The app for making real friends
An app for making real friends — not followers, not matches.
Social networks optimize for dwell time. Dating apps optimize for swipes. Friendship apps usually turn into one or the other. Are We Friends? optimizes for one thing — the number of times you meet a new person in real life because of who we matched you with.
What 'real' actually means here
Four things that make a friendship real
It isn't a platform metric. "Real" has a short, concrete definition: you know each other's personality, you've met in person, you can keep a private conversation going, and the friendship survives uninstalling the app. Are We Friends? is built against that definition.
- You know their personality. Every match has taken the 120-item IPIP-NEO-120 Big Five instrument. Their facet profile is on their page. No fake prompts, no AI-generated bios — the scores are real.
- You meet in person. The AI drafts the first hang the moment you match — venue, time, conversation starters. On-platform messaging is the bridge, not the destination.
- Your conversations stay yours. Every DM is end-to-end encrypted (XChaCha20-Poly1305 + X25519). We literally cannot read them. Neither can a subpoena.
- The friendship survives the app. You can export your friend list. You can delete your account. The friendships you made don't depend on us existing.
Why other apps don't get you real friends
Every tool you've tried optimizes for the wrong metric
- Bumble BFF optimizes for swipes and 24-hour message timers. The metric is matches, not meetings.
- Timeleft optimizes for Wednesday-night dinner attendance. The metric is event fill rate.
- Instagram / TikTok optimize for dwell time. The metric is seconds in-app per day.
- Meetup optimizes for RSVPs to public events. The metric is event count.
- Are We Friends? optimizes for off-platform meetings per active user per week. That is our north star. Every other KPI feeds into it.
Related reading: vs. Bumble BFF · vs. Timeleft · vs. Meetup.
Built for adults
This is not a Snapchat clone with better prompts.
The people using Are We Friends? are mostly 25–44, mostly people who moved cities, had kids, started working from home, or otherwise aged out of the way friendships used to form. The tools designed for them don't exist. The tools designed for 18-year-olds don't fit. We built this for the first group.
No dark-pattern streaks. No "you've got 24 hours or your match disappears." No infinite scroll. Every single design decision runs through the filter: does this help someone actually meet a friend? If no, we kill it.
Frequently asked
Is Are We Friends? really an app?
Yes — it's a progressive web app (PWA) installable from Safari on iOS or Chrome on Android/desktop. You get a real home-screen icon, push notifications, and an offline shell. Native iOS/Android apps are on the roadmap.
How is this different from dating apps with 'friends' mode?
It's not a dating app UX with a flag flipped. The matching model is different (personality-first, not photo-first). The first message is different (pre-drafted hang plan, not 'hey'). The end goal is different (off-platform meetings, not matches). And the messaging is end-to-end encrypted, which dating apps don't offer.
Do I have to take a long personality test?
Yes — 120 items, ~15 minutes once. We don't support a shorter version because a 20-item test produces too much noise per facet to rank on. You only do it once; your profile is yours from there.
What if I already have enough friends?
Then great — the product is useless to you and we'd rather not waste your time. It's built for people who specifically want to make new adult friends and don't have a way to do that in 2026.
How do you make money?
Paid subscriptions ($7.99–$29.99/mo) unlock higher daily caps and features. We never sell your data, we never run ads, and DMs are end-to-end encrypted so we couldn't sell them even if we wanted to.
Who built this?
Bryan Leonard, a solo founder and independent researcher in Phoenix, AZ. Built on a single DigitalOcean droplet. One person, four months of work, no outside funding yet. See /story for the longer version.
Give it five minutes
Meet people who actually fit — and do something real.
Free tier, Big Five test, three matches nearby. No ads, ever.