Part of Notes from the Road, our city-by-city series.
The short answer: Craigslist took its Personals section offline in 2018, in Australia as well as the US, and no single site replaced it. Personal ads in Adelaide, Perth, and Brisbane now live on a few Reddit boards, such as the national r/R4Rstralia and Brisbane’s r/BrisbaneDating, in Locanto’s personals section, on Doublelist, and in text-first apps including AseeksB. On October 9, 2026, we read the newest ads in all three cities.
Australia’s personals searches don’t follow its population. People type “adelaide personals” into Google about 2,900 times a month and “perth personals” about 1,900, against about 390 for “sydney personals,” though Sydney is far bigger than either (Google Keyword Planner, October 2026). In all three cities, the name people search for most is a classifieds site: “locanto perth” alone gets about 60,500 searches a month.
The distances are on another scale too. Perth is closer to Bali than to Sydney. Inside each city, though, the questions are the ones a personal ad has always answered: which side of the river, which suburb, and how far you will drive.
Here is how each option works in Adelaide, Perth, and Brisbane, from our checks on October 9, 2026:
For each city below, we read the 20 newest ads on Locanto and Doublelist on October 9, 2026 and counted the 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.
Adelaide is laid out on a grid, inside a ring of parklands, with the beach at Glenelg a tram ride away and the hills a short drive the other way. It is a city where people know which side of the parklands you mean, so say it.
What we found. On Locanto, 15 of the 20 newest Adelaide ads were posted as women, and all 15 were escort ads, some of them duplicates. Doublelist’s Adelaide page is quiet: its 20th newest ad was from March 26, 2019, and 12 of the 15 posted as women were escort ads. Craigslist Adelaide’s missed connections had no posts.
Reddit. Adelaide’s board, r/R4adelaide, had about 14,600 followers, with about 902 weekly visitors and 36 weekly contributions on Reddit’s count. r/R4Rstralia can be filtered to South Australia too.
Beyond the apps. CitySwoon runs speed dating in Adelaide, with a night for ages 35 to 47 at Wassail Wine Bar in Prospect on October 16, 2026, and a spring singles party in age groups at Brightstar Brewing in Thebarton on October 24, according to its website.
Perth runs a long way up and down the coast, from Fremantle to Joondalup, and the Swan River splits it as surely as any line on a map. North or south of the river is the first thing to say in a Perth ad, and the second is whether you would make the drive.
What we found. On Locanto, Perth’s 20 newest included the same 15 escort ads, all posted as women, that we found in Adelaide, and the paid gallery above them rotated through ads for brothels and massage venues in Northbridge and North Perth, one of them recruiting with “Make 1K a Day.” Doublelist had only 17 Perth ads in all, the oldest from January 27, 2019, and 12 of the 13 posted as women were escort ads. Craigslist Perth’s missed connections had no posts.
Reddit. Perth has no r4r board of its own. The national r/R4Rstralia can be filtered to Western Australia.
Beyond the apps. CitySwoon runs speed dating across Perth, with nights for ages 30 to 44 at the Subiaco Hotel on October 16, 2026, and ages 38 to 52 at the Federal Hotel in Fremantle on October 22.
Brisbane winds around its river, and southeast Queensland runs together from the Sunshine Coast to the Gold Coast, so “Brisbane” can mean an hour’s drive in either direction. A Brisbane ad should say which side of the river you are on, and whether the M1 is part of the deal.
What we found. Locanto’s Brisbane page had the same 15 escort ads, posted as women, as Adelaide and Perth, plus a promoted ad with a woman’s photo that was spam when we opened it. Doublelist’s Brisbane page is quiet: its 20th newest ad was from December 5, 2022, and 9 of the 12 posted as women were escort ads. Craigslist Brisbane’s missed connections had no posts.
Reddit. Brisbane has two boards for two purposes. r/BrisbaneDating, created in 2019, is for dates and relationships, not hookups or affairs. It had about 4,200 followers, with about 3,300 weekly visitors and 43 weekly contributions. It takes posts from anywhere in southeast Queensland, including the Gold Coast, the Sunshine Coast, and Toowoomba. Titles need your age, a tag, and what you are looking for, posts need more than 100 characters, and it is safe for work only. Usernames, phone numbers, and links to other profiles aren’t allowed, and neither is any exchange of money, goods, or services. r/Brisbanensfw is the adult board, for hookups, with about 100,100 followers, 22,000 weekly visitors and 2,100 weekly contributions. You have to be in Brisbane when you post (travellers say so in the post), titles have to say what you are after, and OnlyFans, Fansly, and paid Snapchat accounts are banned, as are paid meets and any mention of “rewards.”
