How to get free stuff alerts before everyone else

A good free couch rarely lasts an evening. The people who get it aren’t luckier than you; they had an alert set and saw the post first. The catch is that every site runs its own alerts, at its own speed, and none knows about the others. Facebook won’t tell you about Kijiji, Trash Nothing won’t tell you about Nextdoor, and the one popular app that scans several sites works only on phones in the US and UK. Below is every free stuff alert worth setting up in the US and Canada, how fast each is, how to set it up, and how to make it ping you about giveaways instead of bait.

Free stuff alerts compared

Where a site doesn’t say how fast its alerts are, neither do we.

Two things stand out. The built-in alerts on the two biggest sites are either slow (Kijiji, once a day) or silent about timing (Facebook). And the tools that watch more than one site split by device: Freebie Alerts lives on your phone and isn’t offered in Canada, Sift lives on your computer, reaches your phone with Sift Pro, and covers Marketplace and Kijiji. Most people who get good free things run two or three alerts side by side, each tuned tightly enough that they still look when it pings.

Which sites have the most free stuff where you live

No site publishes how many free listings it gets in your town, so check. On a weekday evening, open the free section of each site for your area and count what was posted that day. The top two are where your alerts go. Alerts on six sites mean six apps buzzing about the same moving boxes, and soon you ignore them all.

In the US, the candidates are Facebook Marketplace, Nextdoor, Craigslist’s free stuff section and the gifting groups: Buy Nothing, Freecycle, and Trash Nothing, which brings many Freecycle groups into one place. Freebie Alerts reads several of these from one phone app.

In Canada, most giveaways are on Facebook Marketplace and Kijiji. Kijiji’s Free Stuff category runs to thousands of ads across Canada, and Buy Nothing groups run here too. Freebie Alerts isn’t offered in Canada (its site lists the US and UK only), so Canadians set alerts site by site. See buying on Marketplace in Canada.

In the UK, Freebie Alerts adds Gumtree and Freegle; our UK buyer’s guide covers collecting there. In Australia, start with Marketplace’s Free Stuff category. For how the sites compare beyond giveaways, see Marketplace alternatives.

Facebook Marketplace free stuff alerts

Marketplace has a Free Stuff category of its own (on a computer, facebook.com/marketplace/category/free). Facebook’s alerts come from saved searches. In the Facebook app, search for the item or open Free Stuff, set your location and a small radius, then save the search and turn its notifications on. Our Marketplace notifications guide has the exact taps for iPhone and Android and the fixes for when alerts stop.

Two limits matter. You can’t choose how often Facebook checks or how quickly it tells you, so an alert can arrive after the item has gone. And these alerts belong to the phone: one set up on facebook.com shows in Facebook’s notification list and on your phone if the app is installed, but doesn’t pop up on your computer. If you browse Marketplace on a laptop, the native fallback is to sort by newest and refresh.

Facebook groups are separate: many towns have free stuff and curb alert groups with their own notification settings, and weekend garage sales often end with a free pile at the curb.

Kijiji free stuff alerts

On kijiji.ca, go to Buy & Sell, then Free Stuff, set your location and a distance, and click Notify me. Kijiji’s Free Stuff covers all of Canada until you choose an area, so do that first. If you only want certain things, type a keyword before you save; the alert matches the search exactly as it stands. In Quebec, many givers write in French, so a second alert on “à donner” or “gratuit” catches what an English keyword misses.

Kijiji’s help centre says alerts arrive once a day, by email or push, and the app offers Daily or Weekly. That suits firewood and is far too slow for a free couch in Toronto or Montreal. Kijiji alerts covers the app, managing alerts, and fixes when they stop.

Nextdoor Free Finds

Nextdoor launched Free Finds on 3 June 2021, a free-only section inside Nextdoor Finds (once called For Sale & Free). At the time, Nextdoor said a quarter of everything listed to buy, sell or give away was free, and that monthly listings had grown 80% since early 2020. Free Finds is free to use in every country Nextdoor operates in.

We found no official mention of a keyword alert for Free Finds. Treat Nextdoor as a place you check, or let Freebie Alerts check it for you, since Nextdoor is on its US list. Its strength is distance: givers are on your street and the next few blocks, which suits things too heavy to drive across town for, like a patio set.

Trash Nothing and Freecycle

Freecycle is the original giveaway network: volunteer-run town groups with free membership. Its home page counts more than 12 million members across more than 5,000 local towns. Trash Nothing sits on top of thousands of local gifting groups, Freecycle groups included, and has the most flexible keyword alerts of any gifting site here.

To set up a Trash Nothing alert:

1. Open the main posts page with your groups or area selected.
2. Search for one to three keywords, such as “bookcase” or “kids bike”.
3. Click Save Alert.
4. Choose Offers, Requests or both. Offers are things being given away, so that is the one for free stuff.
5. Go to Settings, then Posts Notifications, and choose email, push or both.

Push works in compatible browsers as well as the apps, so this is the one native alert here that reaches a computer as easily as a phone. There is no option to be emailed every post. Trash Nothing says you never need to pay or give card details; it runs on ads.

The giver reads the replies and picks who gets the item, often for a porch or curb pickup. Being early helps, but a message that says exactly when you can come helps more.

Buy Nothing

Buy Nothing groups are gift-only: everything is given “completely for free”. They run in the Buy Nothing app and as Facebook groups. The project’s own figures are 14 million-plus members in more than 50 countries, over 8,000 Facebook groups and 2.6 million-plus items shared each month.

