Frequently asked questions

Global Penfriends is a safe, family-friendly club for online pen pals, with 1 million+ members in 195+ countries. Members write to each other through our secure online messaging to make friends, share their culture and practise languages, and many also swap letters and postcards by post. We have been connecting penpals for 30+ years.
Read more about Global Penfriends.

Yes! The site has a great free/basic offering which allows everyone to find penpals. If you want an enhanced experience, there are also options to upgrade.

Yes.

Start by creating a free profile, search for penpals and send messages and virtual smiles on our website. If you have time, check out our visitor tour.
See our guide to making your first contact.

This is used to send an expression of interest to contact a penpal. Your penpal will receive a message saying you are interested in contacting them.
See our guide to making your first contact.

All new profiles are checked before being approved. This usually takes 2–8 hours. If you haven’t received a verification email, please check your spam folder. If it’s still missing after 24 hours, click the contact support link and send us a query.

Yes, students are welcome to join. We suggest that each student within a class creates a profile to ensure a customised experience. Each profile will require its own email address.

Both, with online first. Every friendship starts in our safe online messaging, and most members write to each other there. Many also swap postal addresses safely with the Address button and send letters and postcards by post, and some write only by post.

We are a family based club based in Western Australia.
Read how this remote corner of the world inspired Global Penfriends.

Sorry, we have not yet released an app.

Global Penfriends has been connecting penpals for 30+ years and we believe it is the safest penpal club in the world. Every profile is checked before it goes live, our team reviews anything unusual, and any non-genuine profiles are removed. Our site is administered to ensure we provide a safe place to meet your new international friends.

Global Penfriends is designed with safety as the top priority. Members can only search for and start new conversations with people close to their own age, so younger members are never put in touch with older adults. A conversation that is already going stays open when one of you has a birthday. This structure is possible thanks to the large, diverse membership base and ensures a safe, age-appropriate penpal experience for everyone. Children under 13 must use the site with a parent’s or guardian’s supervision, and we highly recommend that parents of 13 to 17 year olds stay involved too.

No. For safety reasons we do not allow children under 13 years of age to post pictures of themselves. If any children under 13 would like to add a profile photo, we ask that they upload a picture of an animal or pet instead.

No – we are an international friendship club. If you get reported for being flirtatious or suggestive, your profile will be removed immediately.

No, convicted criminals or inmates are not allowed to join.

Safety is our primary focus. Profiles can be removed if they are found or suspected of being non-genuine or displaying suspicious behaviour.

If a penpal makes you uncomfortable, you can block them (they can no longer contact you) or report them to our safety team. Both tools are in the three-dot menu at the top of any conversation.
See our step-by-step guide to blocking or reporting a penpal.

Yes. We never sell your information or share it for marketing. Payments are handled securely by PayPal and Stripe, and if a payment is ever disputed we may share records of your account with that payment provider to resolve it. Read our privacy policy.

There are currently 9,834 reviews published on our reviews page.
Yes — every review on Global Penfriends is submitted by a verified member after using our service. We do not use third-party platforms or paid testimonials. The reviews you see reflect genuine experiences from real people in our global community. Many of the reviewers still have active profiles, so you can even message them directly. It’s transparent, authentic, and shows exactly what real members think of our platform.

To protect everyone’s privacy, postal addresses are not shown on profiles. There are three main ways to exchange snail mail addresses on the site:

1. Share yours with a penpal using the ✉️ share address button in your conversation.
2. Add your own postal address and tick “Also let me receive surprise mail” — both are needed before anyone can write to you unasked.
3. Use snail mail credits to collect addresses or unlock extra address exchanges (a separate add-on, not included in Premium).

Please do not type your address into a message. Until you and a penpal have built up trust, typed contact details — including postal addresses — are removed and may lead to a warning. Use the Address button (✉️) in the bottom left corner of the message box instead: your penpal is asked to accept before your address is revealed, and it is never sent to anyone who has not agreed to receive it.
See our guide to the 3 ways to exchange postal addresses.

Whenever you feel ready, it is easy to do. Click the ✉️ Address button inside the message box, in the bottom left corner. Before that works you will need to have saved your address under the My Postal Address link — that is where you register it with the site. Once it is saved, you are all set.