Beyond the apps. CitySwoon runs speed dating in Brisbane and on the Gold Coast, with Brisbane nights for ages 43 to 55 at The Gatsby in Fortitude Valley on October 14, 2026, and ages 30 to 45 at The Beaumont, also in the Valley, on October 16. For more ways to meet people, with or without an app, see our guide to alternatives to dating apps.
We have separate guides to personal ads in Sydney and personal ads in Melbourne. For Canberra, Hobart, Darwin, and the rest of the country, r/R4Rstralia can be filtered by state and territory, and CitySwoon also runs speed dating in Canberra, Hobart, and Newcastle. AseeksB works anywhere in Australia, with the distance shown on every post.
Craigslist still has Australian sites, but not for personals: that section went in 2018, and its missed connections listings had no posts in Adelaide, Perth, or Brisbane when we looked. 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 Locanto or Doublelist in Australia, the numbers above are what we found; for more, see sites like Locanto and sites like Doublelist.
Australia’s personal ads are older than Locanto. On March 26, 1888, the front page of Adelaide’s Express and Telegraph carried this, under the heading Matrimonial:
“YOUNG ENGLISH GENTLEMAN (30), tired of the misery of single life, wishes to end same, and with that view desires to correspond with a loving, fond, good-tempered, good-looking Australian girl with a view to MATRIMONY. Money no object, as he has ample means.”
The Express and Telegraph, Adelaide, March 26, 1888. Read the adHe signed himself Herbert and had replies sent to the General Post Office. Printed just above him was a bachelor in fair circumstances who signed himself Lonely, and the next year a respectable widow lady asked for replies at the post office in Port Adelaide. Fifty years on, Brisbane’s Telegraph carried a farmer of 34 looking for a young lady to take on a dairy farm and a tall young man, fond of the pictures, and the Kalgoorlie Miner’s Matrimonial column, out on the Western Australian goldfields, had a quiet young man of 35 asking for “friendship and above.” The archive has eleven ads from these three papers, 1888 to 1952, transcribed from Trove, the National Library of Australia’s newspaper archive. More in our history of personal ads and The Personals Archive.
AseeksB is American-built and most of its members are still in the US, so in Australia treat it as an early, honest way to post what you are after and see who is around, not a crowded local listing. It 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 Adelaide, Perth, Brisbane, and the rest of Australia, in your own words, with distance and other controls in Supporter.
No single site did. Craigslist took its Personals section offline in 2018, in Australia as well as the US. People in Adelaide, Perth, and Brisbane now post on a few Reddit boards, such as the national r/R4Rstralia and Brisbane’s r/BrisbaneDating, in Locanto’s personals section, on Doublelist, and in text-first apps such as AseeksB. They differ mainly in who can read your ad and how replies reach you.
Yes, r/R4Rstralia, which had about 27,400 followers in October 2026, with about 2,100 weekly visitors on Reddit’s count. Titles have to start with your age and a tag, such as “28 M4F,” and posts can be filtered by state. Brisbane and Adelaide have boards of their own; Perth doesn’t.
Brisbane has two boards. r/BrisbaneDating, with about 4,200 followers, is for dates and relationships, not hookups, and takes posts from anywhere in southeast Queensland, including the Gold Coast and the Sunshine Coast. r/Brisbanensfw, with about 100,100 followers and 22,000 weekly visitors, is for hookups and bans paid meets and OnlyFans links.
Yes, and it is what most people in those cities search for by name. When we read the 20 newest personals in each city on October 9, 2026, 15 were posted as women and all 15 were escort ads, the same 15 in all three cities. Some listings that look like personal ads promote Locanto’s own dating service instead.
Yes, though most of its members are still in the US. AseeksB is a free personal ads app for iOS and Android. You choose who sees each post by gender and age range, every post shows how far away it was posted, and Supporters can also set a maximum distance. A free account keeps one active post, and someone can send one message per post until you reply.