Every so often someone in their late thirties or forties will type the old address into a browser out of habit, click through to their nearest UK city and scroll looking for the personals. Manchester, Edinburgh, Bristol, London. The jobs are still there, the sofas for sale, the rooms to let in Walthamstow. The personals are not, and they haven't been since 2018. If you're looking for a Craigslist personals UK alternative, you're in a long queue of people who had exactly the same moment of confusion.
I remember the old section well, warts and all. It was scruffy, unmoderated, full of spam and occasionally brilliant. You could write three honest lines about what you wanted and where you were, and someone nearby who wanted the same would answer. No photos required, no swiping, no algorithm, no subscription. For a certain kind of person, that simplicity was the whole appeal, and nothing that came after has quite replaced it.
This guide covers what actually happened, what people moved to, how classified-style personals work in the UK today, the scams that cluster around them and how to write an advert that gets real replies. I'll also explain where Kommons fits, because we run something closer to the old personals format than most, and I'd rather be upfront about that than slip it in at the end.
What happened to Craigslist personals in the UK
The short version is that a law passed in Washington switched off a section people used in Wolverhampton. In March 2018, the US Congress passed a pair of bills commonly known together as FOSTA-SESTA. Their stated purpose was to tackle sex trafficking online, and they did so partly by making websites legally liable for certain content posted by users that facilitated prostitution. That was a major shift, because until then American platforms had broadly been protected from liability for what their users wrote.
Craigslist's response was swift. Within days, it removed its personals section entirely, explaining that it couldn't take the risk of keeping it without jeopardising the rest of the site. Because Craigslist ran the same structure across its international city sites, the UK versions went too. Anyone who'd been posting or browsing in Glasgow or Leeds found the section simply gone, with a short notice in its place.
The following month, April 2018, US authorities seized Backpage, a classifieds site that had become notorious for adult adverts. Between the two events, the American-run classifieds world that a lot of British users had relied on, knowingly or not, was effectively closed down for anything adult. UK law hadn't changed at all. What changed was the legal exposure of the companies running the sites.
It's worth holding both sides of this in your head. The laws were aimed at a real problem: trafficking and the exploitation of people, including minors, through online adverts. Critics, including many sex worker organisations, argued that the effect was to push activity into darker corners, remove tools workers used to screen clients and make everyone less safe. Both arguments are still made. What isn't really disputed is that ordinary adults looking for consensual, unpaid casual encounters lost one of the simplest tools they had.
What replaced Craigslist personals, and why it scattered
The most common question I hear is what replaced Craigslist personals, as if there were a single successor waiting in the wings. There wasn't. The crowd scattered in several directions at once, and I think it's more useful to understand those directions than to chase one brand name.
Some people moved to the big apps. Tinder, Bumble and their peers were already well established by 2018, and plenty of former personals users made the switch with a sigh. Others went to apps aimed at more specific crowds: Feeld for open-minded people and couples, Grindr for gay, bi, trans and queer men. For a lot of users, especially younger ones, the apps simply absorbed the demand. The guide to the best hookup sites in the UK runs through what each type is genuinely good at.
But a large group never took to swiping. They wanted to write rather than be judged on a photograph. They wanted to state exactly what they were after, without the polite ambiguity that apps encourage. Many were older, or rural, or had specific interests, or were simply allergic to the gamified feel of an app. For them, the answer was a new generation of classified-style personals sites, built to look and feel like the old section.
Doublelist is the name most people know, and it's often searched in the UK as "Doublelist UK". It was set up to reproduce the Craigslist personals experience, with posts organised by location and category. It's best known in the United States, so how useful it is to you depends heavily on how active it happens to be near your part of Britain. That's true of most of these sites. A board can feel lively in one city and like a ghost town forty miles away. Beyond that, I'd rather not make claims about specific competitors' current features, because they change and I can't verify them on any given week. Open the site, set your location and look at what's actually there.
A third group drifted to general social platforms: subreddits, forums and group chats. These can work, but they come with their own problems. Moderation varies wildly, anonymity cuts both ways and many have rules against exactly the kind of posting people want to do. And a fourth, smaller group went to adult listing sites that mix casual personals with escort advertising, which is a different thing entirely and which I'll come to.
