Avito Tests Personal Chats With a Separate Profile for Friends
Avito has begun testing "Personal Chats", a messaging section with its own profile that is not tied to listings, reviews or ratings. Calls are not available yet.
Avito has started testing a feature called "Personal Chats", which lets users message each other without linking the conversation to a listing or a deal. The company says it will appear in the app and the mobile site under "Messages".
To use it, a person must create a second profile inside the chats, with its own name and photo. This profile is not connected to the public Avito profile. Users cannot jump from a public profile into personal chats, and contacts will not see the person's listings, reviews or rating. Friends can be found by syncing phone contacts or adding them manually.
How invitations work
If the person you want to message has not enabled personal chats, you can still send a message, and they will receive an invitation. Someone with no Avito profile at all will need to create one first.
Test scope and features
The test covers 5% of users in selected regions, which Avito has not named. The feature will roll out gradually. The company wants to gauge interest in this format and check key scenarios such as creating a profile and adding contacts.
At launch, users can exchange text and voice messages, photos and videos, copy messages and delete them for both participants. Chat search, pinning, notifications and blocking are also available. Calls are not supported yet.
Looking ahead, Avito says the chats could be used to save the contacts of service providers users liked and to make repeat deals easier. Forbes reported in October 2026 that the marketplace planned to test such chats with a profile separate from the main one.
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