You may have seen a number: about 200 hours to make a close friend, sometimes with 50 for a casual friend and 90 for a friend. It traces back to one study (Hall, 2019), and its first group was people like you: 355 US adults who had moved at least 50 miles in the previous six months, with a median age of 29. Nearly half had moved for their own or a partner’s new job. Each described one new person and estimated, looking back, how many hours they’d spent together.
How to make friends in a new city (when you don’t know anyone yet)
To make friends in a new city, map what you can reach on your new hours and budget, choose one activity that meets weekly, and keep going back for a few weeks. Ask anyone you already know there for one introduction. Count the time you choose to spend with people, not the hours you sit near them at work.
Key takeaways
- Map your new area before you pick anything: what you can reach in under half an hour, when you’re free in the new job, and what you can spend once moving costs are paid.
- There’s no fixed number of hours. In the study behind the “200 hours” figure, estimates ran from about 43 to 219 hours depending on who was asked and how close the friendship, and hours spent together at work went with less closeness, not more.
- Old friends and new ones aren’t a trade. Keep calls home on a rhythm, and keep one evening a week for the city you’re in.
Written byAditi Bajpai, M.A. Clinical Psychology · Coach at Ventoutt·Reviewed byAnshika Jain, PhD scholar, M.A. Clinical Psychology·Published Oct 25, 2026 · Updated Oct 25, 2026·Editorial policy
Ask for one introduction. Before you go, ask three people, “Do you know anyone in [city]?” A college friend’s older brother, a former coworker who moved there, your school’s alumni chapter. Don’t count on anyone turning up, but one name gives you someone to go with.
Map before you unpack. The map below takes about twenty minutes and narrows a whole city to a few real options.
Protect one evening from moving admin. The DMV, the internet installer and the furniture that arrives in pieces can take every weekend for a month. Keep one evening for the map.
Say yes to the early invitations. A new job’s welcome lunch or first after-work plan is time you choose, which counts for more than time at your desks.
Become a regular somewhere. The same café on Saturday mornings, the same library branch on Wednesdays. Familiar faces come before friends, but they stay faces until someone says hello.
How do you map a new city for making friends?
A new city has hundreds of options and none of them are yours yet. Narrow them with what’s true about your life there now. Work down the rows; together they pick your first anchor.
Map thisWhy it matters after a moveHow to find outExample: Dev, 26, moved 900 miles for a remote design job, no car
1. Your reach
A place 45 minutes away can quietly stop happening by week three
Transit and walking times from home in a map app, and the last train or bus home
Anything within 25 minutes by light rail or on foot
2. People you might already know there
One name gives you someone to go with, or someone to ask
Ask three people; check your alumni chapter and your work chat for a city channel
A college friend’s older brother; a monthly alumni happy hour
3. Your new hours
Plans have to land when you’re free in this job, not your old one
Write down your free blocks in an ordinary week
Free after 5 on weekdays; works alone in his apartment all day
4. Your budget, after moving costs
A deposit and new furniture can leave the first months tight
Free and low-cost listings: the library, parks and recreation, volunteer centers
Under $30 a month for now
5. Access
If a place is hard to reach, hard to get into or hard to be in, you won’t go back
The organizer’s page for step-free access, noise and alcohol-free options, or one email to ask
Wants something not built around drinking
6. A welcome for newcomers
Some groups are easy to join on day one; others are tight-knit
Look for “all levels,” “drop-ins welcome,” a beginners’ session or a newcomer social
A community choir that takes new singers each season; a Tuesday run club with a no-drop policy
7. Your anchor
One thing that repeats, picked from rows 1–6, with a start date
Put the next four dates in your calendar
Run club, Tuesdays at 6:30, starting next week
8. Your review
A few weeks of visits tell you more than one
A date a few weeks out: keep it, add a second thing, or swap
Keep the run club; add the choir in January
When a face at your anchor becomes familiar, the making-friends guide covers turning it into a plan somewhere else. If, after a few weeks, the place isn’t working, read how to pick a different kind of place. To keep your map and first steps on one printable page, use the connection-plan worksheet.
How long does it take to make friends in a new city?
What it found is more useful than the number:
There’s no fixed number. Among the movers, a new person was more likely than not to be called a casual friend at about 94 hours, a friend at about 164 and a good or best friend at about 219. First-year college students, in the second study, gave much lower estimates: 43, 57 and 119.
The kind of time mattered. Hours spent together at work went with less closeness. Choosing to hang out went with more.
It takes two. The author notes that spending more time with someone is “unlikely to be a decision that can be made unilaterally.”
The study has limits. The hours were estimated from memory, and they kept adding up after a friendship had already changed level, so they run high. Only friendships that lasted were included, and most participants were White. It shows what went together, not that hours cause friendship.
So don’t count hours. Notice which of your hours are chosen. Coworkers you only see at your desks may stay coworkers; the same people at a Thursday dinner you both picked are on a different track.
How do you make friends around a new job in a new city?
If you work remotely, the job gives you no faces at all. Work from the same library branch or café twice a week, at the same time, and add one evening activity from your map.
If you work shifts, look for activities with more than one time slot, or ones that run on weekday mornings, so a rota change doesn’t cost you the group.
If your office is older or more settled than you, don’t write it off. The colleague who has lived there for fifteen years knows the city. Ask for one recommendation, go, and you have something to tell them about on Monday.
