Craigslist (stylized as craigslist) is a privately held American company operating a classified advertisements website with sections devoted to jobs, housing, for sale, items wanted, services, community service, gigs, résumés, and discussion forums.
Craig Newmark began the service in 1995 as an email distribution list to friends, featuring local events in the San Francisco Bay Area. It became a web-based service in 1996 and expanded into other classified categories. It started expanding to other U.S. and Canadian cities in 2000. In 2023, Craigslist listed seven hundred cities in 70 countries on its website and generated 560 million visits per month. Around 90% of the website's visitors are from the United States.Lingel, J. An Internet for the People: The Politics and Promise of craigslist. (Princeton University Press, 2020). According to Alexa, Craigslist was the 19th most visited website in the United States in 2022 and 16th worldwide in 2023.Lingel, J. An Internet for the People: The Politics and Promise of craigslist. Princeton University Press, 2020.
History
According to founder Craig Newmark, he was influenced by the community-oriented interactions he had observed on early Internet services such as the WELL, MindVox and Usenet, and, as a relative newcomer to San Francisco, decided to create a similar service for local events. In early 1995, he began an email distribution list to friends. Most of the early postings were submitted by Newmark and were notices of social events of interest to software and Internet developers living and working in the San Francisco Bay Area.
The number of subscribers and postings grew rapidly via manual advertising. There was no moderation and Newmark was surprised when people started using the mailing list for non-event postings. People trying to get technical positions filled found that the list was a way to reach people with the skills they were looking for. This led to the addition of a jobs category. User demand for more categories caused the list of categories to grow. The initial technology encountered some limits, so by Majordomo had been installed, and the mailing list "Craigslist" resumed operations. Community members started asking for a web interface. Newmark registered "craigslist.org", and the website went live in 1996.
In the fall of 1998, the name "List Foundation" was introduced, and Craigslist started transitioning to the use of this name. In , when Newmark learned of other organizations called "List Foundation", the use of this name was dropped. Craigslist was incorporated as a private for-profit company in 1999. Around this time, Newmark quit his job to work on Craigslist full-time. By , nine employees were working out of Newmark's San Francisco apartment.
In January 2000, current CEO Jim Buckmaster joined the company as lead programmer and CTO. Buckmaster worked on the site's multi-city architecture, search engine, discussion forums, flagging system, self-posting process, homepage design, personals categories, and best-of-Craigslist feature. He was promoted to CEO in .
The website expanded into nine more U.S. cities in 2000, four in 2001 and 2002, and 14 in 2003. On August 1, 2004, Craigslist began charging $25 to post job openings on the New York and Los Angeles pages. On the same day, a new section called "Gigs" was added, where low-cost and unpaid jobs can be posted for free.
In March 2008, Spanish, French, Italian, German, and Portuguese became the first non-English languages Craigslist supported. As of August 9, 2012, over 700 cities and areas in 70 countries had Craigslist sites. Some Craigslist sites cover large regions instead of individual metropolitan areas—for example, the U.S. states of Delaware and Wyoming, the Colorado Western Slope, the California Gold Country, and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Craigslist sites for some large cities, such as Los Angeles, also include the ability for the user to focus on a specific area of a city (such as central Los Angeles).
Operations
As of 2025, the site receives 142.7 million global monthly visitors and 339,000 global monthly app downloads. In terms of global rank for internet traffic, Craigslist ranks 106th. The majority of users are from the United States. When users were grouped into age ranges, the 45-54 age group was most likely to visit the website.
In 2009, the site received more than new job listings each month. The 23 largest U.S. cities listed on the Craigslist home page collectively received about 300,000 postings per day in the "for sale" and "housing" sections as of October 2011. The classified advertisements range from traditional buy/sell ads and community announcements to personal ads.
In 2009, Craigslist operated with a staff of 28 people. By 2019 this number grew to 50 people. In that year the company was estimated to have made around $1 billion in revenue.Antonoudi, E. The impact of the online marketplace on fraud : evidence from Craigslist from its early adoption in 1995 to its wider expansion in 2006. PhD thesis. Kansas State University, Manhattan, Kan., 2023. https://hdl.handle.net/2097/43533.Johnson, D. 11 mind-blowing facts about Craigslist, which makes more than $1 billion a year and employs just 50 people. Business Insider (New York), 05/17/2019.
Since around 2018, Craigslist has experienced a steady decline in traffic and revenue, with a reported revenue of $302 million in 2025, down from $1.04 billion in 2018. Some analysts have attributed this decline to increased competition from similar services such as Facebook Marketplace, OfferUp, and Mercari.
Financials and ownership In December 2006, at the UBS Global Media Conference in New York, Craigslist CEO Jim Buckmaster claimed that Craigslist had little interest in maximizing profit, and instead preferred to help users find cars, apartments, jobs, and dates. In 2019, Craigslist generated about $1 billion in revenue, while employing only 50 people.