How classified-style personals work in the UK today
The core mechanic hasn't changed much since the newspaper small ads. You write a short post saying who you are, roughly where you are, what you're looking for and, sometimes, when. You choose a location so local people see it. Other people browse posts in their area and reply to the ones that suit them, and you browse theirs. The conversation moves to private messages, and if it goes well, you meet.
What makes this different from apps is that the words do the heavy lifting. A post saying "Woman, 41, Stockport, looking for a regular afternoon arrangement with a kind, discreet man, no drama" filters the world far more efficiently than any number of swipes. People who aren't interested move on. People who are interested reply already knowing the basics. It suits people who know what they want and are happy to say so.
The legal position for this kind of casual personals is straightforward. Two consenting adults arranging to meet for sex, with no money involved, is no business of the law. What the law does care about is consent, age and some public conduct. Consent under section 74 of the Sexual Offences Act 2003 means agreeing by choice with the freedom and capacity to make that choice, and it can be withdrawn at any point, including halfway through. If someone is very drunk, they may lack the capacity to consent at all, which the Court of Appeal addressed in R v Bree in 2007. Agreement in a message is not consent in the room. The guide to consent and UK law for hookups covers this properly.
Things get more complex when adverts involve money. Paid personals are effectively escort adverts, and the law there differs across the UK. Paying for sexual services is a criminal offence in Northern Ireland, and has been since 1 June 2015. In England, Wales and Scotland, paying an adult for sex in private isn't in itself illegal, but soliciting in public, kerb crawling, brothel-keeping and controlling someone for gain are all offences, and anything paid involving anyone under 18 is a serious crime. The old Craigslist boards were often blurry about this line. A good modern site shouldn't be, and you shouldn't be either.
The scams that followed the personals crowd
Wherever there's an open board and people in a hurry, scammers follow, and classified-style personals attract more than their share. The old Craigslist section was riddled with them, and the same scripts moved straight across to the alternatives. If you've been away from personals for a few years, it's worth knowing what's waiting.
The most common is the redirect. A reply arrives, warm and keen, and within a message or two suggests continuing somewhere else: another site, a webcam page, an app you've never heard of. Often there's a "verification" step, where you're told she needs to know you're real and safe, and you're sent to a page that asks for your card details. That page signs you up to a subscription, or simply steals the details. No real person looking for a casual meet needs you to verify yourself by paying a third-party website. If anyone asks, that's the end of the conversation.
The second is the money ask. It might be a deposit, a taxi fare, a mobile top-up so she can keep messaging, a gift card or help with an unexpected bill. On a personals board for unpaid casual encounters, there is no legitimate reason for money to move before you meet, and very little reason after. The third is the threat: after some flirty back and forth, or after exchanging photos, a different tone appears demanding payment or threats of exposure. Sharing or threatening to share an intimate image of someone without consent is an offence under section 66B of the Sexual Offences Act 2003, in force since 31 January 2024. Don't pay, stop contact, keep the evidence and report it. The Revenge Porn Helpline, on 0345 6000 459, helps adults dealing with intimate image abuse.
And then there are the fake posts themselves: adverts that are bait for the scams above, written to be just specific enough to seem real. The tells are familiar. Stock-looking photos, oddly generic text, extraordinary availability and a reply that arrives within a minute of you posting. The guide to escort and hookup scams in the UK walks through the scripts in more detail. If you lose money, report it to Report Fraud, which replaced Action Fraud on 4 December 2025 for England, Wales and Northern Ireland, on 0300 123 2040. In Scotland, contact Police Scotland on 101.
How to write a personals ad that gets real replies
The good news for anyone who misses the old format is that writing a decent personal advert is a skill, and most people never bother to learn it. A few small changes put you well ahead of the field.
Start with the plain facts: who you are, roughly how old, roughly where and what you're looking for. "Man, 38, Cardiff Bay, looking for a casual weekday afternoon arrangement" does more work in one line than a paragraph of adjectives. Be specific about location without being identifying. A district or nearby town is fine; your street isn't. Then say one or two true, slightly specific things about yourself that a real person would find interesting. You cycle the Taff Trail at weekends. You're a decent cook. You're newly separated and not looking for anything heavy. Specifics make you real, and real is rarer than you'd think on these boards.
