Palcity — frequently asked questions

Palcity is a free, location-based social platform where adults can meet new people and make friends with people near them. You create a profile, see who is around you on a map or in a list, and start a conversation — text, photos, voice messages, or a live video call in the browser.

Palcity is a social platform designed to help you connect and make new friends in your local area.

Yes. Palcity is free to use: creating a profile, browsing people nearby, sending and receiving messages and making video calls all cost nothing, and no card is asked for.

There is no paid tier on Palcity at all — nothing to upgrade to.

Palcity is for adults, 18 and over, who want to make new friends in their own area. It is a focused community rather than a general-purpose site: palcity is a social platform designed to help you connect and make new friends in your local area.

Everyone on Palcity must be at least 18 years old. Child safety is treated as a zero-tolerance matter: confirmed violations are removed and reported to the relevant authorities.

Yes — Palcity is a real, operating social platform, run by Intercode, a small software company based in Québec, Canada.

Like every open platform, Palcity does attract people who try to abuse it, and it works continuously to remove them:

• Every uploaded photo is screened automatically before it can appear publicly, and can also be reviewed by a human moderator.
• An automated risk system looks for the patterns that scam and spam accounts share, and hides accounts that match them before they reach other members.
• Any member can block or report any profile or message, and reports are reviewed.
• Members can verify their account and earn a badge, so you can tell who has proven they are a real person.

Not every profile is verified, so it is still worth taking a little extra care with someone who has not been — the same care you would take meeting anyone new.

Palcity is built and operated by Intercode, a small independent software company in Québec, Canada. It is not owned by any of the large dating-app groups.

No. You can browse Palcity and look at profiles without registering — no e-mail, no password, nothing to fill in. Palcity places you on the map automatically using an approximate location, so people near you show up immediately.

You only need a free account when you want to message someone, keep your profile and conversations across devices, or be found by other members.

No. Palcity does not ask for a phone number, at sign-up or afterwards. There is no SMS code to wait for and no number stored against your profile.

Nothing. Creating an account on Palcity is free, and no payment details are requested at any point during sign-up. There is nothing to buy on Palcity.

Palcity does not have a native app in the app stores, and does not need one: the site is an installable web app. Open pal.city in your browser and add it to your home screen, on Android or iPhone, and it behaves like an app — including notifications and video calls.

Palcity offers a live face check. Verification is optional — you can use Palcity without it.

The face check runs in your browser: it records a few seconds of you following on-screen prompts, then compares your face with the public photos on your profile. The comparison runs on Palcity's own servers — your face is never sent to a third-party face-recognition company, and no permanent faceprint is kept. You can erase the recording yourself at any time from your settings, without deleting your account.

Full details: how verification works.

A verified badge means that person has proven there is a real human behind the profile by passing a live face check that matched the photos on their profile. It does not verify their name, age or intentions — only that the person in the photos is the person using the account.

Profiles that are not verified are not necessarily fake — plenty of people simply have not got round to it. It is just worth taking a little extra care with someone who has not verified.

Palcity runs an automated risk system that scores every account on the patterns that scam and spam accounts share, and hides the ones that match before they can reach other members. It works continuously, not only at sign-up, because a stolen-photo or romance-scam account usually looks ordinary until it starts messaging.

Alongside it: every uploaded photo is screened automatically before it can appear publicly and may also be checked by a human moderator; messages that follow known scam patterns are caught; and any member can report a profile or a message in one click.

No platform can promise a community entirely free of bad actors. What Palcity can say is that removing them is continuous work, and that the tools to protect yourself — block, report, and the verified badge — are in front of you on every profile.

Yes. Every photo uploaded to Palcity is screened automatically for nudity and prohibited content before it can be shown publicly, and moderators can review any picture. Pictures you delete are removed from the servers.

You choose the visibility of each photo you upload. Adult content is not allowed on Palcity.

Open the profile or the conversation and use the block or report control there — both are one click, on every profile and every message. Blocking is immediate and silent: the other person is not told. Reports are reviewed by moderators, who can remove content, suspend an account or ban it outright.

If something needs attention urgently, or involves a minor, use support and see the child safety standards.

There is no daily message limit on Palcity. You can write to as many people as you like.

Yes, and it is free. Palcity has live video and voice calls built into the conversation page. Calls run directly in the browser — there is no plugin to install, no separate app, and nothing to pay.

You can also send photos, files and voice clips inside a conversation.

You decide, and the widest setting is narrower than you might expect: Palcity will only ring you for verified members and people you have added to your favorites, which is the default. You can narrow it further to favorites only.

There is deliberately no "anyone" option for calls — letting a complete stranger make your phone ring is a bigger privilege than letting them send you a message, so it is not offered. (Message notifications do have an "anyone" setting, if you want it.) You can change both at any time, and each device you use keeps its own setting.

Palcity has two ways to find people. You can search and browse directly — by distance, who is online, who has a photo and more — and message anyone you like without waiting to be matched. Or you can use Yes / No / Maybe, where you answer one profile at a time and Palcity tells you when the interest is mutual.

Unlike most apps, you are not limited to people who swiped you back: the whole membership is browsable and messageable.

No. Palcity uses no tracking cookies at all — no advertising cookies, no cross-site trackers, no Google Analytics, no social-media pixels. That is why there is no cookie-consent banner: there is nothing to consent to. The only cookies are the ones that keep you logged in and remember your own settings.

Two things are worth stating plainly rather than glossing over: when you arrive from one of Palcity's own ads, a Google Ads conversion tag records that the visit led to a sign-up. Both are described in the privacy policy.

No. Other members never see your location on Palcity — only the approximate distance between you and them, rounded to the nearest 5 kilometres. Your address, your coordinates and your exact position are never shown to anyone.

Location can also only be updated a few times a day, which is what stops someone from moving around to triangulate where you are. You can set your location by city rather than precisely if you prefer.

No — and this is deliberately unusual. Other members cannot see your age or your birthdate on Palcity at all. Your birthdate is only used to decide whether you fall inside the age range other people are looking for.

You can still search for people who are interested in someone your age.

Yes. Palcity has three visibility levels, and you can switch between them at any time: public (found normally), hidden from search (kept out of search results and featured spots, but still reachable by anyone who has your profile link), and completely hidden (invisible in search and your profile page inaccessible to others).

In every mode you keep your existing conversations and can still start new ones.

From your account settings — there is a delete option, and it removes your profile, your pictures and your conversations. You do not have to contact anyone or explain yourself.

If you only want a break, hiding your profile keeps everything intact and is reversible.

Palcity places you on the map as soon as you arrive, using an approximate location worked out from your connection, so people near you are visible immediately — there is nothing to set up first. You can refine it with one tap (GPS on a phone, Wi-Fi or IP on a desktop) or set your city by hand.

From there you can see who is nearby on a map or as a list, filter by who is online, who has a photo, distance and more, and save a search to re-run later.

Yes. Palcity publishes a directory of cities and a directory of countries showing how many members each one has, how many were active in the last week, and the split between men and women. No account is needed to look at it.

Through the support page, which reaches the people who actually run the site. You do not need to be logged in to write, and you do not need to leave an e-mail address — though leaving one is the only way to get a reply.