Craigslist's main source of revenue is paid job ads in select American cities. The company does not formally disclose financial or ownership information. Analysts and commentators have reported varying figures for its annual revenue, ranging from $10 million in 2004, $20 million in 2005, and in 2006 to possibly in 2007."Zen and the Art of Classified Advertising: Craigslist could make $500 million a year. Why not?" . Carney, Brian M. (June 17, 2006). The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved August 22, 2007.
On August 13, 2004, Newmark announced on his blog that auction giant eBay had purchased a 25% stake in the company from a former employee.
The company was believed to be owned principally by Newmark, Buckmaster, and eBay (the three board members). eBay owned approximately 25%, and Newmark is believed to own the largest stake.
In April 2008, eBay announced it was suing Craigslist to "safeguard its four-year financial investment". eBay claimed that in , Craigslist executives took actions that "unfairly diluted eBay's economic interest by more than 10%". Craigslist filed a counter-suit in to "remedy the substantial and ongoing harm to fair competition" that Craigslist claimed was constituted by eBay's actions as Craigslist shareholders; the company claimed that eBay had used its minority stake to gain access to confidential information, which it then used as part of its competing service Kijiji.
On June 19, 2015, eBay Inc. announced that it would divest its stake back to Craigslist for an undisclosed amount, and settle its litigation with the company. The move came shortly before eBay's planned spin-off of PayPal, and an effort to divest other units to focus on its core business.
In 2012, Craigslist sued the Swedish luxury marketplace website Jameslist.com, filing suit on July 11, 2012, seeking unspecified damages and a complete shutdown of Jameslist.com. As a result of the litigation, the company renamed itself JamesEdition.
Content policies As of 2012, mashup sites such as padmapper.com and housingmaps.com were overlaying Craigslist data with Google Maps and adding their own search filters. In June 2012, Craigslist changed its terms of service to disallow the practice. In July 2012, Craigslist filed a lawsuit against padmapper.com. The lawsuit drew criticism from some commentators, including law professor Eric Goldman, who characterized it as anti-consumer and argued it threatened established Internet law.
App In December 2019, Craigslist introduced a platform for iOS and a beta version on Android.
Site characteristics Craigslist is famous for its repeated refusal to update its website appearance. In 2026 it still features a 1995 "barebones" design, which became its most recognizable feature.Lingel, J. An Internet for the People: The Politics and Promise of craigslist. (Princeton University Press, 2020).Lingel, J. An Internet for the People: The Politics and Promise of craigslist. (Princeton University Press, 2020).
Personals Over the years Craigslist had become a very popular online destination for arranging for dates and sex.Craigslist hookups , Timeout.com, 2009College student to launch 'sex hookup site: It's safer than CraigList, and cheaper than bars , ABC NewsColumbus Sex Survey , The Other PaperPaul LaRosa and Maria Cramer, Seven Days of Rage: The Deadly Crime Spree of the Craigslist Killer , Simon and Schuster, 2009.Risky Sex- and Drug-Seeking in a Probability Sample of Men-for-Men Online Bulletin Board Postings , by Christian Grov The personals section allows for postings that are for "strictly platonic", "dating/romance", and "casual encounters".
The site was considered particularly useful by lesbians and gay men seeking to make connections, because of the service's free and open nature and because of the difficulty of otherwise finding each other in more conservative areas.The Hottest Spot Online – The explosively popular-and free-Craigslist attracts both gay men and lesbians by the thousands but the guys and gals aren't generally looking for the same things , by Ann Rostow. The Advocate.
In 2005, San Francisco Craigslist's men seeking men section was attributed to facilitating sexual encounters and was the second most common correlation to syphilis infections. The company has been pressured by San Francisco Department of Public Health officials, prompting Jim Buckmaster to state that the site has a very small staff and that the public "must police themselves". The site has, however, added links to San Francisco City Clinic and STD forums.
On March 22, 2018, Craigslist discontinued its "Personals" section in the United States in response to the passing of the Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act (SESTA), which removes Section 230 safe harbours for interactive services knowingly involved in illegal sex trafficking. The service stated that
US Congress just passed HR 1865, 'FOSTA', seeking to subject websites to criminal and civil liability when third parties (users) misuse online personals unlawfully. Any tool or service can be misused. We can't take such risk without jeopardizing all our other services, so we are regretfully taking craigslist personals offline. To the millions of spouses, partners, and couples who met through craigslist, we wish you every happiness!
Adult services controversy
Advertisements for "adult" (previously "erotic") services were initially given special treatment, then closed entirely on , 2010, following a controversy over claims by state attorneys general that the advertisements promoted prostitution.