Be honest about what you want and what you don't. If you want something one-off, say so. If you'd like something regular with the same person, say that. If you're attached and your partner knows, say so; if you're attached and they don't, think hard about the person on the other end, who may well ask. State your limits and expectations without turning the post into a list of demands. The adverts that do worst, in my experience, are the ones that read like a job specification, with a long list of physical requirements and nothing whatsoever about the person writing.
Keep it clean. You don't need explicit detail to get your point across, and on most moderated sites explicit posts get removed anyway. Plain, adult, grown-up language attracts plain, adult, grown-up replies. And when people reply, answer properly: read what they wrote, respond to it and suggest a simple public first meeting. A drink somewhere easy to reach, with transport home sorted, is still the best test of whether the chemistry survives contact with reality. The guide to writing first messages that get replies has more on the reply side.
Let me give you a scenario. A woman in Derby posts that she's 46, recently divorced, wants something casual and discreet with a man around her age, and would like to meet for a drink first. She gets two dozen replies by morning. Twenty of them are a single line, a photo she didn't ask for or a question about her measurements. Three are polite but clearly haven't read the advert. One says he's 49, lives in Belper, also divorced, read that she'd prefer a drink first and suggests a pub near the station on Thursday. Guess which one she answers. Personals reward the people who listen.
Doublelist UK, Kommons and choosing a Craigslist personals UK alternative
So which Craigslist personals UK alternative should you actually use? I'll give you the same test I'd use for any site, then be honest about our own.
First, look at what's near you. Set your location honestly and see whether the posts within sensible travelling distance are recent, varied and written by people who sound real. A site with a famous name is useless if nobody in your county uses it. Second, check moderation. Is there a way to report a post? Is there any sign that obvious spam gets removed? Unmoderated boards rot quickly, which is why on Kommons profiles are checked and reports are acted on. Third, look at the money. Can you read and answer messages without paying, or is that locked behind a subscription? There's nothing wrong with paid sites, but be wary of any that show you a flurry of messages and then demand payment to read them. Fourth, privacy. What do you have to hand over to join, and can you delete your account properly?
Kommons, the free UK hookup site, was built with the personals format very much in mind. It's free to join, free to browse and free to message, with no subscription. It works in your browser, so there's no app to install, and you can browse by region and city, from England and Scotland to Wales and Northern Ireland. Profiles are checked, there's a report button on every page and reports are investigated. You can delete your account any time. It also carries escort-style listings alongside the casual side, clearly separate in purpose, and the same legal rules apply there as anywhere else in the UK.
I won't claim it recreates the old Craigslist section exactly, because nothing does, and frankly some of what the old section was would be better left in 2018. But if what you miss is the core of it, writing plainly about what you want, reading what people near you have written and replying to the ones that fit, without paying to find out if a message is real, then it's built for that. If you want to know more first, the page on what Kommons is explains how it works.
Safety, sexual health and the meeting itself
The personals format gives you more information up front than an app does, which is helpful, but it also means you're often meeting someone you know only through text. The same old rules apply, and they apply because they work. Meet somewhere public the first time. Tell a friend where you're going, who you're meeting and when you'll check in. Get yourself there and home again under your own steam, whether that's your own car, the last LNER service out of King's Cross or a cab you've booked yourself. If anything feels wrong at the bar, many UK pubs and bars run the "Ask for Angela" scheme, so staff can help you leave quietly.
Keep your main identity separate from your personals life until you trust someone. A messaging number that isn't tied to your main social accounts, photos that don't appear elsewhere online and a little caution about workplace details go a long way. The guide to hookup privacy and discretion covers this in depth.
And look after your sexual health, which is less awkward in the UK than people fear. NHS sexual health clinics are free and confidential, with no GP referral needed, and many areas of England offer free home testing kits depending on your postcode. PrEP is free across the UK. If something goes wrong, PEP should be started ideally within 24 hours and no later than 72, via a clinic or A&E. The NHS sexual health service finder shows you the nearest clinic.
Go back to that person typing the old address into a browser and finding the personals gone. What they were really looking for wasn't Craigslist. It was a plain, honest way for adults to say what they wanted and find someone nearby who wanted it too. That still exists. It just lives in a few different places now, and the trick is to find the one where the people near you are actually writing, and to write something worth answering.
This is general information, not legal advice. If you're worried about your own legal position, speak to a solicitor.