Yubo

Yubo's listing calls itself a social platform for making new friends, and it is careful to say friends rather than dates — the page is built around meeting people to hang out with, not to match with. It leads with "millions of users worldwide", a figure from the company that we have not verified, and then makes its case in five numbered points. Two of those five are "IT'S FREE" and "IT'S SAFE", which tells you where it thinks the doubt is.

You swipe to find people who are online right now and share your interests, then chat with them. The live part is the point: the listing says the people you swipe through are online, not a backlog of profiles, and the things it suggests doing together are the casual ones — sing, dance, talk about your day. Tags are how it sorts people, and they are interest tags rather than demographic ones: gaming, beauty, sports, music, dance. Video calling is not among the features the listing names anywhere, which is worth knowing if video is what brought you here.

The listing says Yubo is "totally free to use" and stops there — no subscription, no premium tier, no in-app purchases, and no qualification attached to the claim. That is the plainest free claim of the four apps reviewed here and also the least informative, because a page that says only "free" leaves a reader unable to tell whether a paid tier exists and was simply not mentioned.

The listing gives safety a numbered heading and then names nothing under it. "We take your safety seriously" is followed by "we've designed many features and tools to ensure you can use Yubo safely" — many, unnamed. For an app whose whole proposition is contact with strangers, that is the thinnest safety passage of the four reviewed here, and it is thinner still because the listing states no age requirement and describes no moderation. What it does offer is a route to a person: support through Instagram and Twitter at @yubo_app.

People who want to meet others to hang out with rather than to date, and who prefer interest tags to a profile browser. It is not built around one-to-one video and does not describe any, so a reader who came for that should look elsewhere in this category.

A social discovery app that asks to be trusted on the strength of two words — free, and safe — and explains neither. The interest tags and the online-now filter are real design choices that make it more useful than a plain profile list, and the free claim carries no small print. Against that, safety gets a heading and no content, no age requirement appears, and a page for an app built on meeting strangers live never once mentions video.