For alerts, you rely on your group’s notifications: the app has a notification bell for activity in your communities, and a Facebook group can notify you about new posts. We found no keyword alert documented for either, so a busy group means plenty of pings about things you don’t want.

Speed counts for less here. Many givers wait, read the replies and choose a recipient, sometimes by need, rather than taking the first comment. An alert gets your reply in on time; it doesn’t win the item.

Freebie Alerts and other free stuff apps

Freebie Alerts is the app most people mean by a free stuff alert app. It reads other sites’ free sections and sends a push notification when something new appears near your ZIP code. Its site says that in the US it scans “Marketplace, Nextdoor, OfferUp, and TrashNothing”, and that in the UK it adds Gumtree and Freegle. It doesn’t say which Marketplace it means, and its page title still names Craigslist although its FAQ list doesn’t. The App Store description names Nextdoor, Letgo, OfferUp and Trash Nothing “and more”.

The practical details, as the app stores list them:

• It is available in the US and the UK only, on iPhone and Android. There is no version for a computer.
• There is no account. You enter a ZIP code and add keywords to a whitelist, such as “sofa” or “laptop”.
• It is free with ads. A Gold subscription removes them, listed at $9.99 on the US App Store with no period stated.
• It is rated around 4.8 out of 5 on the US App Store and 4.7 on Google Play, from hundreds of thousands of ratings, with more than 5 million installs on Google Play.

Its site calls the notifications real-time. We haven’t timed them, so treat the app as an extra, not a replacement for alerts on the site that matters most where you live.

Craigslist needs no app. Open your city’s free stuff section, add a keyword if you like, and save the search (saved searches need a Craigslist account). Then tick the box in the alert column on your account’s Searches tab. Alerts come by email, up to 20 results each, newest first. Craigslist says searches with fewer results are checked more often, so “dresser” in the free section reaches you sooner than the whole section would.

For tools that alert you to paid Marketplace listings as well, see Marketplace alert apps compared and Facebook Marketplace extensions.

Make alerts worth getting

An alert you’ve learned to ignore is worse than none. Set too wide, free stuff alerts ping all evening about plant cuttings and half a bag of mulch.

One alert per thing you want. A saved search for “dresser” in a free category beats an alert on the whole category. In a small town with a handful of free posts a day, watching all of it is fine.

Search the words givers use. People giving things away describe the item and the hurry.

Keep it close. Free is only free if the drive is short. Set your location to your postal code with a small radius, and choose Local pickup where the site offers it, so “free” things that would have to be shipped never reach you. Making Marketplace local only has the steps. On a computer, Sift hides shipped and partner listings on every Marketplace search.

Give alerts a bedtime. Turn on Do Not Disturb for the hours you wouldn’t drive anywhere anyway, or set quiet hours in Sift.

Mute the words that mean bait. Where a site lets you exclude words, add “message for price”, “OBO”, “ISO” and “wanted”. Marketplace has no exclude box of its own; our guide to excluding words on Marketplace has the workarounds.

Why free stuff alerts are so noisy

A $0 price is the cheapest advertising on any classifieds site. Sorting by price puts it first, free filters include it, and every free stuff alert in range fires on it. So some sellers list at $0 with the real price in the text, and each of those listings becomes a ping.

Wanted posts add more, because people looking for free things post in the free categories. And a “free” item that has to be shipped has no pickup spot, so on Marketplace it isn’t held to your radius.

Read the whole listing first, and ask “Is it still free and available?” so there are no surprises. More on bait “free” listings.

Alerts that skip the bait, with Sift

Sift is a free browser extension for Facebook Marketplace. There is no account, it works right in Chrome (and Edge and Brave) on a computer, and setup takes a minute. In Sift’s settings, choose to show only free listings. Then open Facebook’s Free Stuff category, or Kijiji’s Free Stuff once you switch on Kijiji in Sift, set your area, and press Watch in Sift.

New listings go through your filters before they reach you. A $0 listing that is really a sale stays out, as do placeholder prices and wanted posts, and each one keeps its reason so you can see why it went. Sift also puts a red Ships only chip on sellers who will only ship a couch or a piano, the pattern behind the free piano scam. It reads listings, never your Messenger chats.

Sift checks the searches you watch in the background and lets you know soon after a new giveaway is posted, already filtered the way you set it up. Notifications appear on your computer, even with the tab closed, and with Sift Pro they go to your phone by Telegram, ntfy or email. More on the free stuff filter and new listing alerts.

When the alert lands

Speed only pays off if the next five minutes go well.

1. Message straight away, with a time. “Hi, is the dresser still available? I can pick up today at 6 and bring help.”
2. Be ready before the alert. Watching for furniture means straps, a moving blanket and a friend with a car on standby.
3. Confirm the address and time in writing, and send a message when you leave.
4. If you can’t make it, say so. Givers often have a queue, and a quick “sorry, can’t come” lets the next person have it.
5. Look it over at the curb. Free upholstered furniture and mattresses carry the same bed bug risk as paid ones; see our used mattress guide and used furniture checklist.

On Buy Nothing and Trash Nothing, wait to be chosen before you turn up. The full pickup etiquette and safety checklist covers porch pickups and going inside.

Free stuff alert scams

Some alerts are for things that don’t exist. A free piano, puppy or PS5 that comes with a shipping charge, a delivery fee, a deposit to hold it, or a request for a code sent to your phone is a scam every time. The Better Business Bureau has a scam alert on the piano version alone: a grieving owner, a piano already with movers, and a fee to deliver it.

The rule that covers all of them: a real giveaway never needs money, a code or a link from you. Our list of free item scams walks through each script and how it ends, and shipping scams on Marketplace covers the paid version of the same trick.