CouchsurfingReviews of couchsurfing.com

Used to be a good platform and I had lots of good experiences through it. Now, wishing to get back into couchsurfing, I find today that they charge both parties (host and guest) unless the host had a certain number of reviews. I get that they need to make money and are providing a service but the fact is that the host is putting in the work and benefiting the site and why are they expected to pay for it?

Bonjour infernale j'ai passé 1h à essayer de m'inscrire comme hôte site pas du tout intuitif dommage!

War früher cool aber vor ein paar Jahren wurde es kostenpflichtig. Anfangs nur 1 Euro, mittlerweile brauchst du ein Abo das wirklich ins Geld geht. 10 Euro für 3 Monate find ich pervers hoch für eine ursprünglich echt liebe, sympathische Idee. Ich hab während 15 Jahren etwa 30 Couchsurfer bei mir aufgenommen, selbst bin ich nur 2 Mal "gesurft". Jetzt müsste ich selbst als Gastgeber (!!) 10 Euro dafür zahlen, um anderen Reisenden im Sommer eine kostenlose Unterkunft zu ermöglichen! Ist das nicht krank?? Zudem merkt man, wenn man eine Unterkunft sucht, dass der Großteil ehemaliger Gastgeber (vermutlich ebenfalls aus Kostengründen) bereits abgesprungen ist und Anfragen ins Leere gehen und nicht mehr angenommen werden können -womit man erst wieder auf Air b n b und Co angewiesen ist. Schade, aber mich als Kunden verlieren sie nun definitiv.

I've been a member of Couchsurfing since 2007. It's undergone a number of changes over the years and each one has made it steadily worse. The latest set of changes have made me seriously consider ending my membership. At a basic level, the new site is cluttered, hard to navigate and has made it more difficult to find out about potential guests or hosts. There was a time when frequent hosts like myself could get membership for free, a small reward for providing a service to the community. Now, I feel like I'm being milked for cash. The only small concession to user requests has been a slightly improved post-surf/host process, where users are asked confidentially if they felt safe. A tiny step in the right direction. Everything else is horrible. Terrible design, harder to read, harder to search, unintuitive UX. It's as if they're actively trying to put people off. When this was a community-led charity, I was all for it. As a business model, this deeserves to go bust.

Couchsurfing war mal dazu gedacht, dass Menschen mit wenig Geld trotzdem reisen können. Man konnte sich kostenlos verifizieren und so schnell eine Unterkunft finden. Mittlerweile kostet die Verifzierung 70 Euro (letztes Jahr waren es noch 56, also 14 Euro teurer in einem Jahr) und man wird ständig daran erinnert. Es gibt Leute, die können sich das nicht leisten. Das erklärt dann leider auch, warum es so viele inaktive Mitglieder gibt und man kaum noch Übernachtungsmöglichkeiten findet. Couchsurfing sollte sich mal daran erinnern, wofür es gemacht wurde und nicht die reinste Abzocke sein. Angeblich zahlt man ja schon die Mitgliedsgebühr (ja, die kommt auch noch dazu) um den Erhalt der Plattform zu sichern. Als langjähriger Couchsurfer bin ich einfach nur sauer, wie einem hier das Geld aus der tasche gezogen wird. Eine Verifizierung sollte höchstens 5 Euro kosten. So viel zum Thema budgetfreundlich.

Couchsurfing isn't the same site as 6 or 7 years ago. The monthly membership fee has doubled (used to be 3, now is 6 €). Last experience last year was good, but I had to look for a long time to find the right host. Let's see if it will be easier this time. EDIT: 07/12/2025: sent out at least 20 requests for hosts in NYC, I have references and a validated account, yet all I got was rejections. Also, the high number of nudist hosts on CS is a bit disturbing IMO.

I've been a member for many years. When Covid hit and they started to require a membership subscription, I understood the need. (Even though FREE was nice as long as that lasted.) The system works pretty well, but I discovered this summer that my membership fee had be drawn twice each month for 1½ years. I stopped one and asked CS if they could give me 1½ years without paying for that period, since I'd already paid it. We had a long correspondence which basically was: CS: Our policy says we can't give refunds Me: I haven't asked for a refund. CS: Our policy says we can't give refunds Me: I haven't asked for a refund. CS: Our policy says we can't give refunds Me: I haven't asked for a refund. CAN YOU POINT OUT WHERE i HAVE ASKED FOR A REFUND? CS: Our policy says we can't give refunds Me: I haven't asked for a refund. That got tiring and I have now stopped paying, so now I'm locked out. So I can't offer anyone a "couch". CS has gotten 1½ years extra membership fees and I'll be giving 1 or 2 stars in stead of 4 or 5. Who is winning anything by that?? When I got locked out there was an offer to export my data. I choose that and got a mail. But when I tried to access the export I was locked out from that too. some other small points: I tried several times to get my address verified. They're supposed to send a postcard, but they didn't come. (_Maybe_ one came once but it didn't work.) I think CS could make their "verified" price much clearer. Most of the 1* reviews are about that, so be aware that it costs a bit! Otherwise I have enjoyed CS. I have used the people with references. So I can recommend that. Sometimes I've let people without references tent in our yard. Then I could give them references when I got to meet them.

Used couchsurfing.com a lot in the past. Loved it. Amazing. This was before AirBnB, possibly where AirBnB got their inspiration from. So, like many other things online, the power of couchsurfing.com comes from the number of people who use it. And like everything online, as soon as you charge people to even sign up and simply login, never mind a small fee, to, say, for example, arrange a couch surf. It used to be free, but now, you have to pay to even log in, even just to change your email in the account settings, nobody can do anything without first paying. Name any of the most popular dating apps, social media accounts, chat apps, search engines, hotel booking website that charge you to even simply make and use your account? None, why because all the free ones are where all the people go to, the platforms where everyone is at, is what brings the most value. Couchsurfing.com should find ways to make money once people are on their platform, not charge a fee simply to signup and use the platform. I have no problem paying £2.50 per month, but the fact you have to pay, even if you want to host, especially in many developing countries where they may not easily have easy abilities to pay, just drops all confidence in the number of users on couch surfing, so essentially, the payment method they have created now, means, you are paying for a service that has and will become worst that it was because there simply won't be the number of users that there used to be. The pandemic ended 2 years ago but still on their main page they are pleading for the monthly feee due to a pandemic. It's clear the CEO and management want to extract as much cash as possible from this before watching it fail to competition which has already begun. My opinion is, either sack the CEO and make a better business model out of it, I would happily pay for every couch surf I successfully do. Or watch this cherished app fail over the coming years.