Facebook

Meta's social network app, free to use and monetised entirely through targeted advertising

As of 1 September 2026, Facebook is free to use. The main Facebook social networking app for feed, groups, Marketplace, events and video, free to use with no subscription tier. Softwr lists it under Social Media. Facebook is made by Meta Platforms, Inc., available on iOS, Android, Web.

Visit siteVisit Facebook

Overview

What Facebook does

Facebook is a general social networking app: a feed of posts from friends, Pages and Groups, Marketplace for local buying and selling, Events, a short-video Reels format, and Watch for longer video. It supports Pages for businesses and public figures and Groups for communities around shared interests. There is no paid tier of consumer Facebook; the business model is entirely advertising, sold using targeting data drawn from what a person does on Facebook and, through Meta's cross-app tracking and off-platform pixel and business tools, activity elsewhere on the web and in other apps that use Meta's advertising infrastructure. This is the mechanism by which a free app generates one of the largest advertising revenues of any company; the product a user experiences and the product Meta sells (attention and targeting data) are different things. Buyers are essentially anyone wanting to stay connected to a broad social graph, particularly for Groups, Marketplace and Events, where Facebook remains dominant in many markets even as younger users have shifted attention to other apps. The trade-off is the standard one for ad-funded social platforms: free access in exchange for behavioural data collection and an algorithmically ranked feed optimised for engagement rather than a neutral chronological timeline by default.

What people use it for

Staying connected with a broad network of friends and family through a shared feed
Buying and selling locally through Marketplace
Joining Groups organised around a specific interest, neighbourhood or event
Following Pages for local businesses, public figures or organisations

Where it falls short

Concrete and checkable, so you can decide whether any of them matter to you. This is the half of a review a vendor will not write about Facebook.

There is no paid ad-free tier for personal accounts, so using it at all means being profiled for advertising targeting, including in markets where Meta has introduced a paid subscription for reduced ads on Instagram and Facebook in the EU, not globally.
The default feed is algorithmically ranked for engagement rather than shown chronologically, which shapes what content a user sees in ways that are not fully transparent.
Cross-app and off-platform tracking through Meta's advertising tools means behaviour on other websites and apps can inform the ads and targeting shown inside Facebook.
Group and Marketplace content moderation is inconsistent at Facebook's scale, and scams on Marketplace and misinformation in Groups are recurring, documented problems.
Younger user growth has shifted to other platforms in many markets, so Facebook's core demographic skews older than some competing social apps, which matters if the goal is reaching a younger audience.

Cross-shopped

What people choose instead of Facebook

Each pairing was judged by two reviewers asking whether a buyer would genuinely weigh the two against each other. The ones that failed were deleted rather than published.

Facebookvs
Messenger
Messenger: If you want the standalone chat app rather than the main social feed

Pricing

What Facebook costs

Taken from the vendor's own pricing page. Prices move, so check before you buy.

Free

No subscription tier for personal accounts
Ad supported

Capabilities

Features

News Feed
Algorithmically ranked posts from friends, Pages and Groups
Marketplace
Local classifieds-style buying and selling with in-app messaging
Groups
Community spaces organised around shared interests, often with member-only content
Events
Public and private event creation, invitations and RSVP tracking
Reels and Watch
Short-form and long-form video feeds
Ad preference controls
User-facing settings to view and adjust some advertising interest categories, within limits set by Meta

Answered, with sources

Questions people ask

Each answer names the page it came from, so you can check it rather than take our word for it.

Does Facebook have a paid ad-free version?

In the EU, Meta has offered a paid subscription for reduced ads on Facebook and Instagram; outside the EU there is generally no ad-free personal tier.

How does Facebook make money if it is free?

Entirely through advertising, targeted using data about in-app behaviour and, via Meta's broader advertising tools, activity on other websites and apps.

Is the feed shown in chronological order?

Not by default; it is algorithmically ranked, though a chronological "Most Recent" feed option exists and can be selected manually.

Keep looking

Where to go from Facebook

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Softwr does not host reviews and shows no star rating for Facebook, because a rating we did not collect is not ours to publish. What is here is the pricing and platform detail from the vendor’s own pages, limitations we could state concretely, and alternatives a reviewer confirmed people weigh against it. Tell us if any of it is wrong.