Couchsurfing Reviews 

What happened to the couchsurfing we used to know? I tried to log in because I wanted to see my old trips and reviews... instead was forced through an onboarding I couldn't skip, made to pay at the end after I gave my data. I was furious by the end I got to the last step and now never wanna go back again. You guys should seriously fire whoever implemented this customer onboarding.

It used to be a nice travel platform to connect with other users, find stays, trade stories and experiences, but now they're charging for nothing - to the point that you don't even have access to your messages or profile if you don't pay. There's also no longer user regulation, and people treat it like a dating app. I would cancel, but I can't access my account without paying.

The Couchsurfing company is run by scammers. For years they were charging me for a subscription that had expired and that didn't really give me access to any service.
All this without prior notification.
Since the time of Covid in which the App became paid under subscription, it lost most of its users and is currently trying to maintain itself by making fraudulent charges to its users (you can see this in other Trustpilot or Google Play reviews).
Don't go near this app.

In an attempt access email settings after a long break from using the site, I saw no other way to access those settings than through a lengthy process that ended with having to sign up for a "free trial". By not reading the fine print I was charged for said trial. I explained this politely to customer service but was denied a refund.

I would recommend steering clear of this company. Look up "Dark Patterns" to learn more about this kind of scummy business practice.

Tried to scam me with long gone subscription I stopped using years ago and they refused to return the fee even once I acted immediately! Fortunately my bank and paypal returned the fee for me. Avoid them, used to be useful years back then, now they act like scammers.

So I just received this email from couchsurfing with the title “We’ve changed”.
LoL…Last time I was in contact with these thieves they charged me some 80 EUR for some bogus profile check.
Beautiful…Did you guys convince some WallStreet vultures that the brand name was worth another round. Good luck with that.

Please go to BeWelcome.org instead.

I helped BUILD the community that couchsurfing used to be. i was a very active member starting around 2008 and had amazing experiences hosting and traveling and meeting people who actually wanted a cultural exchange and often a new friend. it was built up under a promise of being nonprofit forever. then they decided to go corporate, advertising themselves to a bunch of people who didn't 'get it' and thought it was just a way to travel for free. couch requests went downhill even before they decided to completely lock their most longstanding members out of their accounts if they didn't start paying monthly fees. you know, the people that actually put the work into making it what it was. the people actually opening their homes to travelers for free. I was not just restricted from sending couch requests, but LOCKED OUT. I can't view or edit my own profile, contact my friends, adjust my account settings, or anything. all i get is a paywall. this happened several years ago and i can't believe i never wrote a review until now.

I'm reminded of it because i was sent a "free trial" offer. I decided I would try to use it to log into my account and save some data and change some settings. Instead, even though I was using the email I had signed up with years ago, it took me through a new account setup. I can view my old account now, but I can't log into it. In fact, with their new terrible web design, I can't even find a way to log out of my "new account". I had to give them a credit card just to get the 'free trial' and get this far. They will never have my permission to charge it.

I only recently noticed that most of my old photo albums disappeared after Couchsurfing’s transition to the new format.

And suddenly, something clicked: maybe this is why I’ve been getting so few replies and messages lately, despite having been on Couchsurfing for years and having many references.

I now have only a handful of photos left on my profile, and unfortunately, most of those don’t even show my face. For a platform built around meeting and staying with strangers, photos matter. People want to have some idea who they’re talking to and potentially welcoming into their home.

Personally, I wouldn’t reply to a profile with no visible face, even if that person had thousands of references and years of experience on CS. I think many other members probably feel the same way.

It’s really disappointing to discover that years of photos and memories were lost during the transition, especially when they were also an important part of establishing trust and showing who I am as a traveler and Couchsurfer.

I really hope Couchsurfing can look into this and, if the old albums are still somewhere in the system, give longtime members a way to recover them. After years of being part of this community, it would be a shame for all those memories — and a little bit of our identity on the platform — to simply disappear.

They keep sending email offers for one month of FREE TRIAL and when you click it it requres payment. It doesn't propose to pay for subscription to get one month for free. It clearly proposes one month of free trial. A site that promotes free hosting and accomodation requires monthly subscription with the same amount of streaming services.

Unable to delete account . Tried 1000 times :
Pls see picture attached

They spammed me and I have never been on their site before. How did they get my email address? I can only presume from an illegal unlicensed email seller / database. Did I unsubscribe or even click onto their site from their spam? No, because a) they would risk being infected with malware (illegal spammers are often hackers too), b) that would confirm to them that my email is current and my spam filters did not block them (so they would likely spam me again and again).

