Part of Notes from the Road, our city-by-city series.
The short answer: Craigslist took its Personals section offline in 2018, and no single site replaced it. In Boston and the rest of New England, personal ads now live on Reddit boards such as r/bostonr4r and r/RhodeIslandPersonals, on classified sites such as Doublelist, and in text-first apps including AseeksB. Craigslist still runs missed connections, and in Vermont, a weekly paper still runs personals of its own. On October 12, 2026, we read the newest ads in Boston, Worcester, Providence, Hartford, New Haven, and New Hampshire.
In Boston, people search for a site more than for personals: “doublelist boston” gets about 14,800 searches a month, up 22% on last year, against about 590 for “boston r4r” and 50 for “boston personals” (Google Keyword Planner, October 2026). On October 12, 2026, 6 of the 20 newest Boston ads on Doublelist were escort ads. In Providence, Hartford, New Haven, and New Hampshire, it was 8 or 9 of 20.
Boston’s personals were once a newspaper business. In 1988 the Boston Phoenix added voice personals, and by 2003 the Phoenix’s personals company said it served over 70% of the daily and weekly newspapers in the US. That story is below, after where to post in each part of New England now.
Here is how each option works, from our checks on October 12, 2026:
For each place below, we read the 20 newest ads on Doublelist on October 12, 2026, and counted the escort ads; in Boston, we also counted Locanto and SeekingList. Each count is a snapshot of the newest ads on one day, not a measure of the whole site, and passing this test doesn’t make an ad genuine: an ad can look ordinary and still try to move you to another app once you reply. AseeksB ads can’t be read without an account, so they weren’t counted. How we check.
AseeksB publishes this page and is included in it. For how each site handles the eight traits that defined Craigslist Personals, see our full comparison.
Coming from Reddit or a classified site? On AseeksB you still write an ad in your own words, but you choose who can see it, by gender and age; someone can send one message per post until you reply; and no photo or real name is needed. Posting, browsing, and replying are free. How AseeksB works.
“doublelist boston” gets about 14,800 searches a month, up 22% on last year; “doublelist rhode island” and “doublelist new hampshire” about 2,400 each; “doublelist hartford” about 1,600; and “doublelist providence,” “doublelist worcester,” and “doublelist new haven” about 1,000 each (Google Keyword Planner, October 2026). Doublelist has pages for all six. Anyone can see ad titles, but reading a full ad needs an account. Posting is free for up to 3 posts, and seeing members’ photos takes a paid plan; its help center lists two, Hookup and Hardcore, at $45 and $90 a year. Its pages open with a paid pop-up and carry sponsored links to outside sites; on October 11, 2026, one of them, “Hookup Finder,” led to a page that Chrome blocked as dangerous.
On October 12, 2026, 6 of its 20 newest Boston ads were escort ads, 8 of the 20 newest in Providence, and 9 of 20 each in Hartford, New Haven, and New Hampshire. Worcester’s page was quieter: its 20 newest went back to July 10, many came from outside Worcester, and 4 were escort ads. That is a snapshot of the newest ads on one day, not a measure of the whole site.
If you’re coming from Doublelist, AseeksB works differently: you choose who can see your post, by gender and age; someone can send one message per post until you reply; admins actively monitor posts; and posting, browsing, and replying are free. For more options, see sites like Doublelist.
Boston and Cambridge face each other across the Charles, with Somerville just past Cambridge and the T tying them together. A Boston ad should say which side of the river you’re on, and how far down the Red Line you’d go for a first drink.
What we found. On Doublelist, 6 of the 20 newest Boston ads were escort ads. On Locanto, 14 of the 20 newest were posted as women, and all 14 were escort ads. SeekingList’s Boston page was mostly copies of posts from r/bostonr4r, and 8 of the 9 we opened had since been deleted on Reddit; the 4 ads posted as women on SeekingList itself were all escort ads.
Boston is the last city where we count escort ads. The pattern has been consistent: in most of the cities before it, escort ads were among Doublelist’s newest ads, and on Locanto and SeekingList nearly every ad posted as a woman was one, as in Seattle and Portland, Phoenix and Tucson, and Houston. From here on, our city pages link back to those counts instead of repeating them.
