Step In.Link Up.

GateMate gives every venue and event its own live chatroom. Check in when you arrive, see who's there, and connect with the people sharing your night.

Free for attendees · iOS & Android · Live nationwide

18+ / 21+. ID rules follow each venue.

Download on theApp StoreGet it onGoogle Play
Have a room code? Join on the web →
Guests connecting in a GateMate live room at an event
Live now
Airport rooms at DFW, Dallas Love Field, McKinney, Chicago O'Hare & Midway, Seattle, Austin, Houston, San Antonio and El PasoCity channelsGame-day rooms for pro sports

Community rooms around public events aren't affiliated with the event, team or venue.

See it in motion

This is GateMate, for real.

A first look at the actual app — the gate opens, the room lights up, and the people around you are one tap away.

GateMate app welcome and sign-in screen

How it works

Three taps from stranger to scene.

01

Step In

Arrive at any event or venue and check in to the live room — or open your own private room and share the code. No adding friends, no searching.

02

Connect

See everyone who's here right now. Browse quick profiles, spot your kind of people, and send a connect with a single tap.

03

Say Hi

Break the ice before the lights go down. Keep the conversation going long after the encore — and tonight's photos unlock at 9am, so you relive it over coffee, not mid-party.

See the full walkthrough

Your night, your rules

You're always in control.

Built by a cybersecurity professor — privacy isn't a feature, it's the foundation.

GateMate is opt-in the whole way through. You decide when to appear, who to talk to, and what happens after the lights come up.

Nothing shows until you tap in

Your profile only appears inside a GateRoom after you check in. Walk out and you disappear from the room.

Room-scoped visibility

You're seen only by people at the same venue at the same time. No city-wide broadcast, no location on your profile.

Block, mute, report — one tap

A single tap ends any thread. Reports go straight to GateMate's moderation team, reviewed within 24 hours. Bad actors lose access to the room and the app.

Your data stays yours

No background tracking. No location history. No selling contacts. No ad networks. Delete your account and your profile, messages, photos and connections go with it — the only thing we hold back is content that's already been reported, kept up to 30 days so a human can act on the report.

Two ways in

Going somewhere — or hosting something?

For attendees

I'm going out tonight.

Check in when you arrive. See who's in the room. Say hi before the encore. Free for everyone, everywhere.

  • Free to join · No credit card
  • Concerts, conferences, networking mixers, airports, game days, lounges and community events
  • Free on iOS & Android — live nationwide

For venues

I run the room.

Give your guests a reason to remember each other — and to come back next week. Founding Partners: free during our founding period — no surprise charges.

  • Your venue's own check-in page — live in minutes
  • Live guest counts + weekly digest
  • No ads. No data resale. Your regulars stay yours.
Book a demoApply as a Founding Venue

For venues & hosts

Built for hosts.

Everything a venue, organizer or sponsor needs to run the room — and prove it worked.

Live polls & announcements

Ask the room a question or tell everyone at once — results land in real time.

Co-hosts

Bring your team in. Everyone with a host seat can post, pin and moderate.

Room Files

Menus, schedules, decks — anything guests should have, one tap away.

RSVP "going" list

See who's coming before doors, and how the list is trending.

Room color that matches your flyer

Pick your accent and the whole room — and the cards you share — wear it.

Morning-after album & report

Everyone's photos unlock in one shared album, and you get the engagement report.

Book a demo

Early results

Real rooms. Real connections.

80

attendees connected at Beyond the Panel — Birmingham, AL

25

guests at a community event — Killeen, TX

Partner numbers

Real counts from the live platform — updated as people check in, join rooms, and tell us where to go next.

9,691

Rooms joined

Live rooms across iOS, Android and web

Dominique Hilliard, founder of GateMate

Why we're building this

We're all in the same room.
We just stopped seeing each other.

Concerts, red-eyes, lounges — full of people going somewhere interesting, and completely invisible to each other. GateMate is built to fix that.

Read the founder's story
GateMate logo

Founder note

Dominique Hilliard

Founder · Dallas, TX

I built GateMate because I was standing in a room full of strangers who could've been friends — and none of us knew it. A concert in Deep Ellum. A rooftop in Uptown. A flight to nowhere in particular. The people were already there. Social media just made us stare at our phones instead of each other.

