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 Francisco and the Bay Area now live on two Reddit boards, r/SFr4r and r/sfbaypersonals, on classified sites such as Doublelist and Locanto, and in text-first apps including AseeksB. Craigslist’s missed connections are still busy. On October 10, 2026, we read the newest Bay Area ads.
In the Bay Area, the biggest searches are for Doublelist: “doublelist san francisco” gets about 3,600 searches a month, up 184% on last year, and “doublelist san jose” another 1,900. “sf missed connections” gets about 880, “sf r4r” about 480, and “bay area personals” about 110 (Google Keyword Planner, October 2026). The region is one market made of several places: San Francisco, Oakland and the East Bay, San Jose and the South Bay, the Peninsula, and the North Bay, joined by bridges, BART, and Caltrain.
Here is how each option works, from our checks on October 10, 2026:
On October 10, 2026, we read the 20 newest Bay Area ads on Locanto, Doublelist, and SeekingList and counted the escort ads. On Locanto, 11 were posted as women, and all 11 were escort ads; the 9 posted as men looked genuine. On Doublelist, 4 of the 20 were escort ads. On SeekingList, 16 of the 20 were copies of posts from r/sfbaypersonals and r/SFr4r, 2 of which had since been deleted on Reddit, and of the 4 ads posted to SeekingList directly, the 3 posted as women were 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.
The two boards work differently. A post appears only on the board it was posted to, so reaching both means posting twice, in each board’s format and on each board’s schedule.
| Board | Created | Followers | Weekly visitors | Weekly contributions |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| r/SFr4r | August 2011 | About 65,200 | About 6,000 | 180 |
| r/sfbaypersonals | March 2018 | About 39,100 | About 5,500 | 438 |
As each board showed them on October 10, 2026. r/SFr4r labels its weekly visitors “Potential Friends.”
r/SFr4r calls itself “An R4R forum for the SF Bay Area!” and is the older and bigger of the two. Titles carry your age and a tag, like [M4F], where R stands for a platonic post; couples separate their ages with a slash. You can post once every 48 hours, and accounts less than 120 hours old can’t post. Replies go by private message, not in the comments, and names, numbers, and social media stay out of posts. Solicitation of any kind is banned, including asking for “generous” people or donations, with one exception: dinner or concert tickets, if you are looking for someone to go with. The board is for meeting locals in person, not online-only chat, and NSFW posts must be marked.
r/sfbaypersonals was created on March 30, 2018, eight days after Craigslist took its Personals section offline. It describes itself as personals for the San Francisco Bay Area and says escorts, content sellers, and pic collectors are not welcome, and it belongs to a California Personals Network with boards for Los Angeles, Orange County, the Inland Empire, and San Diego. Titles follow a set format, like “21 [NB4A] #Location - Let’s go out for drinks!”, with no emojis, and the location has to be a specific place inside the county, not the whole region; #Online posts aren’t allowed. You can post once every 72 hours, and deleting a post doesn’t reset the timer. Contact details stay out of posts, and anything paid, from OnlyFans and premium Snapchat to sugaring, gets you banned. Kinks may be stated but not performed: no roleplaying the dynamic in the post, and no minor-coded or degrading language aimed at readers.
Craigslist’s Bay Area missed connections, under Community, are busy. On October 10, 2026, its 20 newest had all been posted in the previous 5 days, and 16 of them looked like genuine missed connections; the other 4 were personal ads.
The city was posting them long before Craigslist. In June 1899, the San Francisco Call carried this one, from a woman who met a man on the train from Portland and then missed him at the ferry:
“IF gentleman who made the acquaintance of lady on Southern Pacific train that arrived here from Portland Tuesday morning, June 13, and was to have met her same evening 5 o’clock at ferry depot, and missed her, wishes to continue the acquaintance, call at 923½ Mission st., room 4.”
San Francisco Call, June 25, 1899. Read the adThe Ferry Building, at the foot of Market Street, had opened in July 1898. Southern Pacific’s trains ended across the bay in Oakland, and passengers crossed to the city by ferry. Four years later, a woman at a Columbia Theater matinee asked the gentleman who borrowed her opera glasses to write to a box at the Call.
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 around San Francisco, including ages 30 to 45 at Rick & Roxy’s in the Marina on October 14, 2026, ages 35 to 47 at Elixir in the Mission on October 21, and ages 28 to 42 at Indie Wine & Beer on Telegraph Hill on October 30. Little Gay Book, whose Bay Area group for lesbian, bi, trans, and queer+ singles had about 4,100 members in October 2026, holds speed dating for BIPOC lesbian, bi, trans, and queer+ singles at Golden Ratio in Oakland on October 29. For more ways to meet people, with or without an app, see our guide to alternatives to dating apps.
Craigslist still has its San Francisco Bay Area site, and its missed connections are busy, 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 the Bay Area, the numbers above are what we found; for more, see sites like Doublelist and sites like Locanto.
Some San Francisco personals waited years for an answer. In August 1912, the San Francisco Call carried this one, and ran it more than once:
“WILL the lady who occupied, with others, the second box from the stage on the right hand side of the second floor of the Tivoli, on the evening of Sunday, the 12th day of February, 1905, while Mme. Tetrazzini sang in ‘La Traviata,’ please communicate with box numbered 150 of The Call?”
San Francisco Call, August 30, 1912. Read the adLuisa Tetrazzini had made her American debut at the Tivoli on January 11, 1905, a month before that evening. The Tivoli, at Mason and Eddy streets, was destroyed in the earthquake and fire of April 18, 1906, so by the time the ad ran, the box itself was gone. The same column carried a widow of 42, a fine cook, looking for a comfortable home, and in 1898 the Call ran an ad from a gentleman with a rich claim in the Klondike who wanted a lady of some means to go north with him. More in our history of personal ads and The Personals Archive.
A written ad says which side of the bay you are on before anyone crosses a bridge. 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 Francisco and the rest of the Bay Area, 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 the Bay Area. People there now post on Reddit’s r/SFr4r and r/sfbaypersonals, 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. They differ mainly in who can read your ad and how replies reach you.
Yes, two. r/SFr4r, created in 2011, had about 65,200 followers and 6,000 weekly visitors in October 2026; titles carry your age and a tag, like [M4F], and you can post once every 48 hours. r/sfbaypersonals, created in 2018, had about 39,100 followers and 5,500 weekly visitors; titles follow the format age, [tag], #Location, and a description, and you can post once every 72 hours.
Craigslist still has missed connections for the Bay Area, under Community. When we read them on October 10, 2026, the 20 newest had all been posted in the previous 5 days, and 16 of them looked like genuine missed connections. AseeksB has a missed connections category too.
Yes, it has a page for the San Francisco Bay Area. Anyone can see ad titles, but reading a full ad needs an account. When we read its 20 newest Bay Area ads on October 10, 2026, 4 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.