About Dinchat

Dinchat is a place to meet new people online. It lives at dinchat.cam, runs in a web browser, and lets you come in as a guest and start a conversation with someone you have not met before. There are two ways to do that: browse the list of people who are online and pick one, or tap Match and be connected with someone at random.

Conversations happen by written message, by voice or by video. If you get on with someone you can follow them, which lets you find them again and message or call them from their profile. That is the entire shape of the thing. It is small on purpose. The tools are listed by what you want to do on the Dinchat features page, and in the order you meet them in how Dinchat works.

Because the first hello is where most online socialising goes wrong. A great deal of the internet is designed to keep you looking: another profile, another post, another thirty seconds of somebody else's holiday. You can spend an evening that way and not exchange a single sentence with another human being.

We wanted the opposite. Less scrolling, more connecting. Everything on Dinchat is arranged to shorten the distance between arriving and actually talking to someone. That is why you can enter without registering, why the first thing you see is who is online, and why a profile's main buttons are Message and Video call instead of a long page to read.

It is also why we care about the tone of that first hello. A conversation that starts with one friendly, easy-to-answer line tends to go well. So across this site you will find more advice about what to say than about how to optimise a profile. We think that is the right way round.

For people who would like to meet someone new and are ready to be pleasant about it. In practice that covers a wide range. Some are curious about other countries and like the idea of talking to a person in Lagos or Lima over lunch. Some work from home and miss the small talk. Some are shy and find it easier to practise conversation with people they will never bump into at the shops. Some simply have a free evening.

It is not for people who want to harass, pressure or deceive others. That is the firm line, and the rules that draw it are in the Community Guidelines linked at the foot of every page.

It may also not be for you if what you want is a structured way to find a long-term partner. People do sometimes hit it off here, but Dinchat does not sort people by compatibility and makes no attempt to play matchmaker. If you are unsure which kind of service you are after, the comparison in apps to meet new people may help.

Through coins, bought by the people who choose to use it more. We would rather state that than pretend a live service runs on goodwill.

A service like this has real running costs. Connecting two people by live video or voice, in different countries, takes infrastructure that costs money for as long as the call runs. Translating messages costs something each time. So does keeping the list of who is online current. None of that is free to provide, and somebody has to cover it.

Dinchat lets everyone in, gives a real free part, and charges for heavier use. You come in as a guest, a match starts with free time, the Reward Center hands out more matches through the day, and coins come in after that.

The consequence we care about is that nobody pays to find out whether they like it here. The consequence you should know about is that long calls and back-to-back matching do cost coins. Exactly where the line falls is set out on the is Dinchat free page.

A product is defined as much by what it leaves out. Here is what you will not find, with the reason for each, so nobody goes looking for it.

You are reading a help page, and it seems fair to say what rules it was written under. There are five.

For anyone who wants them in one place.

If you want to judge the place before using it, read is Dinchat safe, which separates what the platform looks after from what stays with you. If something is broken or you have a question about a payment, the contact page lists what to put in your message. Suggestions about what is confusing or missing on these pages are welcome at [email protected].

And if you have read this far without trying the thing itself, the quickest way to understand Dinchat is to say hello to someone.