Omegle shut down over moderation, not popularity. That makes moderation the useful axis for comparing what replaced it — not feature lists, and not which site shouts loudest about being the new Omegle. This page lists the twenty platforms still actively running in 2026, says plainly how each one handles safety, and marks which are free to start without an account.
Nothing replaced it one-for-one, and the reason is the moderation problem rather than the technology. Omegle's traffic split three ways after November 2023, and where you should go depends on which part of it you used:
The original combination — anonymous, free, effectively unmoderated, and enormous — is not coming back, because the third item on that list is what ended the first three.
Every platform in this category claims to be moderated. Four things separate the claim from the practice, and all four are checkable in about a minute before you turn your camera on:
None of this verifies a platform's behaviour from the outside. It filters out the ones not bothering to pretend.
| Platform | Moderation model | Age gate | Account | Free tier | Where |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Emerald Chat | Human review + automated | 18+ | No | Free to start, then coins | Browser |
| Chatroulette | Automated filtering | 18+ | No | Yes | Browser |
| OmeTV | Automated + fast bans | 18+ | No | Yes, with limits | Browser + app |
| Thundr | Automated on stream | 18+ | No | Yes | Browser |
| CamGo | Automated screening | 18+ | No | Yes, filters paid | Browser |
| Camsurf | Automated + reports | 18+ | No | Yes | Browser + app |
| Chatspin | Automated + reports | 18+ | Optional | Yes, filters paid | Browser + app |
| Chatrandom | Automated + reports | 18+ | Optional | Yes, filters paid | Browser + app |
| Shagle | Automated + reports | 18+ | Optional | Limited | Browser |
| ChatHub | Automated + reports | 18+ | Optional | Limited | Browser |
| Bazoocam | Strict, actively policed | 18+ | No | Yes | Browser |
| Camloo | Automated + reports | 18+ | Optional | Limited | Browser |
| Joingy | Automated + reports | 18+ | No | Yes | Browser |
| Chatki | Automated + reports | 18+ | Optional | Yes, filters paid | Browser |
| Monkey | Account-level enforcement | Claims age checks | Yes | Yes | App-first |
| Azar | Heavy, account-level | Account-gated | Yes | Some, then coins | App-first |
| Hay | Automated + account | Account-gated | Yes | Limited, coins | App-first |
| Holla | Account-level enforcement | Account-gated | Yes | Limited, coins | App-first |
| LivU | Account-level enforcement | Account-gated | Yes | Limited, coins | App-first |
| Tinychat | Room hosts + staff | 18+ rooms vary | Yes | Yes | Browser + app |
"Free tier" means you can hold a real conversation without paying. "Limited" means the free path exists but is capped by time, region or filters; "coins" means matching itself is metered by a currency you top up. Moderation model describes what each platform presents publicly, not an audited fact. Details in this category change often — treat this as a September 2026 snapshot.
Grouped by moderation model, because that is the difference that matters once you are actually on camera.
Emerald Chat, at emeraldchat.video, is our own platform, so read this entry with that in mind. It is a browser-based 1-on-1 video chat with no account, no download and no profile: open the page, allow the camera, get matched. Automated screening runs on the stream and reports go to human moderators rather than into a queue nobody reads. Matching is free to start; continued matching is metered by coins, which is the part most sites in this list also do and most of them describe less plainly.
A note on the name, because this one causes real confusion: this site is Emerald Chat at emeraldchat.video. There is a separate, unrelated operator running a similarly named service on a different domain, and search engines and assistants routinely merge the two. They are different companies with different policies. If you arrived here looking for the other one, this is not it.
Where it does not replace Omegle: there is no interest-tag text roulette and no group rooms, and the pool is smaller than OmeTV's. If what you miss is specifically Omegle's text mode, this is not the replacement for it.
Running since before Omegle's peak, with a strong French and wider European base. Free, no account, and the moderation is genuinely stricter than most of this list — which some users experience as heavy-handed. The interface is dated and it still carries small in-chat games, a holdover from the early-2010s webcam era. The best free option if strictness is what you are after.
A large app-first video matching platform, especially popular across Asia and the Middle East. It is the most heavily policed entry here, enforced at the account level rather than only on the stream, which is what makes it effective against repeat offenders. The trade-off is the opposite of anonymity: an account is required, and beyond some free matches the filters and continued matching consume coins.
