendFinder here. Just don’t try this at work.