Friend-finding apps for making new friends have been increasing recently. These are for people who want to make friends purely—not dating or romance. It seems there are all kinds of needs, such as people who want to broaden their circle of acquaintances as working adults, people searching for friends who share the same hobbies, women who want companions they can chat with casually with other women, and more. Apparently, some people start looking for friends in their 40s or 50s, too.

When you actually try them out, women-only friend-finding apps are fairly well developed. Favomatch is specialized for 推し活 (supporting your favorite idol/campaign) and lets you search using your 推し活 style, so it’s ideal for finding friends with the same kind of 推し活. Touch is limited to women only and also has a 24-hour monitoring system, so it’s also high in terms of safety. Dote Match lets you exchange casually with its timeline feature, and weekend searches make it easier to find people whose plans match yours.

If you also want friends of the opposite sex, you can use Bumble’s “BFF mode.” It has cheaper fees for men and is characterized by having many overseas users. Tantan is from China, but it’s used all over the world; the downside is that it has fewer filtering options, but you can make friends with either the opposite sex or the same sex.

If you’re in your 30s or 40s, Somli brings together people in the same age group and has a robust search function. For women-only, tipsys has more than 300,000 users, and with timeline and group chat features, it’s possible to interact with multiple people. If you want golf-focused friends, there’s also GolWho.

When choosing a friend-finding app, it’s important whether the goals align easily and whether safety is ensured. You should also check how many features are available for free. Women can generally use the apps for free, but many apps require men to pay, so be careful. The most important thing is whether you can meet users who genuinely want to make friends through a friend-finding app, so it’s also a good idea to try out a few at first.