Nearhood and Nextdoor for London boroughs

Both put neighbours in front of you. What they expect you to do next is where they part.

Nextdoor's own description of itself leads with local news, real-time safety alerts, recommendations, for sale and free listings, and events. What that adds up to in practice is talk about the area: something happened on your street and you hear about it, someone wants a plumber, someone else is furious about a parking space, someone has lost a cat or wants to tell you about a hard week. It is a place to keep up and to sound off, and the reply box is where most of the life is.

Nearhood is built the other way round. A post is an offer, a date or a request: a haircut on Tuesday, a table going free, a bench that needs mending, a recommendation for the man who fixed the gutters. There is no general feed to keep up with and nothing to reply to except the thing itself. If you want to read about the area, this site is dull by design. If you want something done with a neighbour, that is what the site is for.

Nextdoor asks for your name and your address. It checks the address against signals such as the billing address on your mobile plan, the location of your phone, or a code posted to you. If those fail, you can send a document: a driving licence, a tenancy agreement, a utility bill or a letter from a bank.

That address places you in a neighbourhood, and the neighbourhood is the unit you post into. Nextdoor's own account of its rules says members must use their own names and that aliases, initials and shortened surnames are not allowed. People whose address cannot be confirmed may still hold an account, with limited access.

The result is a small group of people who have shown an address close to yours and post under their own names. What you get in return is a narrower circle than a borough.

Nearhood uses the 33 London boroughs as its unit. Each event, service and trade is tagged with a borough, or with all of London, and the feed you see is built from those tags. A local post stays in its own borough feed rather than following you around the city.

Reading needs no account. The site has no sign-up form, no email address and no password. When you post, Nearhood makes an account on your phone and unlocks it with a passkey, which is the same Face ID or fingerprint you use for your phone. Nothing held on the server can post as you.

That also means the account is yours rather than the site's. There is no login for Nearhood to revoke, and it keeps working elsewhere: the same account can be used in another app that reads the same posts.

Every post shows which account wrote it, so a reader can open that account's other posts and reply to the author. Reviews work the same way: a review is a public message tied to an account, with text and no star average. You read what the person wrote and decide what it is worth.

Noticeboard listings that arrived from a printed flyer can sit unclaimed until the provider confirms a code sent by text message. That confirms control of a phone number. It says nothing about the quality of the work, insurance or accreditation.

The feed is a set of recent sections. No paid placement appears in it today. Browsing and posting are free. For the wider picture of what the site does, see events, services and the trades board.

If it matters to you that the people around you have shown they live nearby, Nextdoor does that and Nearhood does not. A neighbourhood is a smaller unit than a borough, so a lost cat, a school gate or a road closure reaches the right people and few others.

If your neighbours are already there, that network is the reason to stay.

If you would rather not give your address or your legal name to a local site, Nearhood asks for neither, and you can read the listings before you decide to post anything.

If you are looking for a plumber, a piano teacher or a room for a class, a borough is a more useful reach than a street. The weekly borough guides cover events across a whole borough, and the account behind a recommendation can be opened and followed. Start from what is on near you.

If what you want from neighbours is something to do rather than something to keep up with, that is the difference: a date to turn up to, a table to collect, a job booked with someone whose other work you can read.