If the button is greyed out it could be because your penpal does not want to receive an address, or because you have not yet sent a couple of messages back and forth. Tap the button (or hover over it) and it will tell you which.
See our step-by-step guide to sharing your postal address.

While you are still building trust with a penpal, free members can swap addresses with 2 new penpals a month and Premium members with 8. Once trust is established in a conversation there is no limit at all. Sharing again with someone who already has your address does not count, and neither does an offer that is declined or left unanswered — you only use one when an exchange actually completes.

Not at all. You will see a card in the conversation asking if you would like their address; the address stays hidden until you accept. If you decline, your penpal is not told why, and they cannot offer again unless you change your mind — press Allow them to ask again on the card if you do.

When you post a real letter to a penpal, you can log it in your conversation with them so you both have a record of it.
See our guide to logging a posted letter.

This refers to exchanging candy / lollies / sweets via post. Candy is often small and travels well, so it makes for an ideal item to exchange with penpals overseas. Many countries have candy that is specific to their country – so this is a good form of cultural exchange.

A Travel Ring is a small group of penpals whose treasures — journals, letters, postcards — travel the world by post, with every member adding something along the way. Rings run in one of two formats: the “round robin”, where every member’s item travels the ring at the same time and comes home to its owner, or the “relay”, where only the creator’s item is passed around and each member posts just once.
See our guide to how Travel Rings work.

You can share photos directly with a penpal once you know each other well. Photo sharing becomes available in a conversation when you are both 18 or older and trust is established. Use the Photo button in the bottom left corner of the message box — until photos unlock it is greyed out, and tapping it tells you what is still needed. Every photo you receive has a Stop photos link if you would rather not get any more from that penpal. Video and other media cannot be shared.
See our guide to sharing a photo safely.

If you are in a new conversation and trust is not established, your messages must be filtered to ensure electronic contact details, links and phone numbers are not being given out early. If you feel our detection system wrongly penalised one of your messages, let us know by clicking the contact support link.
See our guide to building trust and the Trust Progress bar.

Free members can open their 5 most recently active conversations. Older conversations are locked until there is new activity in them, which moves them back into the top 5. Premium members can open every conversation.

Members without Premium can start a new conversation with about 80% of members. The 80% is spread across the whole club, so it is nothing personal and has nothing to do with your age, country or profile. You can always reply to a penpal who writes to you, keep writing to anyone you are already talking to, and send a free smile to any member. Members under 21 and Premium members are not affected.
See how the 80% rule works.

You can only remove a conversation from an inbox when a trash bin icon is displayed alongside their conversation. The trash icon will display if the penpal is new and not responding within 1 week OR if the conversation is two-way and the recipient does not respond after several weeks. Basically the trash icon will display when the conversation is stale. If someone writes to you first and you don’t want to reply, tap Not a match next to the message box: we send them a short, friendly note for you and the conversation is removed from your inbox straight away.
See our guide to removing a conversation from your inbox.

Yes. Tap the message (on a computer you can also click the small arrow that appears when you point at it) and choose Delete for me. You will be asked to confirm first. Deleting removes the message from your side of the conversation only — your penpal will still see it. A message that is still waiting for a safety check cannot be deleted until the check is finished. The same menu also has Save to notes for your penpal’s messages.
See how deleting a message works.

No — once a message is deleted it cannot be restored. Please be careful before deleting any conversations.

We love that members want to give back. There are a few simple ways to help — including gifts that go towards giving kind young penpals the full Premium experience.
See how you can support Global Penfriends.

Upgrades usually happen straight away, but occasionally you must wait a couple of minutes for it to activate.

Please sign into your profile and click on the Payments link. Then click on the active subscription and cancel it. Alternatively, submit a support ticket and we will cancel it within 24 hours.

We don’t show ads at the moment. If ads are used in future, they will only be shown to adult free members — never to children, and never to Premium members.

No — children never see ads.

Please go to the sign-in page and click on the “forgot password” link. You will be asked for your registered email address. You will be sent a link to reset your password.

Visit the contact us page, send us an email and we will run a manual security check.

Yes. Sign in, click on My Profile and choose Pause profile. This will remove it from search results, but still allow you to message your existing penpals.
See our guide to pausing your profile.

Sign in, click My Profile and then Delete profile, then click to confirm deletion. Once deleted, your data cannot be restored.

Try a different image or run your photo through a resizer such as https://picresize.com/. Try to upload a square image if possible.