Buffet vs Timeleft
Both apps solve the same problem — you want to meet people in person, and organising that yourself is exhausting. They solve it differently. Timeleft is one recurring dinner with strangers; Buffet is a weekly calendar of events plus a one-to-one side.
The short answer
Choose Buffet if you want range in what you actually do — dinners one week, an activity or a night out the next — and you want to stay in touch with the people you liked, because the group chat opens before you meet and stays open afterwards.
Choose Timeleft if you want one fixed dinner on the same night every week with no decisions attached, or if you are not yet in a city Buffet serves.
How they compare
| Buffet | Timeleft | |
|---|---|---|
| Core format | a handful of curated events a week — dinners, activities, nights out | Dinner with strangers, on a fixed recurring night |
| Group size | 3–6, splits above 6 | Typically 6 |
| How often you can go | Unlimited on Buffet+, once a month free | Governed by the dinner schedule |
| One-to-one meetings | Yes — invite one person to a specific venue | No |
| Chat before you meet | Yes — group chat opens at 3 sign-ups | Limited; the table is the introduction |
| Chat after you meet | Yes — the group chat persists | Not the primary design |
| You pick the event | Yes, from the week’s lineup, and you vote on next week’s | No — the format is the point |
| Cities | Los Angeles, with Austin and New York waitlisted | Very wide international coverage |
| Price | Free tier, plus an optional subscription | Subscription only |
Timeleft details are summarised from its public description and change over time — check Timeleft directly for current pricing and availability in your city. Buffet figures are verified against its App Store listing and in-app content.
The biggest practical difference: what happens afterwards
Timeleft’s design treats the dinner as the complete unit. You turn up, you have the evening, and continuing is left to you and whatever numbers you exchange.
Buffet opens the group chat before you meet — at 3 sign-ups — and it stays open afterwards. That is a small architectural choice with a large social consequence: you arrive already having exchanged a few messages, and the group has somewhere to exist the following week. If your goal is a repeatable set of people rather than a pleasant one-off, that is the difference that matters.
The biggest practical difference in the other direction: coverage
Timeleft runs in a very large number of cities. Buffet runs in one, with two more waitlisted. If you are not in Los Angeles, this comparison is currently academic and Timeleft is the app that will actually seat you at a table this week. This is the single most common request in Buffet’s own reviews — four of its fifteen written reviews ask for more cities.
Variety versus ritual
Timeleft’s constraint is deliberate: same format, same night, no decisions. That is genuinely valuable — decision fatigue is why people stay home.
Buffet trades some of that for range. A week might offer a dinner, a daytime activity and a night out, and members vote on which options appear next week. If “dinner with six strangers” is not the shape of your free time, that range is the argument.
Price
Buffet is the cheaper of the two, and it is the only one of the two with a usable free tier — you can join an event each month without paying anything. Check both apps’ current prices directly, since subscription pricing on both moves. Neither charges for the food; you pay the venue.
Can you use both?
In Los Angeles, yes, and there is a reasonable case for it — Timeleft for the fixed weekly ritual, Buffet for range and for keeping in touch with people you actually clicked with. They are not really competing for the same slot in your week.