An Honest Review of Timeleft (2026)

I signed up for my first Timeleft dinner on a Wednesday in March last year. I almost didn't go. I sat in my apartment for twenty minutes, shoes on, telling myself it would be weird, that I'd have nothing to say, that the whole thing was a gimmick. Then I went anyway. And I had one of the best nights I'd had in months.

Since then, I've done 14 Timeleft dinners. Fourteen Wednesdays, fourteen different restaurants, probably 70 strangers in total. Some of those nights were great. A few were genuinely special. And a handful were just... fine. Here's what a year of Timeleft actually looks like.

How It Works

If you haven't used Timeleft before, here's the setup. You download the app, take a personality test (it takes about ten minutes), pick your city, and book a Wednesday. The app's algorithm uses your personality test results to build a table of six people who should get along. On Wednesday afternoon, you get a push notification with the restaurant name and your table number. You show up at 8 PM, find your table, and spend the next two to three hours eating dinner with five people you've never met.

That's it. No icebreaker games. No moderator. No agenda. Just dinner with strangers.

What I Liked

The Wednesday ritual

This is the part I didn't expect to love. Having a standing social commitment on Wednesday nights changed my week. It gave me something to look forward to in the middle of the slog between Monday and Friday. After a few months, it became a habit. I'd block off Wednesday evenings without thinking about it. Friends started asking "how was your Timeleft this week?" the way they'd ask about a TV show. The consistency of the format is one of its best features, even though it sounds like a limitation on paper.

The algorithm works more often than it doesn't

I was skeptical about the personality matching. How much can a ten-minute quiz really tell you? But after 14 dinners, I think the algorithm does something real. My best tables had a specific quality to them: everyone was roughly on the same wavelength. Not identical people, but people who were curious, open, and willing to go past small talk. My worst tables felt random. So the algorithm doesn't always hit, but when it does, you can feel the difference.

The no-choice design

You don't pick who you eat with. You don't pick the restaurant. You barely pick anything at all. And that's the point. I've used apps like Bumble BFF where the matching is up to you, and the paradox of choice kills it. You swipe, you overthink, you never commit. Timeleft removes all of that. You just show up. For people who tend to talk themselves out of social plans, this design is perfect.

Low barrier, high reward

Walking into a restaurant and sitting down at a table is about as easy as socializing gets. You don't have to introduce yourself to a room full of people. You don't have to work up the nerve to approach anyone. The table is right there, the people are already seated, and the food gives everyone something to do with their hands. The first five minutes are always a little awkward, and then someone cracks a joke and you're off.

What I Didn't Like

The cost stacks up

Timeleft charges about $13/month for the subscription. Then you pay for your own dinner. In New York, that means your Wednesday night runs $50-80 once you factor in food, drinks, tax, and tip. Do that four times a month and you're looking at $200-300. That's a real budget line item. I don't go every single Wednesday anymore partly because of this. Every other week feels more sustainable.

Wednesday-only is limiting

I get why they picked one night. It creates the ritual, it simplifies operations, it makes the brand memorable. But there have been plenty of Wednesdays where I had a work dinner, was traveling, or just wasn't feeling it. You can't reschedule to Thursday. You can't do a weekend brunch instead. If Wednesday doesn't work, your week is a bust. I'd love to see them add a second night, even if it was just in bigger cities.

Some tables are duds

I need to be honest about this because the marketing makes every dinner look like a scene from a movie. Out of my 14 dinners, I'd say 4 were amazing, 7 were good, and 3 were mediocre. The mediocre ones weren't bad exactly. Nobody was rude or unpleasant. But the conversation never got past surface level. We talked about jobs, neighborhoods, where we're from, and then kind of ran out of gas. By dessert, people were looking at their phones. It happens. Not every group of six random humans is going to click, no matter what the algorithm says.

No built-in follow-up

After dinner, Timeleft creates a group chat for your table. In theory, this is where you stay connected. In practice, someone sends "great meeting everyone!" that night, one or two people respond, and the chat goes silent forever. I've exchanged Instagrams with people I really liked and managed to see a few of them again. But the app itself doesn't do much to help you turn a good dinner into an actual friendship. It's an introduction service, not a relationship builder.

City quality varies

I've done Timeleft in New York and once while traveling in London. New York is their strongest market, so the pool of people is deep and the restaurants are good. I've heard from friends in smaller cities that the experience is spottier. Fewer people in the matching pool means less precise matching. Fewer restaurant partnerships means you might end up at the same place twice. If you're in a city with a big Timeleft presence, the experience is great. If not, your mileage will vary.

The Tables I'll Remember

My third dinner was the one that hooked me. The restaurant was a small Italian place in the West Village. The six of us were all between 26 and 33, all transplants to New York, all in that specific phase of adult life where you have a job and an apartment but not really a community yet. We talked for three hours. We closed the restaurant. Four of us went to a bar afterwards and stayed until midnight. I still see two people from that table regularly.

My eleventh dinner was the other standout. A woman at the table had just quit her corporate job to start a pottery studio. Another guy was training for an ultramarathon. The conversation bounced between wildly different life stories and somehow held together. Nobody was performing or trying to impress anyone. It was just honest, interesting people being themselves over pasta.

Those nights are what keep me coming back. They don't happen every time. But they happen often enough.

Who Should Try Timeleft

If you've moved to a new city and don't know many people, Timeleft is the single best place to start. It's also great if you have an established social circle but want to meet people outside your usual bubble. If you're an introvert, the small group format (six people, one table) is far less intimidating than a networking event or a big Meetup group.

It's less ideal if you're on a tight budget, if Wednesdays are consistently bad for you, or if you're looking for deep friendships right away. Timeleft gives you introductions. What you do with them is up to you.

The Verdict

Timeleft is the best app in the IRL social space right now. That's my honest assessment after a year of using it. The concept is simple, the execution is clean, and the experience is consistently good (not always great, but consistently good). The Wednesday night dinner with strangers has become a genuine part of my social life in a way that no other app has managed.

It's not perfect. It's expensive if you go every week. The algorithm misses sometimes. Wednesday-only is rigid. And the app does a better job getting you to dinner than helping you build lasting connections from it.

But here's what matters: after 14 dinners, I'm still booking the next one. That says more than any review can.