CouchsurfingReviews of couchsurfing.com

Most apps are enshittified slowly so you barely notice. This one was quick and drastic. Even though I was given a free year as a former active member, after trying the new app I have no intention of using it ever again. RIP.

They completely redid the site a few months back, and it's almost unusable now. I had close to 400 references — I've been with CS for YEARS — and I'm no longer getting any guests. (But I guess that's because I refuse to pay, when in the past, because of hosting so much AND living in a poor country, it was free.) Cs is NOT a travel site (it was a hospitality site) but now it's more like a dating site, so it's useless as a Hospex site. Sad, but I've moved on and am getting guests from other sites.

Almost everyone I know through Couchsurfing has had serious problems with the platform. Many of my friends lost their profiles while charges continued. Some of them had 200, 300, even 500 references built up over many years. My own account survived for a while, although the website became almost impossible to use properly. At some point I thought I should at least take screenshots of my references before they disappeared too. Oh joy — I tried to log in and couldn’t. Instead, I was asked to pay. So I have effectively lost an account I had for around three years, together with approximately 20 references and years of history. Some of my friends lost vastly more than that. And the most absurd part? I still receive notifications saying that people are requesting to stay at my place, while I cannot even access my own profile. My opinion is that Couchsurfing was not simply badly managed or monetised too aggressively. I believe this community was deliberately destroyed from the inside. Couchsurfing used to be one of the best things on the internet. It connected people from completely different countries, cultures, languages and backgrounds. Strangers opened their homes to one another. People travelled, trusted each other, became friends and created genuine international connections. And that, in my view, is exactly what was destroyed. Divide and rule. Take a huge community built organically by ordinary people, put access behind barriers, destroy trust, remove people’s histories, make the platform increasingly unusable, and eventually scatter the community. To me, it feels like the same mentality that has poisoned so many large online platforms: everything genuine, human and community-driven eventually gets taken over, controlled, monetised or dismantled. People built Couchsurfing. Not some corporation. The users created its value through hospitality, references, friendships and years of trust. And then that community was treated as if all of that meant nothing. I consider the way this has been handled deeply dishonest, and from a user’s perspective it feels like a scam. What was once one of the best websites in the world became something I would never trust again. Thankfully, alternatives still exist. I hope people keep building new communities, keep connecting across borders and keep finding ways around platforms that try to control or destroy those connections. They can ruin a website. They cannot stop people from finding each other.

I'm writing this because I know I'm not alone, and because I'm done being quiet about it. A while back, I had an account with dozens of positive references. Not just "nice host, clean couch" — I'm talking about hosts who wrote long, heartfelt paragraphs about conversations we had, meals we shared, the kind of references that make you remember why you joined this community in the first place. That account was a diary of my travels and friendships, built over years. Then one day, it was gone. Deactivated. No warning. No email. No explanation beyond "violation of terms of use." I wrote back asking what I did — nothing. "We can't disclose the reason." That's it. I made a new account to try to get some answers. Same thing: no references, no explanation, no appeal, no human being on the other end. Just a wall. And then I started reading. This is happening to everyone. On Reddit, on Trustpilot, on Facebook groups. People with 55 references, 108 positive reviews, 8 years on the platform — deleted overnight, with zero due process. One user with a spotless 8-year record got told the reason was "privacy." Privacy from what? It's my account. Let me be blunt about what Couchsurfing has become: · It used to be a free, community-driven platform. Now it charges you a membership fee — and then deletes your account without warning, keeping your money. · Customer support doesn't exist. You get templates. You get silence. You get a wall. · Your references — the years of trust, friendship, and memories you built — are hostage data. If they delete you, you lose everything. · You are one algorithm glitch away from losing your entire history. There is no backup. There is no mercy. So here's my ask. Two things. 1. Screenshot every single reference and message you have. TODAY. Don't wait. Don't assume you're safe because you have a clean record. Hundreds of people with perfect records got deleted. Take screenshots of every reference, every conversation, every meaningful message you've received. Save them to your phone, your cloud, your email. Your memories do not belong to Couchsurfing — but once they delete you, they're gone forever. 2. Stop paying them. Stop registering. Stop giving them your money and your data. If you're already a paying member: cancel your auto-renewal right now. You are funding a company that will discard you the moment it's convenient. New users: don't sign up. Don't pay. It's not worth it. Where we should all go instead: There are free, community-run alternatives that actually respect their members: 🔹 BeWelcome (bewelcome.org) — The most established free alternative. Non-profit, volunteer-run, around 115,000–180,000 members. No fees. No algorithm deleting your profile overnight. This is where the community is migrating. 🔹 Trustroots (trustroots.org) — Non-profit, open-source, growing fast. Around 34,000–60,000 members. Built by travelers, for travelers. Free, no paywalls, no BS. 🔹 Couchers.org — Newer, free, and explicitly built to be what Couchsurfing used to be before it went corporate. Worth joining early. If we all move to BeWelcome and Trustroots, we don't need Couchsurfing anymore. We built that community. We wrote those references. We hosted those travelers. We can do it again — on platforms that don't treat us like disposable revenue. They think they can keep charging money, deleting accounts, and ignoring users because they're "the biggest." Let's prove them wrong. Let's make them a ghost town. Empty profiles, cancelled subscriptions, and a community that walked away. To every long-time member reading this: you are not alone. Your reviews were real. Your friendships were real. And you deserve better than a platform that treats your history like trash. Screenshot your reviews. Cancel your payment. Join BeWelcome and Trustroots. Let's rebuild — free, and on our own terms.

What happened to the couchsurfing we used to know? I tried to log in because I wanted to see my old trips and reviews... instead was forced through an onboarding I couldn't skip, made to pay at the end after I gave my data. I was furious by the end I got to the last step and now never wanna go back again. You guys should seriously fire whoever implemented this customer onboarding.

It used to be a nice travel platform to connect with other users, find stays, trade stories and experiences, but now they're charging for nothing - to the point that you don't even have access to your messages or profile if you don't pay. There's also no longer user regulation, and people treat it like a dating app. I would cancel, but I can't access my account without paying.

The Couchsurfing company is run by scammers. For years they were charging me for a subscription that had expired and that didn't really give me access to any service. All this without prior notification. Since the time of Covid in which the App became paid under subscription, it lost most of its users and is currently trying to maintain itself by making fraudulent charges to its users (you can see this in other Trustpilot or Google Play reviews). Don't go near this app.

In an attempt access email settings after a long break from using the site, I saw no other way to access those settings than through a lengthy process that ended with having to sign up for a "free trial". By not reading the fine print I was charged for said trial. I explained this politely to customer service but was denied a refund. I would recommend steering clear of this company. Look up "Dark Patterns" to learn more about this kind of scummy business practice.