An Honest Review of Pie (2026)

The first thing that caught my attention about Pie was the price: free. Not "free with a premium tier." Not "free trial." Actually, fully, no-catch free. In a space where every app wants $15-40/month, that's unusual enough to investigate.

I used Pie in Chicago for two months. Here's the full rundown.

How It Works

Pie shows you a feed of free, in-person events happening near you. DJ sets at coffee shops, art openings, park cleanups, happy hours, fitness classes. You browse, mark the ones you're interested in, and show up. There's no matching algorithm. The social discovery happens through a friend-of-friend graph that builds over time as you attend events and connect with people.

You can also host your own events. And everything is free.

What I Liked

Zero financial barrier

I cannot stress enough how different this feels. With Pie, I opened the app, found a free art show in Logan Square, and walked over. No subscription to justify. No "is this worth $15/month?" mental math. The zero cost means you try things you wouldn't otherwise bother with. I went to a ceramics open house and a DJ set at a coffee shop because they were free and right there. Both were great. I never would have paid for an app to find them.

The friend-of-friend graph is clever

After you attend a few events and connect with people, Pie starts showing you what those people are interested in. It's like how you actually discover things in real life: a friend mentions a cool event, you tag along, you meet their friends. Pie replicates that loop digitally. After about three weeks, my feed started feeling personalized in a way that felt organic rather than algorithmic.

Hosting events is simple

I posted a "coffee and board games, Sunday 11 AM" event and four people showed up. The process took about two minutes. Pie handles the listing, RSVPs, and notifications. If you're the kind of person who likes organizing things, this feature alone makes the app worth downloading.

What I Didn't Like

Four cities is a tiny footprint

Chicago, Austin, Bay Area, and Columbus. That's it. If you're not in one of those four metro areas, Pie is useless to you right now. And because it's a Public Benefit Corporation, the expansion timeline is probably slower than a VC-backed rocket ship.

Event quality varies wildly

Some weeks I'd open Pie and see a dozen interesting events. Other weeks, the pickings were thin. Because there's no curation, you get everything from polished events to someone posting "hanging out at the park, come through." You learn to filter, but it takes a few tries.

No matching means no guaranteed connections

Pie gets you to events. It doesn't guarantee you'll meet anyone. You still have to walk up to people and introduce yourself. If you're an introvert who finds that hard, the structured apps like Mesh or Timeleft where you're assigned a group are going to work better.

The Verdict

Pie is the most generous social app I've used. Everything is free. The event discovery is solid. The friend-of-friend graph is smart. The limitation is geographic reach and the fact that it requires more initiative than structured apps. If you're in a supported city and you're the kind of person who will actually show up to things, Pie is a no-brainer download. It costs you nothing to find out.