InterNations alternative: options for meeting people locally, not just other expats

Product · by Simone Rainieri · 6 min read read

InterNations is a paid events and networking platform for expats built around roughly 500 official events and 3,500-plus member activities a month, and the best alternative for people who want actual local friends rather than a room of fellow newcomers is an introduction-based app that matches on compatibility instead of expat status. InterNations is upfront about what it is. Founded in 2007, it describes itself as the world's largest network for people living and working abroad, built around roughly 500 official events and more than 3,500 monthly member-organized activities across around 420 cities, according to its own factsheet. That is a real, substantial operation, and if what you want is a room full of other expats and a structured way to find your professional and social footing in a new country, it does that job at genuine scale.

How the membership model actually works

InterNations runs on a two-tier membership structure. Basic membership is free and gives access to site content and community-organized activities, though attending most of those still means paying a per-event entry fee. The paid tier, called Albatross Membership, is sold as an upfront annual subscription and gets members free or reduced-price entry to InterNations' own Official Events, along with full access to interest-based groups, the ability to browse other members' profiles anonymously, an ad-free experience, and more advanced in-app messaging. Free or reduced admission to Official Events is, per InterNations' own materials, the main reason members actually upgrade. There is also a tiered event-pricing structure within the platform itself: the same event can carry a different price depending on whether the attendee is an Albatross member, a Basic member, or an outside guest.

The Official Events themselves are not arbitrary. InterNations reportedly only rolls out more than one paid Official Event per month in a given city once community-organized attendance for that city has consistently reached 60 to 80 people per event over a three-month stretch, meaning the paid event calendar scales with proven local demand rather than being pushed everywhere uniformly. That is a reasonably disciplined way to run an events business, but it also means the paid experience is genuinely thin in smaller or newer markets until organic attendance builds up.

What InterNations is actually built for

The core product, in other words, is the event, not the introduction. You join, you browse activities and official meetups happening near you, and you show up. Some are large mixers, others are smaller interest-based gatherings, and the platform also functions as an information resource, with city guides and forums where members trade practical advice about relocating and living abroad. It is closer to a subscription events and networking business, similar in structure to a professional association, than to a friendship-matching product. Nobody is introducing you to one specific person based on compatibility. You are being pointed at a room, sometimes for a fee, and left to do the rest yourself.

That model has a real strength: it is good at surface area. Attend enough events and you will meet a lot of people quickly, which matters in the first disorienting months after a move. It also has a built-in identity filter, since the whole premise is expat-to-expat connection, which can be exactly what someone wants when they are looking for people who understand the specific disorientation of being new somewhere. The company survived and reportedly grew through the pandemic era by leaning into its subscription model even as in-person events paused, which suggests the underlying community and content side of the product has real staying power independent of the events calendar.

The gap it leaves: expats only, by design

That same identity filter is the limitation. InterNations connects you with other expats, by design, which means it is not really built to connect you with people who have lived in the city for years, including locals who never left. If your goal is to actually integrate into the place you have moved to rather than build a parallel community of other newcomers, an expat-only network structurally cannot deliver that, no matter how many events it runs or how disciplined its rollout criteria are.

The gap it leaves: an event is not a relationship

There is also the event-format problem itself, separate from the expat-only framing. A mixer is a decent way to meet a lot of people briefly and a poor way to figure out who you would actually want to spend real time with. You get surface impressions, a few exchanged numbers, and then the same problem every event-based networking model has: turning a five-minute conversation at a bar into an actual ongoing friendship requires both people to do a lot of unprompted follow-up work, and most people do not. Add the pay-per-event structure on top, and there is a real cost, in both money and inconvenience, to simply showing up again and again hoping the right conversation happens on its own. That trade-off between rooms and individuals is the subject of [one-to-one friendship apps vs group events](https://vairi.app/journal/one-to-one-friendship-apps-vs-group-events).

What to look for instead

If the goal is local friends rather than a rotating cast of fellow newcomers, look for something that is not filtered by expat status and that does more than put you in a paid room. That means matching based on how you actually get along with people, not just shared nationality-abroad status, and it means some structure for the follow-through that events leave to chance and cost. This is part of what Vairi is built around: matches are not restricted by expat identity at all, and instead of a one-off ticketed event, the app gives two people an actual space to build a relationship, shared activities inside the chat itself, one match introduced at a time instead of a room full of strangers to work through in an evening.