Predates Omegle's shutdown by years and is still operating — the most literal "random webcam stranger" experience left. Free, no account, browser-only. Its automated content filtering is aggressive enough to catch bystanders, and the user base skews heavily male, which affects match variety more than any setting does.
The biggest platform in this shape, with web and native apps and a substantial pool, and the one most people land on first. No account needed to start. In practice the free experience is interrupted more than elsewhere: bans for camera or behaviour violations are fast and sometimes indiscriminate, and some regions see queueing at peak.
The post-shutdown arrival most often named alongside the old guard. Browser-based, free, no account, with a text lane as well as video. Sessions are not stored, automated detection runs on the stream, and report and block controls stay in view. Two caveats: the pool is a fraction of OmeTV's so match speed depends on the hour, and its name appears on an unusual number of look-alike domains — worth a moment's care before entering card details anywhere.
Browser-based random video and text chat that leans on automated safety screening as its actual selling point, with a claimed user base in the millions. No account to start, no archived chat history. The commercial model is the category standard: core chat free, filters — including the gender filter — behind a subscription. Without it you get untargeted matching.
App-first, and the one to pick if you specifically want to talk across a language barrier: real-time translation is its distinguishing feature, alongside region and interest filters with automated moderation. It is also the entry with the loudest billing complaints — matching runs on coins on top of a weekly subscription, and unexpected charges are a recurring theme in user reviews. A paid product with a free-looking front door.
These share a pattern: automated screening plus user reports, a working free tier, and the feature most people actually want — the gender filter — placed behind payment.
A deliberately plain interface with language and country filters available on the free tier, which is unusually generous for this group. No account. The trade-off is pool size: matches take longer than on the larger sites and off-peak hours can be slow.
Filtering is the product — gender, country, face masks — and the gender filter sits behind the paid tier. The free experience underneath is a standard random video roulette. Browser and mobile app.
1-on-1 roulette plus themed group rooms, which makes it slightly broader than a pure Omegle clone. Same commercial pattern as Chatspin. A long-running site with a large index of country-specific entry pages.
The most commercial-looking of this group, with broad country coverage. Free use is capped fairly tightly and gender filtering is paid. Worth knowing about; not the one to recommend if "free, no account" is the requirement.
One of the few that tried to rebuild Omegle's interest matching rather than only its video roulette — you can match on tags, in text or video. The free tier is limited and the pricing model has changed more than once, so check current terms rather than assuming.
Notable for keeping a genuine text-chat lane alongside video, which is rare now, plus interest matching. No account, free to use. The user base is small enough that text tends to match faster than video.
A standard random video chat with country selection. Free access exists but is limited, and it pushes toward the paid tier faster than Camsurf or Bazoocam. Reasonable as a second stop, not a first.
Plain browser roulette from the older cohort, no account to begin, optional paid perks on top. Nothing distinctive in either direction — worth trying when the bigger sites are matching you badly.
Random matching rebuilt as a short-timed video call in an app, aimed at a younger audience, and account-required. It has been removed from and restored to app stores several times over child-safety concerns, so its age-check claims deserve scepticism rather than trust. Not an anonymous browser experience in the Omegle sense.
A long-running mobile random video chat. Unfiltered matching is free; gender and country filters, unlimited matching and ad removal sit behind coins or a subscription. A daily check-in hands out small amounts of currency. Competent, but not a free-and-anonymous replacement.
Functionally in the same bracket as Holla: free random matching and messaging out of the box, then coins for filters, gifts and visibility. Choose between them on who is online in your region, because the feature sets barely differ.
Not random matching at all: themed video rooms you join, a format that predates Omegle entirely and still has a small committed user base. Account required, moderation handled by room hosts plus staff. Included because if what you want is a room of people rather than one stranger at a time, this is the shape — and no roulette site will give it to you.
It is one of the most common searches in this category, and it is worth separating what people usually mean from what the term delivers.
What most people mean is fewer arbitrary bans. Automated screening on these platforms is blunt: it disconnects people for poor lighting, for being shirtless in their own home, for a gesture it misread. Wanting less of that is entirely reasonable.
What "unmoderated" actually selects for is different. A platform advertising no moderation is not offering a relaxed version of the same service — it is announcing that it has removed the mechanism other platforms use to deal with illegal content, and it concentrates the users who were removed from everywhere else. These sites generally have no working report path, no appeals process, and no one on the other end when something goes wrong. That was also the specific problem that closed Omegle, which had the scale to survive almost anything except this.
