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. Personal ads in San Diego now live on Reddit’s r/SanDiegoR4R, on classified sites such as Doublelist and Locanto, and in text-first apps including AseeksB. Craigslist’s missed connections are still there, but quiet. On October 10, 2026, we read the newest San Diego ads.
In San Diego, the biggest search by far is for Doublelist: “doublelist san diego” gets about 9,900 searches a month, up 49% on last year. “locanto san diego” gets about 2,900, down 70%, “san diego missed connections” about 720, “san diego casual encounters” about 320, “san diego personals” about 260, and “san diego r4r” about 140, up 55% (Google Keyword Planner, October 2026). San Diego County runs from Oceanside to the Mexican border, and the city’s r4r board on Reddit asks you to put your part of it in the title.
Here is how each option works, from our checks on October 10, 2026:
On October 10, 2026, we read the 20 newest San Diego ads on Locanto, Doublelist, and SeekingList and counted the escort ads. On Locanto, 17 were posted as women, and all 17 were escort ads; 1 posted as a man offered paid services, and the other 2 looked genuine. On Doublelist, 8 of the 20 were escort ads. On SeekingList, 16 of the 20 were escort ads, all posted to SeekingList directly. Google’s AI answer for San Diego personals also suggests DoULike and Oodle; when we opened them on October 10, 2026, their listings were spam and escort ads. 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.
r/SanDiegoR4R, created in July 2015, had about 62,000 followers, with about 7,200 weekly visitors and 965 weekly contributions on Reddit’s count on October 10, 2026. It describes itself as the R4R board for the San Diego area and asks people to help it stay a high-quality local community. Titles start with your age, a tag, and the specific part of San Diego you are in, then a short title, like “32 [R4R] Specific part of San Diego,” so a post says where you are before anyone opens it. You can post once every 48 hours, and accounts that aren’t verified need 50 post karma and 25 comment karma; verifying means sending the moderators a photo of your face with the board’s name, your username, and the date written on paper. Selling, transactions, and drugs get a permanent ban, and so does any post by or about a minor; personal information stays out of posts; and harassment, hate speech, and replying to posts not aimed at you are banned too. Accounts active on karma-farming boards are banned, and posts with genital photos are deleted.
San Diego also has r/sandiegopersonals, part of the same California Personals Network as the Bay Area’s r/sfbaypersonals; we didn’t check its numbers. For the Southern California board shared with Los Angeles, r/SoCalR4R, see our guide to personal ads in Los Angeles.
Craigslist’s San Diego missed connections, under Community, are quiet: on October 10, 2026, there were only 13 posts, the oldest from two months earlier, and 12 of them looked like genuine missed connections; the other was a personal ad. Searches for them are growing, though: “craigslist missed connections san diego” rose to about 320 a month in July and August, from about 140 before.
San Diegans were writing them more than a century ago. In January 1912, the San Diego Union carried this one, from someone visiting from Los Angeles:
“I WISH to correspond with the party that rode with me to the depot on New Era motorcycle New Year, and helped me to find a room at Majestic hotel.”
San Diego Union and Daily Bee, January 14, 1912. Read the adThe writer signed it J. J. Reid and asked for letters at general delivery in Los Angeles. A party was the period’s word for a person.
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 and date nights around San Diego, including ages 45 to 59 at Original 40 Brewing in North Park on October 14, 2026, ages 32 to 44 at Cork & Stem in Hillcrest on October 21, and ages 38 to 52 at The Lot in La Jolla on October 28. Pre-Dating, which has run speed dating since 2001, lists a Halloween singles party for ages 24 to 49 at Arcana Brewing in Carlsbad, in North County, on October 22. For more ways to meet people, with or without an app, see our guide to alternatives to dating apps.
Craigslist still has a San Diego site, and its missed connections are still there, but the Personals section went in 2018, Casual Encounters included. Which site comes closest to Craigslist depends on what you used it for: reading ads without signing up, replying without a match, or staying anonymous. Our Craigslist alternatives comparison sorts the sites by those traits. If you came looking for Doublelist or Locanto in San Diego, the numbers above are what we found; for more, see sites like Doublelist and sites like Locanto.
San Diego’s personal ads are older than Craigslist. In August 1910, the San Diego Union carried this:
“A GENTLEMAN of 32 and a stranger in San Diego would like to meet a refined lady. No other need answer.”
San Diego Union and Daily Bee, August 8, 1910. Read the adThe same paper carried many more. In December 1908, a widow, “amiable and domestic,” asked for a refined gentleman “of 40 or 45; one who, like herself, desires love and companionship.” In March 1889, a year after San Diego’s land boom went bust, a middle-aged gentleman at Sorrento, in San Diego County, with “a fine home in the country,” advertised for “a lady having some means.” And in October 1917, a widow described her “cozy home, but lonely.” More in our history of personal ads and The Personals Archive.
A written ad says which part of the county you are in before anyone gets on the freeway. AseeksB is free to download and post, and every post shows how far away it was posted.
One honest difference: AseeksB ads can only be read inside the app after signing up, unlike Reddit’s boards and the classified sites above. That is the trade for choosing exactly who sees each post, and first messages stay in the app, where you can report someone even after they unmatch.
Text-first personal ads for San Diego, from the beaches to North County, 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 San Diego. People there now post on Reddit’s r/SanDiegoR4R, on classified-style sites such as Doublelist and SeekingList, in Locanto’s personals section, and in text-first apps such as AseeksB. Missed connections still run on Craigslist, though they are quiet. The sites differ mainly in who can read your ad and how replies reach you.
Yes, r/SanDiegoR4R, created in 2015, with about 62,000 followers, 7,200 weekly visitors, and 965 weekly contributions in October 2026. Titles start with your age, a tag, and your part of San Diego, like “32 [R4R] Specific part of San Diego,” you can post once every 48 hours, and accounts that aren’t verified need 50 post karma and 25 comment karma.
Craigslist still has missed connections for San Diego, under Community, but they are quiet: when we read them on October 10, 2026, there were only 13 posts, the oldest from two months earlier, and 12 of them looked like genuine missed connections. AseeksB has a missed connections category too.
Yes, it has a San Diego page. Anyone can see ad titles, but reading a full ad needs an account. When we read its 20 newest San Diego ads on October 10, 2026, 8 were escort ads.
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.