Someone to talk to, right now
It is late, or it is the middle of an ordinary afternoon, and there is nobody you can call. You do not want advice and you do not want a form to fill in. You want a person who will answer.
A real person, anonymously, in seconds, at any hour. Free, with no account and no ads.
Lumi pairs you with one other person for a text, audio, or video conversation. You are not given a bot, a queue, or a profile to build first. If the conversation is not right you skip, and the next person is a few seconds away. Nobody is paid to talk to you, and nobody is selling anything.
How it works
- Choose text, audio, or video. Camera-on is never required. Add a nickname if you like; your name is never asked for.
- Pass the selfie age check, once. You enter your birth year and look at your camera for a moment. Software on Lumi's own servers estimates your age group; a person checks its decisions. The photo is deleted the moment a person has reviewed the check, and after 90 days at the latest whatever happens.
- Talk. You are paired with someone in your age band. Talk as long as you like, and skip whenever you want to meet someone new.
The safety facts
- Every person you meet has passed the selfie age check. Users aged 13 to 17 are matched only with other teens; adults (18 and over) only with adults.
- The person you meet never sees your IP address: audio and video are relayed through Lumi's own servers.
- Lumi does not record your conversations. Automated screening on Lumi's own servers may sample camera frames and check text to catch abuse; what gets flagged is kept as evidence for 90 days and reviewed by a person, the rest is discarded.
- Skip or leave at any time. Report is one tap, and a person reads every report. Bans stick to the device and the connection, and a ban is never lifted for money.
- No account, no ads, no trackers, no data sale, and no third-party vendors.
What Lumi is not
Lumi is not a crisis line and not a substitute for one. If you are in danger, or thinking of harming yourself, call your local emergency number or a crisis line. They are staffed for exactly this, and they will pick up.
Why talking to a stranger helps
Being lonely is common and rarely said out loud. The United States Surgeon General's 2023 advisory on loneliness found that about half of American adults report it, and compared the health effect of lacking connection to smoking. Talking to strangers turns out to help more than people expect: in Epley and Schroeder's 2014 commuter studies, people told to strike up a conversation on the train enjoyed the trip more than those who sat in silence, and had predicted the opposite. A one-week program of talking to strangers reduced participants' fear of being rejected (Sandstrom, Boothby, and Cooney 2022).
Sources: U.S. Surgeon General, advisory on loneliness and isolation, 2023; Epley and Schroeder, "Mistakenly seeking solitude," 2014; Sandstrom, Boothby, and Cooney, 2022.