Omegle alternatives, and how to pick one

Omegle ran from 2009 to November 2023 and put strangers in front of each other with almost nothing in between. That was its appeal, and it was also what ended it. The site closed after a lawsuit brought on behalf of a girl who had been abused through it, and its founder wrote openly about the cost of fighting misuse.

The demand did not disappear with the site. It scattered across dozens of replacements, most of which copied the product and skipped the lesson.

The complaints that follow these sites are remarkably consistent. Five things come up everywhere, and they are the right checklist:

• bots and funnels pushing you toward paid cam sites
• nudity you did not ask to see, within the first few skips
• automatic bans with no explanation and no way to contest them
• basic filters, including the country filter, locked behind a subscription
• a heavy gender imbalance that nobody will quantify

A site that answers all five openly is rare. A site that publishes numbers to back its answers is, as far as we know, not a thing anyone else does.

decal is a random video chat for adults. One button connects you to someone, one button moves you on. There is no app to install and nothing to pay to start.

• Nudity is detected before it is broadcast, in the browser, not after someone has reported it.
• Every suspension can be appealed, and every appeal is read by a person. An account suspended in error is restored in full. The rules are set out on the community rules page.
• The country filter is free. Only the gender filter is paid.
• Video never passes through our servers. It goes peer to peer, and the server only relays the connection setup and text messages.
• An account is required. That is a deliberate cost: without one, anyone excluded comes straight back in a new tab.

decal is new and small. At the time of writing, you will wait longer here than on a site with hundreds of thousands of people online, and at some hours you may find very few people at all.

We would rather say so than show an invented counter. What you find when you sign in is what is actually there, and we are not going to dress it up with a number chosen to look bigger than reality.

Open the site, sign in, allow the camera, and press Start. You are matched with someone within seconds when people are online. Press the decal button to move on, at any time, without explaining yourself.