The short answer
Bounty.chat is an anonymous French chat site that openly models itself on Coco, the platform French courts shut down in June 2024. It is not a safe place to spend time. Since launching in autumn 2024, it has leaked the data of about 560,000 users, been referred to the regulator Arcom by the French government, and become the subject of a criminal investigation into child sexual abuse content.
This guide covers what Bounty.chat is, how it got here, what the data leak exposed, where the legal case stands, and how its main competitors compare on Ahrefs data. If you came looking for "a site like Bounty," read the section on how to judge any anonymous chat before you sign up anywhere.
Key facts at a glance
What it is: a free, registration-light chat site with themed rooms, private messages and a "people near you" search.
Who runs it: a team based in Lille, France, so it falls under French law.
Data breach: 14 February 2025, about 560,000 accounts exposed, passwords included.
Regulators: referred to Arcom and the Pharos reporting platform in August 2025.
Criminal case: Paris opened a judicial investigation in September 2025.
Search demand: "bounty chat" draws about 689,000 searches a month in France (Ahrefs).
What is Bounty.chat?
Bounty.chat is a French-language chat website built to fill the gap Coco left behind. Users get in within a few clicks: a nickname, an age and a postal code are enough. There is no meaningful age check.
The feature set mirrors Coco's almost exactly:
Themed public rooms on topics from music and gaming to adult content.
Private spaces, including password-protected rooms.
Private messages between users.
Local search that surfaces people nearby by postal code.
Access on desktop, mobile and tablet, with video chat for adults.
The name is not an accident. Bounty is the coconut-filled chocolate bar, a deliberate nod to Coco. The site says it is heavily inspired by Coco but adds new features and complies with French law. Its founder told Le Parisien that the team fully cooperates with the authorities and already sends reports to Pharos, France's illegal-content reporting platform.
One naming trap: a mobile app called "Bounty Chat" also exists on Google Play, and it ranks #2 in France for "bounty chat". It is not documented as the same service as the bounty.chat website, so check which one an article is actually describing.
From Coco to Bounty: the timeline
Bounty.chat appeared within months of Coco's closure and has been under official scrutiny for most of its life.
Date | Event |
|---|---|
25 June 2024 | Paris prosecutors shut down Coco. Before it closed, France's High Commissioner for Children said 23,051 legal proceedings had been opened in connection with the site. |
September 2024 | Bounty.chat launches, offering the same no-registration, no-age-check chat format. |
January 2025 | Coco's founder, Isaac Steidl, is charged with the possession and distribution of child abuse images and aggravated pimping, and placed under judicial supervision. |
14 February 2025 | Bounty.chat's databases are exfiltrated. Security outlet Zataz later that month reports that about 560,000 user records were published online. |
August 2025 | High Commissioner for Children Sarah El Haïry refers the site to Arcom and alerts the Justice and Interior ministries and Pharos. Arcom writes to the platform and contacts the national anti-cybercrime office (OFAC). |
September 2025 | French media report that a judicial investigation has been opened in Paris over suspected child sexual abuse content on the site. |
November 2026 | We found no public report that the case has closed. Ahrefs still records organic search traffic to bounty.chat. |
The 2025 data breach: what leaked
On 14 February 2025, attackers pulled Bounty.chat's user databases and published them online, exposing more than 560,000 users. Security news site Zataz broke the story at the end of that month.
The main database held:
usernames and email addresses
passwords, as stored at the time
ages, gender and city of residence
IP addresses
account creation dates
A second file listed banned users, their IP addresses, and nicknames.
For a site that sells itself on anonymity, that is the worst possible leak. Email plus city plus IP address is often enough to identify a real person. Exposed users face phishing, account takeovers and, for some, blackmail over the fact that they used the site at all. Commentators also noted the platform's lack of official communication about the incident.
If you ever had a Bounty.chat account: change that password everywhere you reused it, turn on two-factor authentication for your email, and treat any message that references your Bounty activity as a likely scam.
Is Bounty.chat legal? Where the case stands
Bounty.chat is not banned, but it is under both regulatory and criminal scrutiny in France.
