Why Some People Are Paying to Make Friends

Last year, Alexandra Pitzer paid $290 to meet a group of strangers.

Ms. Pitzer, 33, had just relocated from Nashville to Honolulu for her husband’s Army job when an Instagram ad for a friendship matching app caught her attention. The app, Real Roots, organizes get-togethers for groups of women after they fill out a personality survey. If the women get along, they can pay Real Roots to arrange meet-ups with the same group for the next several weeks.

Ms. Pitzer clicked in, signed up and soon found herself at a brewery with eight other women. They quickly bonded, and she continued meeting some of them after the package ended, going camping and to the beach.

“I can see most of them being lifelong friends,” Ms. Pitzer said. “We have a genuine connection.”

Fueled by a loneliness epidemic and increasingly online lifestyles, more people are paying start-ups to make new friends offline. And friend-matching companies such as Real Roots, 222 and Timeleft are exploding in popularity as a result, each one generating millions of dollars in revenue annually.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/10/26/business/why-some-people-are-paying-to-make-friends.html