None of this makes InterNations a bad product. It is doing what it says it does, connecting expats with other expats through a disciplined, subscription-funded events calendar, at meaningful scale. The alternative is only worth reaching for if what you actually want was never what InterNations was selling in the first place: not a network of fellow newcomers paying for entry to a room, but friends who happen to already know the place you just moved to.

A concrete scenario: the first three months after a move

Picture someone who has just relocated for work and joins InterNations in their first week. The free Basic tier gets them into the community forums and city guides immediately, useful for practical questions, but most of the actual events they might want to attend carry a per-event fee at the Basic tier. After a couple of months of paying those individual fees, upgrading to Albatross membership starts to make financial sense, so they commit to the annual subscription. From that point on they have free or reduced entry to Official Events and can browse profiles anonymously. Over the following months they attend a handful of mixers, meet dozens of people briefly, exchange contact details with a few, and end up with, realistically, one or two people they see again without prompting. That is not a bad outcome for the money and time spent, but it took an ongoing subscription and repeated in-person attendance to get there, and every one of those dozens of brief conversations was with someone who, structurally, cannot be a local in the sense of someone who was born there or has lived there for decades. If that slow-conversion stage sounds familiar, [moved to another country and cannot make friends yet?](https://vairi.app/journal/moved-to-another-country-and-cannot-make-friends) goes deeper on what helps.

What that scenario costs versus what it produces

The honest way to think about InterNations financially is as a subscription-plus-per-event cost structure in exchange for volume and vetting-free access to a room of similarly situated people. That is a reasonable trade for some people and a bad one for others, depending entirely on what they are optimizing for. If the goal is simply high-volume exposure to other newcomers as fast as possible, the subscription pays for itself quickly. If the goal is a small number of durable local friendships, including with people who are not themselves expats, the subscription is solving the wrong problem regardless of how well-run the events calendar is, because no amount of event volume changes who is structurally eligible to attend.

Why the expat-only design is not a flaw, exactly

It is worth being fair to InterNations on this point rather than treating the expat focus as a shortcoming. A platform built specifically around the shared experience of having recently moved somewhere is offering something real and specific: instant common ground with people who understand what it is like to not yet know the transit system, the tax rules, or where to get a phone plan. That commonality genuinely accelerates the first few conversations in a way that pure locality-based matching would not. The tradeoff is simply that this same design choice caps how far it can take you if your actual goal is integration into the city as it already exists, rather than into a parallel community of people going through the same transition you are.

InterNations' own factsheet describes roughly 500 official events and more than 3,500 member-organized activities a month across around 420 cities, all filtered by expat status. That scale solves surface area, not selection: the format leaves you to convert five-minute mixer conversations into friendships yourself, and it structurally cannot introduce you to locals.

Key takeaways

InterNations delivers volume: roughly 500 official events and 3,500-plus member activities monthly across about 420 cities, per its own factsheet. The Basic tier is free, but most events carry per-event fees, and the annual Albatross subscription mainly buys reduced event entry. The two structural gaps are that everyone you meet is another expat and that an event is not a relationship. Reach for an introduction-based alternative only if integrating with locals, rather than networking with newcomers, is the actual goal.

Related reading: [making friends after moving abroad](https://vairi.app/journal/making-friends-after-moving-abroad), [how to make friends as a foreigner in a new city](https://vairi.app/journal/how-to-make-friends-as-a-foreigner-in-a-new-city), and [how to make friends in a new country as an introvert](https://vairi.app/journal/how-to-make-friends-abroad-as-an-introvert).

Is InterNations free?

There is a free Basic tier with access to community content and member-organized activities, though attending most events still costs a per-event fee. The paid Albatross tier is an annual subscription that gets free or reduced entry to InterNations own Official Events.

What is the difference between InterNations and a friendship-matching app?

InterNations is built around events: you join, browse activities, and show up. An introduction app matches two specific people based on compatibility and gives them a shared space to build the relationship, one match at a time rather than a room of strangers.

Does InterNations connect you with locals?

No, by design. It connects expats with other expats, so if the goal is integrating with people who have lived in the city for years or were born there, an expat-only network structurally cannot deliver that.

Is InterNations worth it for making local friends?

It is a strong choice for volume, quickly meeting a lot of fellow newcomers, but turning a five-minute mixer conversation into an actual friendship still requires unprompted follow-up work from both sides, and the identity filter means you will not meet true locals through it.

What is a good InterNations alternative for local friendships?

Look for something not filtered by expat status that does more than put you in a paid room: matching on compatibility and giving structure to the follow-through that events leave to chance.