GateMate flips it. The room is the network. When you check into a GateRoom, the room becomes legible for a few hours — you see who else is here, what they're into, who else showed up alone. Then the room closes. Nothing sticky. No feed. No highlight reel to compare yourself to. Just presence.

We're starting in Dallas-Fort Worth because this is where I live and where I can walk into any venue and ask a stranger if this feels right. Airport GateRooms are already live at ten airports — DFW, Love Field and McKinney at home, both Chicago airports, plus Sea-Tac, Austin, Houston, San Antonio and El Paso. Then the next city. But we're doing this one room at a time, not one growth-hack at a time.

The full manifesto

Inside the app

Sample screens from the app.

A look at the build members are using tonight. Tap any card to view it full-size.

Where should GateMate go next?

Get updates on new rooms and partner venues near you — tell us your city and we'll email you when there's something to step into.

FAQ

Questions, answered.

Everything you need to know before you step in — whether you're coming to a show or running the venue.

GateMate is real-time networking for live events. When you check in to a concert, game, festival or lounge, you join that event's GateRoom — see who's in the room and connect with the people there right now. Photos from the night go to the morning-after album: everyone's shots unlock at 9am.

No — GateMate is not a ticketing or event-discovery app. We're the live social layer for people already at the same venue. Your venue keeps its ticketing; we make the room social.

A GateRoom is the live in-app room — the people, the chat, the night. The door QR is what opens one: the printed code at the venue or the short code a friend texts you. Anyone can open a private GateRoom and share the code; public rooms on the map are run by partner venues.

Most apps are built around an endless feed. GateMate is built around presence: it only matters when you're actually somewhere, with real people, at the same moment. No performance, no doomscroll — just the room you're in.

Everywhere — the app is live on iOS and Android worldwide, and any member can open a room with a code and share it tonight, in any city. Public venue rooms light up first in Dallas–Fort Worth, where we're signing founding venues now. Tell us your city and we'll bring partner venues there next.

Yes. GateRooms are ephemeral — they exist for the night and close when it ends (private rooms close themselves after 4 hours). One-on-one chats you start last forever, and you're never broadcast beyond the rooms you choose to step into.

Yes — joining rooms, chatting, saying hi and messaging your connections never costs anything, and never will. For bigger nights there's GateMate+: $4.99 a month, $39.99 a year, or a $2.99 Night Pass that covers one night and doesn't renew. Full breakdown on the Pricing page.

Every GateRoom comes with its own invite: a 6-letter code you can read out loud, a QR that opens the room the second it's scanned, and a story-ready card you can post in Bold, Minimal or Photo style. Hosting? You can also drop a private room straight into the DMs of people you've already met on GateMate. No list to climb — anyone with the code or QR is in.

GateMate is live on iPhone and Android — get it on the App Store or Google Play. You can also use the GateMate web app from any modern browser at app.gatemate.net — all three connect to the same live rooms.

GateMate is an 18+ platform. Some rooms run 21+ nights — ID rules follow each venue, exactly like walking in without the app.

We never track you in the background and never build a history of where you've been. Your phone's location is read in a few explicit moments only: at first launch to check whether your city has live rooms, when you tap "Rooms near me", at the door if a host requires guests to actually be at the venue, and — only if you switch it on inside a festival room — Find Friends, which shows a mutual friend you've both chosen a distance and direction ("about 300 ft NE"), never a coordinate or a map pin. You can always join a room by typing its code without granting location at all.

Yes — save your flight in the app and when it lands you'll get one notification about what's happening in that airport's GateRoom: at most one per airport every six hours, and never while the room is closed. It runs off the airline's published arrival time, not your phone — no location permission, nothing watching you travel. Silence it anytime at Settings → Notifications → Travel.

You'll be the first in the room. New arrivals show up automatically the second they check in, so drop a hello, save the link, and share it with a friend at the door — the room fills in minutes at any decent-sized event.

Yes. In Settings there's a Hide-from-rooms toggle. When it's on, you can see who else is in the room but you don't appear on their member lists. Flip it off when you want to be visible again.

Running a venue or an event? See GateMate for Business

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