Help & FAQ

Sidecar is for making friends. Locals can meet locals, travellers can meet travellers, and newcomers can meet people who know the city. All plans and conversations should stay platonic: no dating pressure or sexual solicitation.

Open Discover and search for a city. You can select a city anywhere without changing your home city on your profile. Locate me is optional and asks your browser for permission; manual city search always works. Times on the board are local to the selected city.

Use Find your people on Discover. Choose interests, languages, communities, accommodations and boundaries; selected choices appear as removable chips. Advanced options distinguish requirements from preferences. Requirements exclude non-matches; preferences do not. Missing information is not a confirmed match. You can save your preferred filters.

Clearly labelled examples show how Sidecar works. Their hosts are fictional, cannot be contacted and do not have verified identities or real availability. If there are no matching live meetups, try another date or distance, deliberately remove a filter, or post your own plan. Important boundaries are not removed automatically.

Open a real invitation, read the host’s Rider Pass and the activity details, then choose Join or Request to join. Sign in and agree to the community pledge if prompted. A pending request is not a reserved place: you are in the group only after the host accepts you.

Choose Post a plan on Discover. Fill in Where, What, When and Spots. Under When, use a quick time or select another date and time. Your selection is interpreted in the selected city’s local time. Set the circle’s boundaries and accommodations explicitly rather than making assumptions about people.

Open Chats and select a plan you host. Incoming requests have accept and decline controls. Accept only people you are comfortable welcoming and stay within your plan’s capacity.

Group chat unlocks after acceptance, not when you send a request. Open Chats to find your accepted group. Fictional examples cannot be messaged. Blocking or leaving a group can also remove access.

Open your plan or its conversation and use the available withdraw, leave or cancel control. Withdrawing removes a pending request; leaving gives up an accepted place. Hosts can cancel their own plan. Let the group know about changes as early as possible.

My Network shows connections from shared plans and lets you open real connections and their conversations. Any fictional connections are explicitly labelled and cannot receive messages. You do not need to swipe or treat this like a dating app.

Use Invite a friend on the homepage, or Share on a real invitation. Your phone may open its sharing menu; otherwise use Copy link or More apps. Sharing an invitation does not automatically accept someone into the group.

Read their Rider Pass, introduction, boundaries and real commendations. Meet in a busy public place, tell someone where you are going and arrange your own way home. Do not send money or sensitive documents to another member. Leave if you feel uncomfortable. No profile, badge or rating guarantees safety.

Open the real plan and choose its report control, select what happened and optionally add details. You can also choose Report behaviour under After your hangouts on your profile. For another situation, contact Support with a link and a brief description. Reports are private, separate from public commendations.

Reports are not posted publicly and the reporting flow does not tell the person who submitted them. Relevant information may be reviewed to handle the concern. Do not include unnecessary personal information. Reporting is not an emergency response service, and we cannot promise an immediate reply or a particular outcome.

Use Block in the real plan’s report area. Blocking prevents access to each other’s plans, requests and messages within Sidecar. Blocking does not contact emergency services, prevent contact outside Sidecar or replace reporting a serious concern.

Contact local emergency services immediately; in the EU, call 112. Move to a safe public place if you can. Sidecar support is not monitored continuously and must not be relied on for emergency help.

A Rider Pass is a member’s profile: their introduction, interests, voluntary information and real social proof. Members can add optional social profile links. These links are self-provided: Sidecar does not verify who owns those accounts. You can leave personal identity information unspecified.

Optional ID verification, where available, uses Stripe Identity to check a government ID and selfie. A real badge appears only after a successful verification result. It is not a background check, proof of good behaviour or a safety guarantee. Never email your ID to support or send it to another member. Fictional examples are never ID verified.

Open your profile and look for After your hangouts. Eligible people from a shared plan can give positive commendations such as Good vibes, Solid human, Great chat or Local gold. You cannot commend yourself or people from unrelated plans. Real counts appear on Rider Passes and alongside hosts; badges derive from recorded activity and commendations, not purchased status. Use a private report for problems, not a public negative rating.

Open your profile or Rider setup to edit your Rider Pass. On your profile, signed-in members can add optional social links and save them. Only share information you are comfortable making visible to others.

Boosts and business promotions are optional one-time purchases, not recurring subscriptions. Checkout shows the price and duration. They buy paid visibility, not acceptance into a group, guaranteed guests or safety credentials. One boost can be active per plan at a time; businesses may run multiple promotions.

Contact Support with your account email and receipt reference. Do not send full card details. A promotion activates after payment confirmation, not simply after opening checkout. If checkout is labelled test mode, it does not charge real money. Refund requests are handled through Support; a confirmed refund ends the associated promotion.

Use the Support form with your account’s email as the reply address, and select Account deletion or Privacy request. We may need to confirm that the account belongs to you before acting. Our Privacy notice explains data use and your rights.

Sidecar uses browser storage for sign-in and preferences such as your chosen city and filters. Location detection is optional. External services may use their own storage; see the Cookies and Privacy notices for the current explanation. The Cookies page is information, not a consent-settings panel.