Home / How it works

How Hasty works

Hasty is a pen pal app where letters behave like post. Here’s everything that happens between “send” and “it arrived”.

Letters take the real distance

The further apart you are, the longer a letter takes. It’s worked out from the distance between your two cities, as the crow flies. Nothing ever takes longer than two days.

Route	Distance	Usually takes
Within the same city	—	About an hour
Lisbon → Porto	274 km	A couple of hours
Paris → Berlin	877 km	A few hours
New York → Chicago	1,144 km	A few hours
Lisbon → New York	5,423 km	Under half a day
Berlin → Tokyo	8,917 km	More than half a day
Madrid → Wellington	19,855 km	A day and a few hours

Some letters arrive a little early, some a little late, as real post does. You’ll see “arriving tomorrow”, never a countdown.

Stamps start conversations

Writing to someone new takes a stamp. Replies in a conversation are free. You start with five stamps, and more come with letters, in junk mail and as rewards.

Finding pen pals

Discover shows people who share a language with you, and the interests you like to talk about. Write the first letter. They see who you are when they open it, and decide whether to write back.

Lost letters

Write a letter to anyone, and it goes into the pile. Every so often a lost letter finds its way to each person, and you can hold up to three at a time. More about lost letters.

Your collection

Stamps, postcards and stationery (papers and envelopes) arrive with letters and by post. Many are vintage designs from public-domain collections. Each has a rarity, and some are one of a kind.

The blind exchange swaps like for like: put in a stamp and another collector’s stamp comes back; put in a postcard and you get a postcard. You only see the kind, never which one. Up to five swaps a week.

House penpals

While Hasty is new, some penpals are house penpals: profiles run by Hasty, whose letters are written automatically. They carry a “House penpal” tag, and they only come up when there isn’t a real person who fits what you’re looking for.

What it costs

Writing, replying and receiving letters are free, and there are no ads.

Updated 2026-10-08