Reddit. r/bostonr4r, created in 2012, had about 112,700 members, with about 13,000 weekly visitors and 751 weekly contributions on Reddit’s count. It describes itself as the place to find anything from platonic friends, gaming partners, and travel mates to relationships and casual encounters, and posters have to be in the Boston area. Since May 2026, only verified users can post: you send a moderator a safe-for-work photo of yourself holding a handwritten note with the board’s name, your username, age, gender, and the date and time. Titles give your age, a tag, your location, and what you’re looking for, like “22 [F4M] #Allston - Just feel like chatting.” The post itself needs at least 120 characters, including a short description of what you look like, and you can post once every 24 hours. Selling or trading anything, OnlyFans included, is banned, and so are email addresses, phone numbers, Kik, and Snapchat in posts or comments, false ads, and ads written with AI tools. AseeksB doesn’t need a photo to post: photos are optional, and only the audience you choose sees your post.
Outside Boston, Doublelist’s newest ads had more escort ads, and the Reddit boards have rules of their own.
Worcester is about 40 miles west of Boston, and its listings lean on its neighbors. “doublelist worcester” gets about 1,000 searches a month, down 45% on last year. On October 12, 2026, Doublelist’s Worcester page was quiet: its 20 newest ads went back to July 10, many came from outside Worcester, and 4 were escort ads. Craigslist’s Worcester site had no missed connections of its own, only posts repeated from Boston and elsewhere.
“doublelist rhode island” gets about 2,400 searches a month, up 21% on last year, and “doublelist providence” about 1,000, down 55%. On October 12, 2026, 8 of the 20 newest Providence ads on Doublelist were escort ads.
Reddit. r/RhodeIslandPersonals, created in 2022, had about 44,900 members, with about 11,000 weekly visitors and 2,000 weekly contributions: more contributions than r/bostonr4r, which has more than twice the members. Titles must give your age, and you must be 21 or older; your location goes in the title or the post. Selling of any kind is banned, including OnlyFans and payment apps such as Venmo and Cash App, and so is any mention of Snapchat, Kik, Telegram, or other outside chat apps. Photos and videos, NSFW ones included, are allowed.
“doublelist hartford” gets about 1,600 searches a month, down 45% on last year, and “doublelist new haven” about 1,000, down 32%. On October 12, 2026, 9 of the 20 newest ads on each city’s Doublelist page were escort ads.
Reddit. Connecticut has two boards with the same rules: r/ConnecticutR4R, created in 2014, with about 39,100 members, 3,800 weekly visitors, and 269 recent posts on Reddit’s count; and r/CThookups, created in 2021, with about 47,200 members, 6,700 weekly visitors, and 770 recent posts. Titles follow “Age [sex4sex] Location Description,” like “22 [M4A] #Fairfield Anyone wanna grab drinks?”, and a post without the brackets and the 4 can’t go up. Each user can post 3 times a day; selling of any kind, OnlyFans and Cash App included, gets a ban; and anyone whose posts are suspected to be fake is asked to verify with the moderators. r/CThookups also takes photos and videos, as long as they show the person posting.
“doublelist new hampshire” gets about 2,400 searches a month. Doublelist has one page for the whole state, and on October 12, 2026, 9 of its 20 newest ads were escort ads. On Reddit, r/NHmeets had about 7,100 members, with about 2,600 weekly visitors and 354 weekly contributions.
Vermont still has a newspaper that runs personals. Seven Days, Burlington’s alt-weekly, has run them since shortly after its first issue in 1995, online since the early 2000s, with an I Spy section for missed connections and a Love Letters service that forwards replies by mail. In November 2024 The New York Times called it “one of the last bastions of newspaper personal ads,” and NBC’s Today show featured it in January 2026, according to Seven Days. “doublelist vermont” gets about 590 searches a month, up 120% on last year. In Maine, the Portland Phoenix, the Boston Phoenix’s sister paper, published its last issue in July 2023.
Craigslist still runs missed connections across New England, under Community, but they move slowly. On October 12, 2026, Boston’s site had 11, the oldest about three months old, and one of them was really an ad, with a phone number in it. Rhode Island’s had 5, Hartford’s 4, and New Hampshire’s 2, both genuine-looking. Worcester and New Haven had none of their own.
One Boston missed connection was shared far beyond Boston. In September 2015, a man posted on Craigslist about a woman he had met in the rain under the balcony of the Old State House on New Year’s Eve, 1972, and lost at Neisner’s five-and-dime at Downtown Crossing. Craigslist added it to its best-of pages, but Boston Magazine doubted it was real, and a reader pointed out that the name Downtown Crossing wasn’t in use until years after 1972.
AseeksB has a missed connections category too: say where and when, and only the audience you choose can see the post. For how to write one that the right person will recognize, see our guide to missed connections.
