The Calm, Gentle Rise of Snugglers for Hire

Samantha Hess and Becky Rodrigues are paid to hug people. Cuddlers for hire, they will hold clients close, in a platonic manner, for $60 to $80 an hour. If being held by a stranger doesn’t sound appealing, there are also platonic friends for rent. They will be happy to meet for dinner, go shopping, or just take a walk, for a fee. There are supposedly 526,873 such people available to choose from on the website RentAFriend. The average rate is $23 per hour.

In the past few years, companionship businesses have cropped up in various parts of the U.S. While they’re still far from mainstream, a handful of them are having no trouble finding lonely clients and bringing in profits. Snuggle Buddies, a cuddling outfit based in New Jersey, has a roster of 125 freelance cuddlers and takes in about $16,000 a month in revenue, according to its founder, Evan Carp.

The idea of paying to cuddle may sound laughable, desperate, or even skeevy. But these businesses are serving a diverse swath of Americans with a variety of needs. Some clients seek companionship—two recent surveys found that around 40 percent of adults say they’re lonely, which represents a major increase over the 20 percent of adults who said the same back in 1980. Other clients are victims of physical abuse, or suffer from PTSD, and find cuddling therapeutic.

The idea of paid companionship goes back many years and was once common enough to pop up in literature, as it did in Edith Wharton’s 1905 novel The House of Mirth, which features a character who lives off the generosity of her wealthy friends, acting as confidante and travel companion in return for free vacations, dresses, and trinkets.

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