The Arcom referral. In late August 2025, Sarah El Haïry, France's High Commissioner for Children, referred the site to Arcom, the national digital and audiovisual regulator. She also alerted the Justice and Interior ministries and Pharos. Arcom wrote to the platform warning that it may be helping to spread content harmful to minors, including child sexual abuse material, and to enable the online solicitation of minors. The regulator analyzed the platform's reply and coordinated with the child-protection charity e-Enfance and the anti-cybercrime office OFAC.
The criminal investigation. In September 2025, Le Figaro and Le Parisien reported that Paris prosecutors had opened a judicial investigation into the site over suspected child sexual abuse content.
The platform's position. Bounty.chat says moderation and safety are its priority and that it follows French law. Because the operator is based in Lille, French authorities have direct jurisdiction over it.
What this means for users. Using a chat site is not a crime. But authorities can block or shut down a site under this kind of investigation on short notice; they can seize its logs, and the people you meet there are not vetted. Anyone who encounters content involving minors should report it to Pharos (internet-signalement.gouv.fr) or, in France, call 119.
Why can't I connect to Bounty.chat?
There is no single confirmed cause, and we found no public court or Arcom order blocking the domain as of November 2026. Around 1,100 people a month search "bounty chat ne fonctionne plus" (Bounty chat isn't working), and another 1,200 search "bounty chat banni" (banned), so here is what usually explains it:
You were banned. The site keeps a ban list tied to IP addresses and nicknames, which is exactly what leaked in 2025. A "403" error usually means your IP is blocked.
Maintenance or outages. Small chat platforms under pressure often go dark for hours or days without notice.
Network or DNS filtering. Some guides claim French ISPs are filtering the site. We could not confirm an official blocking order, so treat these claims with caution.
You landed on a fake. Look-alike domains copy the Bounty name to harvest logins (see the cybersquatting warning below).
We do not recommend using a VPN or proxy to get around a ban or a block. If the site has banned you or been restricted, that is a signal to stop, not a technical problem to solve.
Bounty.chat by the numbers (Ahrefs, November 2026)
Demand for Bounty is enormous and almost entirely French. Ahrefs estimates about 689,000 monthly searches for "bounty chat" in France, against roughly 900 in the United States. Variants such as "chat bounty" (22,000), "bounty chat gratuit" (16,000) and "bounty.chat" (12,000) add tens of thousands more.
The site itself captures only a small slice of that. Ahrefs puts bounty.chat at Domain Rating 36, with 699 referring domains and an estimated 48,800 monthly organic visits from France. Most clicks on its own name go elsewhere: Google's results for "bounty chat" are led by an AI Overview and filled with news coverage from Le Monde, Radio France and Yahoo, plus social posts. In other words, most people searching the name want to know what it is and whether it is safe.
The Coco brand still pulls weight too. "coco chat" draws about 65,000 searches a month in France, two years after the site closed.
Bounty.chat competitors compared
On Ahrefs data, Bounty.chat is not the biggest French chat site; chaat.fr pulls about four times its organic traffic. The four sites below overlap most with Bounty.chat in French search results. This is an SEO and market comparison, not an endorsement: we have not audited the moderation, age verification or data handling of any of them.
Site | Domain Rating | FR organic traffic / month | Referring domains | Keywords in top 3 (all markets) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
chaat.fr | 34 | 197,650 | 1,229 | 888 |
tchatche.com | 42 | 110,730 | 1,696 | 594 |
net-tchat.info | 38 | 110,159 | 808 | 538 |
bounty.chat | 36 | 48,800 | 699 | 84 |
andromede.net | 14 | 16,019 | 783 | 104 |
Source: Ahrefs Site Explorer, France, November 2026. Traffic figures are Ahrefs estimates of organic search visits, not total site visits.