Beyond the apps. CitySwoon runs speed dating by age range around Boston, at venues near Faneuil Hall, in Charlestown, and at Bow Market in Somerville. Skip the Small Talk runs speed dating with “big talk” questions around Boston, with separate nights for monogamous and polyamorous singles, including poly bi and pan nights for ages 21 and up. For more ways to meet people, with or without an app, see our guide to alternatives to dating apps.
Boston’s personal ads are much older than Craigslist. In February 1898, a Boston man placed this in the Beverly Evening Times, on the North Shore:
“PERSONAL—YOUNG MAN, 30, CHRISTIAN, wishing to enter small business, wants to meet lady with means, object matrimony. This is inserted in good faith by a respectable American. William W. Knox, Boston, Mass General Delivery Post Office.”
Beverly Evening Times, February 28, 1898. Read the adHe signed his own name, which few writers in our archive did, and had replies held for him at General Delivery, where the post office kept mail until it was called for. Elsewhere in New England, a New Haven woman advertised in 1905 for company, “object sociability,” and in 1916 a Manchester, New Hampshire, man of 40 wrote that he would like to correspond with “a good kind lady of means.”
Ninety years after Knox, Boston’s personals were in the Boston Phoenix, the alt-weekly that began as Boston After Dark in 1966. In 1988, Andy Sutcliffe developed voice personals for the Phoenix: instead of writing to a box number, readers called to hear an advertiser’s recorded greeting and leave a message. Sutcliffe became the founding president of Tele-Publishing, the Phoenix’s personals company, which by 2003 said it served over 70% of the daily and weekly newspapers in the US. In 1992, the Phoenix was one of the only local papers to run personal ads for people who were HIV-positive, in a dating column headed “HIV-Positive”.
The web changed that. In January 2004, Sutcliffe said 900-number voice personals, “once an incredibly profitable service for alt publishers,” were “near death.” When the Phoenix closed in March 2013, Boston Magazine reported that a big portion of its revenue had come from classified ads, including ads for escorts, “nearly all of which have dried up,” as classifieds moved to Craigslist. Most of the Phoenix’s issues from 1973 on, personals included, are now searchable online, through Northeastern University and the Internet Archive. More in our history of personal ads and The Personals Archive.
New England is spread out: Providence is about 50 miles from Boston, and Hartford about 100. Every AseeksB post shows how far away it was posted, and anyone can search by distance.
One honest difference: AseeksB ads can only be read inside the app after signing up, unlike Craigslist’s missed connections and most of the classified sites above. That is the trade for choosing exactly who sees each post.
Every post makes AseeksB busier for the next person in Boston and New England. Post what you’re looking for, and if there’s a feature you’d want, tell us through the app, from the profile tab; we’d love to hear it.
Text-first personal ads for Boston and the rest of New England, in your own words, with distance and other controls in Supporter.
Craigslist took its Personals section offline in the US on March 22, 2018, after Congress passed FOSTA, including in Boston. People there now post on Reddit’s r/bostonr4r, on classified-style sites such as Doublelist, in Locanto’s personals section, and in text-first apps such as AseeksB. Missed connections still run on Craigslist. They differ mainly in who can read your ad and how replies reach you.
Yes, r/bostonr4r, with about 112,700 members, 13,000 weekly visitors, and 751 weekly contributions in October 2026. Since May 2026, only verified users can post: you send a moderator a photo of yourself holding a handwritten note with the board’s name, your username, age, gender, and the date and time. Titles start with your age, a tag, and your location, like “22 [F4M] #Allston,” posts need at least 120 characters, and you can post once every 24 hours.
Yes. Rhode Island has r/RhodeIslandPersonals, with about 44,900 members and 2,000 weekly contributions, for ages 21 and up. Connecticut has r/ConnecticutR4R and r/CThookups, which share the same rules, and New Hampshire has r/NHmeets. Those numbers are from October 2026.
Craigslist still runs missed connections in Boston and across New England, under Community, but slowly: on October 12, 2026, Boston’s site had 11, the oldest about three months old. In Vermont, Seven Days runs an I Spy section for missed connections. AseeksB has a missed connections category too.
Yes. Seven Days, the alt-weekly in Burlington, Vermont, has run personals since shortly after its first issue in 1995, with an I Spy section for missed connections and a Love Letters service that forwards replies by mail. The Boston Phoenix, which ran Boston’s personals for decades, printed its last issue in March 2013.
Yes. AseeksB is a free personal ads app for iOS and Android. Every post shows how far away it was posted, anyone can search by distance, and Supporters can also set a maximum distance on their own posts. A free account keeps one active post, and someone can send one message per post until you reply.