Is Chatingly free? Free to start, and here is the fine print.

Chatingly is free to start, and that phrase is chosen with care. You can open the site, press start and meet strangers without paying anything or entering a card. New members get a batch of free matches, and more free matches or coins keep arriving through the Reward Center.

What Chatingly will not tell you is that everything costs nothing for as long as you use it. Running live video between strangers across the world is expensive, so at some point, if you chat a lot, matching and a few extras move onto coins. Knowing where that line sits up front beats discovering it halfway through a good conversation.

• Opening Chatingly and starting as a guest, with no sign-up and no card.
• Your free matches as a new member, in video, voice or text mode.
• Claiming from the Reward Center whenever its countdown finishes.
• Pressing next, reporting someone, and every safety tool.
• The translate button on typed messages.
• Browsing the online list and the Live tab, following people and reading your messages.
• Pinning Chatingly to your phone home screen.

You will find the Reward Center pinned above the match controls. When the timer on it runs out, a reward becomes claimable, which might be free matches or coins. The following countdown is measured from your claim, not from midnight, so if you check in now and again you can collect several times in a single day.

There is no streak to protect. Skip a day, or a week, and nothing resets or disappears. The amounts and the timing are set by Chatingly and can change, which is why this page describes how it works rather than quoting figures.

A little habit stretches the free part of Chatingly a surprisingly long way. Claim from the Reward Center whenever you open the app, even if you are not about to chat, because the countdown only starts again after a claim. Skip early when a match is clearly going nowhere instead of letting it drift for ages.

Voice and text draw on the same allowance as video, but they suit quick check-ins on a bus or a lunch break. That leaves your camera matches for the evenings when you actually want to be seen.

Coins are Chatingly’s in-app currency. You need them for:

• Carrying on with random matching after your free matches are gone.
• Private one-to-one video calls with a specific person from the online list.
• Gifts for someone you are calling or watching live.
• Entry to certain paid or ticketed rooms on Chatingly Live.

Two habits are built into Chatingly to stop accidental spending. If your balance is too low for a private call, you are asked to top up before the call begins; Chatingly never quietly starts a paid call and bills you after. Gifts also need a confirmation tap, so a stray thumb in a live room does not send one.

VIP is a separate membership. Members carry a VIP badge they can hide if they prefer, and they see member pricing on coin top-ups. Coins and VIP are digital items that only work inside Chatingly; the terms of service cover refunds and the rest of the small print.

Search for Chatingly and you will eventually see sites offering coin generators, hacks or a modded version of the app. None of them come from Chatingly, and they are a common way to steal logins and card details. Chatingly rewards come from the Reward Center and nowhere else. The how it works walkthrough shows where the real one lives.