Sites Like ChitChat: What to Compare First

A site like ChitChat is a place where you talk to one stranger at a time, straight from a browser, without building a profile first. That is the family ChitChat belongs to, and it is a different thing from a forum, a feed or a group server.

Lists of ChitChat alternatives tend to be thirty names long and tell you almost nothing, because every entry gets the same two cheerful sentences. A better use of five minutes is to learn what actually separates one of these sites from another. There are seven things. For each, we say what a good answer looks like and then tell you plainly where ChitChat stands, including where it falls short. Take the list with you and hold any site up against it, ours included.

A good site lets you try it before it asks anything of you. If you have to hand over an email, choose a password and confirm a code just to find out whether anyone is there, the site is collecting sign-ups first and serving conversations second.

On ChitChat you go in as a guest automatically. There is no form before your first chat. An account is optional at the start; the ChitChat login page sets out what changes when you have one. On this point we would put ourselves near the easy end.

Some people want a face, some want a keyboard, and most want different things on different days. A good site does not force the choice at the door.

Here is exactly what ChitChat offers. The random match is video: tap Start and you meet one person on camera, with a message box on the call for typing. Text on its own works another way. You open Who's online, choose a person and write to them from their profile. What we do not have is a button that pairs you at random with someone for a typed-only conversation. If that single feature is the one you are shopping for, you should know it before you start. If what you want is to write to a real person without showing your face, the profile route does that well, and text chat explains it.

Pure roulette is fun for ten minutes. After that, most people want some say in who they talk to. The sites that hold your interest are the ones that let you look around.

ChitChat has a live list, Who's online, that shows who is on right now and can be viewed by country. Each person on it has a profile you can open. It is not a search engine for people. But between "completely random" and "choose from the list", you have both ends covered.

This is the one most comparison lists ignore, and it matters more than any other. On many random chat sites a great conversation ends the moment either of you taps next, and that person is gone for good. If you are there to make friends, a site that cannot remember anyone is working against you.

ChitChat lets you follow people. A followed person is kept in your following list, their profile stays one tap away, and from it you can message them or call them directly. It is a simple feature and it changes what the site is for: from passing time to building up a handful of people you actually know.

Almost every site in this category puts "free" in large letters. The useful question is: free up to where? Look for a plain statement of what you get without paying and what happens after.

ChitChat is free to start; it is not free without end, and a site that tells you it is deserves a second look at the small print. Where our own line falls is set out on is ChitChat free, so you can hold us to the same question.

When you check another site, look for three things in its answer: what you get before paying, what makes the free part run out, and whether you are told before it does. A site that answers all three in plain words is usually straight with you elsewhere too.

The appeal of talking to strangers is that they might be from anywhere. That only works if the two of you can understand each other, and a site with no help for language quietly shrinks your world to people who speak yours.

On ChitChat, typed messages are translated automatically. You write in your language, they read in theirs. It applies to text and not to speech, so on a video call you will still be relying on whatever words you share, plus a good deal of pointing and laughing, with the message box as a safety net when a sentence will not come out right.

A download is a commitment: storage, permissions, updates. For something you may try once on a slow evening, it is a lot to ask. Sites that live in the browser let you find out whether you like the place before it takes up room on your phone.

ChitChat runs entirely in the browser on phones and computers. If you decide to keep it, you can add it to your home screen and open it from an icon, which the ChitChat app page walks through. Nothing is installed from a store.

By what you came for. If you only want to kill ten minutes, the first and the last are all that count: no sign-up, no download. If you are hoping to make friends, put the fourth at the top, because nothing else matters if you cannot find people again. If you are shy, the second and third decide it, since they tell you whether you can write first and choose who to write to.

One last piece of advice, and it applies whichever site you end up on. Give a site three sessions before you judge it. The first is mostly nerves. The second is when you work out how it goes. By the third you know whether the people there are your kind of people, and that is the only comparison that counts. If you are weighing ChitChat against the old Omegle in particular, we wrote that up separately on the Omegle alternative page.