What Can I Use Instead Of Meetup To Find Local Events?

If you want alternatives to Meetup for finding local events, the short answer is: use Eventbrite for ticketed events, Facebook Events for casual gatherings, Reddit and Discord for niche communities, and Time Out or your local council listings for what's on in your city. And if the real reason you used Meetup was to meet people rather than just find something on, FirstMove is the one built for that. Most people end up using two or three of these together because no single platform covers everything.

What can I use instead of Meetup to find local events?

Meetup used to be the default. It's still useful for hobby groups, especially in larger UK cities, but many organisers have drifted to Eventbrite, WhatsApp, and Discord because Meetup's per-organiser fees and dated interface put them off. So the honest answer is: there isn't one replacement. You stitch together a few tools depending on what you're after.

The realistic alternatives

FirstMove

Start here if your real goal is the bit Meetup is actually for: meeting people. Most people do not open Meetup because they want a calendar. They open it because they want to walk into a room and not stand there alone. FirstMove is an IRL-first app for UK events and cities built around that moment. You browse what is on, then when you arrive the event's VibeZone switches on and shows who else is open to connecting. A consent-first handshake means you only ever match when both people opt in, so there are no cold messages and no swiping. Where Eventbrite and Time Out help you find something to attend, FirstMove is the one focused on what happens once you turn up. Free on iOS and Android. For the direct comparison, see Meetup vs FirstMove.

Eventbrite

The closest mainstream alternative. Strong for ticketed events, paid workshops, comedy nights, supper clubs, and professional meetups. Search by city and category. Free to attend most events; paid events take a fee. Eventbrite tends to surface bigger, more produced events rather than scrappy hobby groups.

Facebook Events

Still surprisingly active in the UK, particularly for pub quizzes, club nights, community fundraisers, and neighbourhood gatherings. If you're not on Facebook it's invisible to you, which is its main problem. Useful if you already have local friends sharing events into your feed.

Reddit (city subs)

r/London, r/Manchester, r/Bristol, r/Edinburgh and similar subs run weekly threads for meetups, language exchanges, and recommendations. Quality varies. Good for finding low-key events run by regular people, less good for polished or large-scale stuff.

Discord servers

City-specific Discord servers have grown a lot. Search for your city plus "Discord" and you'll usually find one. They tend to skew younger (early 20s to mid 30s) and lean towards gaming, tech, board games, and run clubs. Conversation-first, which means events get organised through chat rather than a calendar.

Local council and library listings

Underrated. Most UK councils publish what's-on pages with free events, family activities, exhibitions and community classes. Libraries run reading groups and crafting sessions. Not glamorous but reliable.

Time Out

Editorial rather than community. Useful for finding what's culturally worth attending in London, Manchester, Edinburgh and Birmingham, particularly food, exhibitions, theatre, and pop-ups. Not where you go to find groups, but where you go to find things to do. (If you're specifically looking for friendship apps, our review of whether Bumble BFF is good for real friends covers that in more detail, and we have a wider roundup of free apps for meeting people in the UK if cost is a factor.)

Friend-led group chats

The quietly dominant channel. Most UK adults find out about gigs, dinners and parties through WhatsApp groups rather than apps. Not searchable, not scalable, but high signal. If you don't have a group chat to lean on yet, our piece on making friends after moving to a UK city covers how people typically build one from scratch.

How they compare

What Meetup still does well

It's worth being fair to Meetup. In London especially, large hiking groups, language tandems, photography walks and tech meetups still run regular events with hundreds of members. If you find a Meetup group with consistent organisers, it's often more reliable than a new Discord that fizzles after two months. The decline isn't universal, it's patchy.

Where Meetup falls short

The interface feels stuck a decade ago, the per-organiser pricing pushed a lot of small group hosts away, and outside the big cities the group density thins out fast. You also can't really chat or build relationships in the app, so people swap to WhatsApp after one meet, which means the platform doesn't compound the way Discord or Facebook Groups do.

Picking the right combination

For most UK readers, the realistic stack is something like: Eventbrite for paid events, Reddit or Discord for free hobby groups, council listings for kid-friendly or community stuff, and a WhatsApp group with two or three friends for the rest. The trick is to commit to one or two and check them weekly rather than installing six apps and ignoring all of them. For a longer look at the wider trade-offs, see our Meetup app alternatives roundup.

Is Meetup still free?
Attending events is free. Organising a group costs money, which is part of why supply has thinned.

Which is better for professional networking, Meetup or Eventbrite?
Eventbrite, generally. Most paid networking events and industry meetups list there now. LinkedIn Events is also worth checking.

Are there UK-specific event apps?
Time Out is UK-strong. Skiddle is solid for nightlife and festivals. Resident Advisor (RA) is the standard for electronic music.

What's the easiest way to find events in a smaller UK town?
Facebook Events plus your council's what's-on page. Reddit and Discord thin out fast outside major cities.

So which should you actually use?

Every tool above helps you find something on. The harder part, and the part most people actually opened Meetup for, is walking in and meeting people once you are there. That is what FirstMove is built for. It is an IRL-first app for UK events and cities: browse what is happening, then let the event's VibeZone connect you with people who are up for it, with a consent-first handshake so it never feels like a cold approach.

So the honest stack for most people: Eventbrite to find ticketed events, Reddit or Discord for free hobby groups, your council listings for community bits, and FirstMove for the night itself, so the event you found turns into people you actually meet.