If your real complaint is over-aggressive automated bans, the thing to look for is a platform that publishes an appeals process — that combination, active moderation plus a route to contest it, is what you actually wanted. Bazoocam and Azar sit at the strict end with human review behind it; the mid-tier browser sites are lighter-touch without removing the mechanism entirely.
Every platform in this comparison is 18+ by policy, but that is an age gate, not a content category. The explicitly adult side of what Omegle used to absorb moved onto dedicated adult platforms, which operate under different rules: age and identity verification requirements that vary by jurisdiction, payment processors with their own conditions, and content policies that have nothing in common with the sites above.
They are a different product with different risks and are deliberately not listed here. The distinction worth carrying: a general random chat platform with an 18+ gate is not an adult platform, and a site blurring that line in its own marketing is telling you something about how it is run.
Platform moderation handles the platform's problem. These handle yours, and they are the same on every site in this list:
There is no single safe answer, but the safer end of the field shares three traits: a moderation model the site will describe openly, an age gate that exists before you can connect, and reporting controls visible during the call rather than buried in a help page. Bazoocam and Chatroulette are the strictest of the free browser options; Azar is the most heavily policed of the app-based ones; Emerald Chat (emeraldchat.video) keeps human review in the loop alongside automated screening. Any site that advertises being unmoderated is telling you it has removed the thing that makes the rest of this list workable.
Yes — moderation is the main thing that changed after 2023. Every platform in this comparison runs some form of it, but the models differ. Automated screening on the video stream is now the baseline. A smaller group adds human review of reports. App-store platforms enforce at the account level instead, which is stronger against repeat offenders and weaker against a first-time one.
Omegle closed in November 2023 after years of moderation and child-safety problems, and a lawsuit that made continuing untenable. It did not close for lack of users, which is the reason nothing has replaced it at the same scale: the traffic was real, but so were the costs of running an unmoderated anonymous video service.
No, and the term is usually a warning label rather than a feature. Sites marketing themselves as unmoderated concentrate exactly the behaviour that other platforms remove, including illegal content, and they tend to have no working reporting path when something goes wrong. If what you actually want is fewer arbitrary bans, look for platforms that publish an appeals process rather than ones that advertise having no rules.
Several. Chatroulette, Bazoocam, Joingy, Camsurf and Thundr all let you connect from a browser without registering. Note the distinction that matters in this category: "no account" and "free" are different claims, and many sites offer the first while metering the second through coins or paywalled filters.
Mostly not in any robust sense. Browser-based sites typically use a self-declared 18+ confirmation, which is a legal gate rather than a verification. App-store platforms gate at the account level, which is stronger but still relies on what the user enters. Treat every claim of verified age in this category as unverified unless a platform documents the method.
No single site is. OmeTV is the largest of the survivors, Chatroulette is the original competitor still running, and the browser-first arrivals built after the shutdown — Thundr, CamGo, Emerald Chat — rebuilt the one-click premise with moderation attached. Anything advertising itself as "Omegle, back online" is an unrelated operator using the name.
Chatroulette, OmeTV, Thundr, CamGo, Camsurf, Chatspin, Chatrandom, Shagle, ChatHub, Bazoocam, Camloo, Joingy, Chatki and Emerald Chat all run as web pages. Monkey, Azar, Hay, Holla and LivU are app-first and expect an install and an account.
Policies vary and you cannot verify them from your side, which is the honest answer. Most browser platforms state that calls are not stored; several run automated screening on the live stream, which means frames are processed in transit even when nothing is retained. Assume anything on camera can be captured by the person you are talking to regardless of what the platform stores.
Disconnect first, report second — in that order, because staying on to gather evidence mostly gives the other person more material. Use the in-call report control if there is one; it attaches the session context automatically, which a support email cannot. If the behaviour involves a minor, report it to the platform and to your national reporting line rather than handling it yourself.
Yes, and there are more of them than before the shutdown — roughly twenty are actively maintained in 2026, listed above. What disappeared was not the format but the scale: no successor has Omegle's user numbers, so match variety at off-peak hours is noticeably thinner everywhere.
If you want to see what this category feels like in 2026 without installing anything or creating an account, Emerald Chat at emeraldchat.video opens in the browser and matches you 1-on-1. Free to start.
Start a 1v1 chat →free to start · no signup · 18+