A few things stand out:
chaat.fr leads in traffic and ranks in the top 3 for almost 900 keywords. It owns the generic "tchat gratuit" space (82,000 searches/month, KD 59).
tchatche.com has the strongest backlink profile of the group (DR 42, 1,696 referring domains) and an established brand: "tchatche" alone draws about 100,000 searches a month.
net-tchat.info matches tchatche.com on traffic with far fewer links, which suggests strong on-page targeting.
bounty.chat gets most of its visibility from its own name. Strip out branded searches and its footprint is small.
andromede.net is the smallest, with a DR of 14.
Before choosing any of them, run it through the checklist in the next section.
How to judge any anonymous chat site
The safest chat site can prove who is under 18 and keep them out. Coco and Bounty both failed that test. Use these six checks on any alternative before you create an account:
Age verification. Does the site actually verify age, or just ask you to type it? A typed age protects no one.
Visible moderation. Look for published rules, a report button on every message, and named moderation or trust-and-safety contacts.
A real operator. Legal notices (mentions légales) should name a company, an address and a host. Anonymous operators are a red flag.
Data protection. Check for a GDPR-compliant privacy policy, and search the domain name plus "fuite" or "breach" before you sign up.
Regulatory history. Search the site's name with "Arcom", "enquête" or "Pharos". A clean record is not proof of safety, but a bad one is proof of risk.
What it asks of you. Never share your address, phone number, ID documents, bank details or intimate images with someone you met in an anonymous chat.
If a site fails the first two checks, move on. Coco's record of thousands of criminal cases shows what happens when a platform never checks who its users are.
Watch out for fake Coco and Bounty sites
Every time a big chat brand disappears, copycats move in. After Coco closed, several sites claimed to be its successor, including coco-chat.fr and blairoudeurs.fr, but they turned out to be cybersquatting scams. Bounty's popularity makes the same trick attractive: a search for its name already surfaces several look-alike domains and "review" pages of uneven quality.
Signs you are on a fake:
The domain is close to, but not exactly, the one you expected.
It asks for an email and password before showing any chat.
It pushes an app download, a paid "premium" upgrade or a card payment straight away.
It claims to be "100% secure" with "no data leak possible". No site can promise that, and Bounty's own history shows why.
Never reuse a password from your email or bank on any chat site, real or fake.
Frequently asked questions
Is Bounty.chat the same as Coco?
No, it is a separate site, operated from Lille. It openly copies Coco's format and launched a few months after Coco closed, which is why French media call it Coco's successor.
Is Bounty.chat safe?
No. It has no meaningful age verification, it leaked around 560,000 user records in February 2025, and it is the subject of an Arcom referral and a criminal investigation into child sexual abuse content.
Is Bounty.chat closed?
We found no public court order or Arcom decision closing it as of November 2026, and Ahrefs still records traffic to the domain. Access problems are more likely to be bans, outages or fake domains.
Was my data in the Bounty.chat leak?
If you had an account before 14 February 2025, assume yes. Change any reused passwords, enable two-factor authentication on your email, and watch for phishing.
Is it illegal to use Bounty.chat?
Using a chat site isn't illegal in France. Sharing or seeking illegal content, or contacting minors, is a serious crime on any platform.
What are the alternatives to Bounty.chat?
The sites closest to it in French search are chaat.fr, tchatche.com, net-tchat.info and andromede.net. We have not vetted their safety, so apply the six-point checklist above before using any of them.
How do I report illegal content I saw on a chat site?
In France, report it to Pharos at internet-signalement.gouv.fr. If a child is at risk, call 119.
The bottom line
Bounty.chat rebuilt Coco's model and has inherited Coco's problems: no real age checks, a major data leak, a government referral and a criminal investigation, all within about a year of launch. The search data tells the same story. Hundreds of thousands of people look up the name every month, and Google mostly answers them with news about the investigation.
If you want an anonymous chat, judge the platform on age verification, moderation and data protection before anything else. If you run a platform in this space, the lesson from Coco and Bounty is that growth without safety eventually ends in court.
Disclaimer: Competitor data is based on Ahrefs estimates from November 2026 and reflects search visibility, not site quality. I do not endorse or recommend any of the sites mentioned.