Turn one work connection into chosen time. A lunch away from your desks, or the after-work plan someone mentions in passing.
Friends at work, and on remote teams, have their own guide.
How do you keep old friends while you build new ones?
You don’t have to choose. Old friends are who you call about the new city; new ones are who you’ll see in it.
Put calls home on a rhythm, so they don’t fill every free evening by default, and don’t fade either. The guide to keeping friendships going helps you choose one, and friends in another city or time zone have their own guide.
Tell them about your map. An old friend asking “Did you go to the run club?” is a little accountability from far away.
If the person you left behind is a partner, read about keeping a long-distance relationship going.
If you’re tired of hearing “just go out more,” that’s fair. Going out once isn’t the plan; going back to the same place is. In a new city you don’t yet know which rooms are good ones, and a bad first night is how you find out. Ask what kind of night it was:
None of this guarantees the next place works. For what to do once you’re there, read the making-friends guide, and for choosing a different kind of place, the guide to where to meet people. If the move has left you lonely in ways that go past making new friends, see the wider guide to loneliness and connection.
What if the move has left you low, not only lonely?
If your mood is low most days and sleep, classes or work are slipping, start with when loneliness feels like more than loneliness. If a partner decides who you can see or talk to, read relationship problem or controlling behavior?. If you’re thinking about ending your life, or you’re in danger now, use the crisis options below.
If you need help now
If you are in the US and having thoughts of suicide or self-harm, or need crisis support, call or text 988 or use 988 online chat. For an immediate life-threatening emergency, call 911. Outside the US, contact your local emergency or crisis service. Coaching, venting and a therapy waitlist are not emergency services.
See suicide prevention helplines for your countryWhere can a coach help after a move?
Fill in the map with you and pick the first anchor.
Plan your first month around a new job’s hours.
Rehearse asking a coworker or a neighbor to one thing outside work.
Decide how much of your week goes to calls home, and how much to the city you’re in.
Look at what happened after a bad first night, and choose what to change.
…and plenty that does not fit a category. If it is taking up your week, it is worth a conversation.
Which coaches help people settle into a new place?
Ventoutt assigns your first coach; if the fit isn’t right, you can change coach from the available options.
4.8★
Aditi Bajpai
Mental Wellness Coach
Burnout Support for USA Clients
Qualifications: M.A. in Clinical Psychology
Specializes in: CBT, Mindfulness, ACT, SFBT, Psychodynamic; stress, burnout, overthinking, relationships, life transitions
Best for: Overthinkers, professionals facing burnout, and those seeking deeper self-understanding
Global Exposure: Experience working with clients from the USA
4.8★
Pulkita Wadhwa
Mental Wellness Coach
USA Fellowship-Trained Support
Qualifications: Master’s in Psychology; Bachelor’s (Hons.) in Psychology; Psychoanalytic Fellowship – Washington-Baltimore, USA; Diplomas (NIMHANS & Child/Family Counselling)
Specializes in: Psychoanalytic, CBT, DBT; Stress, relationships, career, family dynamics
Best for: In-depth coaching, complex emotional patterns, and long-term personal transformation
Global Exposure: Advanced clinical training and academic exposure through her fellowship in the USA
Noreen Choudhri
Mental Wellness Coach
10+ Years Experience
Qualifications: M.Phil. in Clinical Psychology, Gold Medalist; M.Sc. in Psychology with specialization in Clinical Psychology
Specializes in: Stress management, Relationship concerns, Positive parenting, Women's well-being, Workplace stress, Self-improvement, Emotional clarity, Personal growth, Family concerns, Confidence building, Coping skills, Behavior modification, CBT-informed support, Supportive guidance, Child and adolescent concerns
Want someone to plan the first months with?
You can do all of this on your own. A coach helps when moving admin is eating every weekend, or when a bad first night has made the next one hard to face. Coaching on Ventoutt is for everyday parts of life like this, not for diagnosis.
Ventoutt’s coaches are MA/PhD psychology professionals, minimum three years’ experience, based in India. Wondering how that works from a US city? Here’s how coaching across the time difference works. Moving is expensive, so here’s what coaching costs in the US and how the options compare. And if you’d like to know what happens once you sign up, here are the steps.
$35 single session with no subscription — 45–60 minutes, by chat or video. First 50 coaching texts free for eligible new users.
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Still have questions about making friends after a move?
Is it normal to feel lonely after moving to a new city?
Yes. A move can take away your social life in a day: the friends you’d text, the places you were a regular, the people who knew your name. Feeling lonely after that is an ordinary reaction to a real loss, not a sign you made the wrong move. If it has turned into low mood most days, see the care section above.
How do you make friends in a new town rather than a city?
There are fewer options, but the same faces come back without anyone planning it: the coffee counter, the library, the one gym. Become a regular at two places, go to the town’s own events — the fall festival, the high-school game, the farmers market — and expect to see people again.
How do you make friends in a new city when you work from home?
Give your week the structure an office would: a place you work from, at the same time each week, and one evening activity from your map. The job section above has more.
What if you moved for your partner’s job?
Their new coworkers can be a start, and couple friends count. Build at least one thing that’s only yours as well, so your social life in the new city doesn’t depend on theirs. Fill in the map for your own hours, not theirs.