Tinychat alternative, now that the rooms are gone
Tinychat closed on 16 December 2024. That week its homepage said "TinyChat has Closed!", thanked people for fifteen years and carried a banner pointing them to Paltalk. Type tinychat.com today and a site still opens under the old name, but it is a different product with a different owner: a one-on-one video roulette whose video window belongs to another company. The video chat above is Veilr's, running on our own service. It is one-on-one too, so if you came back for the rooms, we can't give you those either.
Why Tinychat shut down
It wasn't a verdict on the product. Tinychat belonged to Paltalk, Inc., traded on NASDAQ as PALT, and a merger required the company to part with three apps: Paltalk, Camfrog and Tinychat. The first two were sold. Tinychat's operations were simply stopped before the deal closed. The company then renamed itself Intelligent Protection Management Corp. and left video chat altogether.
The name sat on the market for a while. An archived copy of the address from 1 April 2025 shows a domain broker's page, Saw.com, with the line "tinychat.com is listed for sale!" and a "Make an offer" form. On 2 May 2025 the owner of StrangerCam bought it.
What tinychat.com is now
A WordPress site run by Eastwood Media B.V. of Breda, in the Netherlands, a company that calls itself a marketing ecosystem of affiliate sites for chat and dating. The chat itself is CooMeet's. The homepage loads CooMeet's widget with a partner ID attached, and Tinychat's own refund page puts it in writing: the site describes itself as an independent affiliate, and CooMeet handles all billing, refunds, chargebacks and support for anything bought through its links.
The roulette costs nothing and needs no sign-up. The gender and country filters are labelled premium, and paying for them means paying CooMeet, which shows no public price list until you are inside a session. The site's terms also mention a paid way to lift a ban before it runs out.
Two of its pages disagree about safety. The homepage promises moderation around the clock. The rules page says the platform can't watch every interaction in real time, relies on reports from the community, and bans people automatically once reports pile up.
The footer reads "Copyright © 2009 – 2026 TinyChat™", and the site claims more than 20 million users and 50 million chats a month. That is the site's own marketing, and we had no way to check it. There is no app in either store. The old Android listing answers 404; AppBrain records it as removed from Google Play on 13 October 2023, almost four years after its last update in December 2019.
What the old Tinychat had
Credit where it's due. A Tinychat room could hold up to 12 cameras at once. Rooms were listed in a directory by topic, their owners had their own moderators and their own bans, and an open API grew a small ecosystem of bots on GitHub for moderation and music. People returned to the same room for years; for many it was closer to a voice server than to a roulette. Fifteen years of that, 2009 to 2024, is a long life in a category where most services last two or three.
A lot of what turns up under "Tinychat review 2026" still describes those rooms. None of them have existed since December 2024.
Veilr doesn't bring them back. Every Veilr chat is two people, and there is no directory to browse. If a room with a dozen cameras is what you miss, Veilr is the wrong answer, and so is the site now living at the old address.
What Veilr offers instead
Three formats, one partner each time. Choose video, voice or text before the search. The format holds until the chat ends, so a text chat never turns into a camera, and you can still type during a call.
The gender choice isn't rented from someone else. On tinychat.com that filter is a CooMeet premium product. On Veilr it's part of the service and costs nothing: with your own gender on your profile, name the gender you'd like to meet. If anyone like that is online, the search tries them first; if nobody is, it connects you to someone else instead of leaving you waiting. Whatever the other person asked for is respected too. A Boost pass makes your choice a strict filter and puts you first in the queue.
An account at the door. The site at tinychat.com asks for no sign-up. Veilr does, and it has no guest mode: you use an account you already have, say Google, from the options on the sign-in screen, and on your first visit you give your name, gender, date of birth and native language. Accounts recorded as under 18 are never matched.
Penalties with a ceiling. tinychat.com's terms mention a paid way to lift a ban early. On Veilr an automatic penalty runs out after 30 days at most, and only a person can make a ban permanent. The notice says which of the two you got, and appeals go by email. Reporting someone during a chat moves you on to a new partner, and for the next 24 hours the two of you stay apart.
A way back to the same person. Press ‘Add to contacts’ during the chat, or on the panel that appears after a text or voice chat ends; from there it becomes a request that waits for the other person's answer. When you have both added each other, the conversation is kept as a private chat, and each of you receives the other's display name and the email address on their account. Until that happens, a stranger never sees your name, your email or your city.
Money that stays optional. Video, voice and text all cost nothing to use. Two things are sold, each bought once and never renewed: Boost passes, from an hour up to a month, and extra minutes of live captions.
tinychat.com today, next to Veilr
| tinychat.com today | Veilr | |
|---|---|---|
| Who runs the chat | Eastwood Media B.V.; the video is CooMeet's widget | Veilr, on its own service |
| Getting in | No sign-up, no download | Sign-in, plus a profile on the first visit |
| Choosing gender | A premium filter, paid to CooMeet | A free preference; strict with Boost |
| Rooms with many cameras | Gone since 16 December 2024 | None; two people per chat |
| Formats | One-on-one video roulette | Video, voice and text |
| Apps | None in either store | Android app on Google Play; iPhone in the browser |
| Who answers for a purchase | CooMeet, by Tinychat's own refund page | Veilr's terms name the seller and the route |
One row goes to the site at tinychat.com, and it's a real one: you can be on camera there without giving anybody an email address. The other rows show what that shortcut leaves out. The filter is rented from a company whose name isn't on the door, and when something goes wrong with a purchase, the site sends you somewhere else.
Your first Veilr chat
- 1. Sign in and fill in the profile, which only happens the first time.
- 2. Pick video and press ‘Start video chat’. Voice and text start the same way.
- 3. Met someone you'd talk to again? Press ‘Add to contacts’.
Related
- All the Omegle alternatives we compared
- Omegle — closed in November 2023, just over a year before Tinychat.
- Emerald Chat — group text rooms, if a room is what you're after.
- Video chat — one stranger, cameras on.
- Voice chat — the same match with your camera off.
Questions about Tinychat
Is Tinychat still working?
The original service closed on 16 December 2024. tinychat.com opens, but it's a new owner's one-on-one roulette built around CooMeet's chat, and the rooms are gone.
Why did Tinychat close?
Its owner, Paltalk, Inc., had to part with Paltalk, Camfrog and Tinychat as part of a merger. It sold the first two and shut Tinychat down.
Is there a Tinychat app?
Not any more. The Android app was removed from Google Play in 2023, and neither store lists one today. Veilr has an Android app on Google Play and runs in the browser on an iPhone.
Where do I ask for a refund?
On tinychat.com, its refund page sends you to CooMeet. On Veilr, the terms say who sold you a pass: a payment provider on the web, Google Play in the app. Their refund rules apply as well. As a rule, Boost time that has already begun isn't refunded. The About page tells you how to reach us.
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