AVOID them in every respect

It seems that someone who hated what couchsurfing was infiltrated it to wreck it from the inside. The new site is hideous and the backwards steps - including awful functioning of the site - make it so off putting to use the website/app. What a sudden, extreme and foul tasting fall off.

The new couchsurfing app update is jıat too bad. I can't fing my template messages , and hangout especially works like dating app. Really not a user friendly app. So slow and irritating

Tinder gone bad do not use

It’s ok for women to ask for money, however I ask for help or I leave my phone number and I am banned.

Ask anyone who used CS and stayed with me, they will say I was very kind. I pity what is left... one day everyone will see it is a sour place to be and I am going to look after me...

I got a chargeback and filling in every review...

I joined Couchsurfing in 2018 in a small town in the tropical highlands of Peru. I hosted more than 100 groups of 1 to 6 people, from 30 countries, mostly backpacking or biking between the Andes and the Amazon. All were fun and interesting people, and some are still friends. Then they changed. The website became difficult to use. They cropped photos and present them in an unwanted slide show, destroying much of the content. For those 9 years, I had never been charged because of my high intake of visitors. But suddenly they want money, even though my free time had not expired. And now, they won't even let me see my messages unless I pay. And worst of all, they rudely interrogate people's sexual choices in detail. It now seems like an LGBTQ dating site. I never concerned myself with people's private sexual choices, but when they must showcase them, it's an indication of sexual intention. Couchsurfers have been traditionally open minded people who accept everyone without prying into private matters. It used to be an excellent app for interesting and versatile travelers with open minds and low budgets. No more. Now it's trashy. Sorry, CS, you've done this to yourselves.

One of the greatest inventions of the 21st century was ruined by... greed, I suppose?

It went all the way from the 2011 promise that "CouchSurfing will never make you pay" (surprisingly still online) to the 2020 call for monetary help (a "decision of last resort") to a paid-subscription model that has remained even after the pandemic, only becoming more universal and more expensive in 2026.

So, a platform that was originally built on human-to-human trust started deceiving its members long ago, but the most recent, dating-app-inspired 2026 update comes close to being a scam. First, in order to hide the fact that the vast majority of profiles have long been inactive, they removed the one feature that still made it easy to use, the ‘Last log in’ filter, replaced by a vague 'Recently active' tag (initially, by nothing). More dangerously, they moved every user, regardless of their hosting status, to be an 'active host' you can send requests to, unless they subscribe and change their status every single month (there’s no permanent switch off). Thus they're seemingly trying to lure back the disenchanted (they start receiving request notifications in their emails, though some of these do seem to be made-up) and give the false impression of an active community before potential new subscribers and, I suppose, before potential investors as well.

My real-life friend María José died in a car crash in 2024, along with her father. Ten years before, she'd signed up on Couchsurfing, which she never seems to have used. In 2026, M. J. became an 'active host' you can send requests to, asking to stay with her wherever she is now... and will remain so for eternity, for, being dead, she can no longer change or delete her profile.

One can only imagine how many Couchsurfing users created profiles since the company was launched in 2004, left them to rot, passed away at some point in the 2000s or 2010s or 2020s, and have been peacefully lying in their graves until April 2026, when they were summoned back to inflate the numbers of a now-shady company. To top it up, if a user has no home pics, as is the case with many of them, an image is chosen of a place above the clouds... Unless having a Couchsurfing profile grants you some special form of immunity against death, they must be at least in their hundreds, statistically.

But the Resurrection of the Dead comes shortly before the Apocalypse, the End of all Ends. Please choose Couchers or BeWelcome every time you can. Couchsurfing's tactics are plainly immoral, perhaps illegal.

The platform literally doesn't work anymore and still they forced me to pay, or loose all my data and account. It was supposed to be a free platform for everyone. They have destroyed it.

I do NOT recommend couchsurfing.com (previously couchsurfing.org). I have been a very active and regular user of this platform from March 2009 to June 2026 - over 17 years - with 133 references, all positive, from both hosts and guests. Although my yearly subscription was paid and up to date, all of a sudden I could not access anymore my account. I messaged the Couchsurfing support, who replied one week later with a generic unpersonalized response, informing me that my profile had been removed, and that no explanation would be provided. So even though you have paid your subscription, you might get your account removed without any warning, without any explanation, without access to your data, and without any refund. This is one of the most disturbing user policy I have ever experienced in my life. My general feeling is that couchsurfing.com, although it initially started as an enjoyable free community-based platform, evolved over the years into a soul-less money-making factory. I have now created new profiles on couchers.org and bewelcome.org, which are both free platforms that seem to provide a credible alternative to couchsurfing.com.

Very bad new design. No User experienced used at all. My total lifetime membership gone. I cant find anyone.
Just why, why???

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.