KF.SocialWhat the subscription includes
Timeleft's help centre lists three things. Access to all event types available in your city, which at the moment means dinners, drinks and running groups. As many events as you like during the subscription period. And the matching and the venue: "your group is matched and your venue is assigned by Timeleft".
So the subscription buys the seat allocation, not the meal.
What it does not include, and this is the part people miss
The same article is explicit: "Food, drinks, and any venue costs are paid directly on the day." The homepage says the same thing in its FAQ. That is normal for this kind of dinner, ours included, but it means the subscription is not the cost of the evening. A London dinner out is a London dinner out on top of whatever you are paying monthly.
Three things worth reading before you subscribe
It renews on its own. Timeleft's help centre says subscriptions renew automatically unless cancelled before the next billing date, and recommends cancelling before that date to stop the next payment.
Refunds are narrow. Subscriptions are "generally non-refundable once a new billing period has started", and that explicitly includes cancelling on the same day the renewal charge lands. If you subscribed through the App Store or Google Play, Timeleft says it cannot refund you at all and you have to go to Apple or Google.
You cannot switch plans in the app. To move between the one, three and six month periods you cancel, wait for the current period to expire, and then buy the new one. Its help centre says you cannot purchase a new plan until the current one has fully expired. Pick the length deliberately, because changing your mind costs you the rest of the period.
The arithmetic that actually decides it
A subscription is priced for frequency. It is good value for somebody who lives in one city and goes most weeks, and poor value for somebody who wants two evenings in a fortnight. Before you subscribe, work out honestly how many evenings you will use inside the period, and divide. If the answer is two, a period of one month is already a per-dinner price with extra steps, and a six month period is a bet on a habit you have not formed yet.
That is also the case for the reverse. If you go every week in the city you live in, a per-dinner fee is the worse deal and you should subscribe to something.
What KF.Social costs, for comparison
We publish it, so here it is. A seat at a KF.Social dinner is 15 pounds, shown before you pay, and you pay for your own food and drinks at the restaurant. There is no subscription and no membership: booking a dinner needs you to be 18 or over and to pay for the seat, and that is the whole gate. A table is six people, and if a seventh books we open another table of six rather than turn the seat away.
Cancelling has a published ladder rather than a policy you have to ask about. More than 72 hours before the dinner, the 15 pounds goes back to your card. Between 72 and 24 hours it comes back as KF Points. Inside 24 hours it does not come back. If we cancel the table, you get the money back in full whenever that happens.
The trade is real and it runs the other way too: we only operate in London, and Timeleft's homepage says it runs in 48 countries and more than 160 cities. If you want the same account to work in four cities this year, that is not us.
So which one
If you are in London for work for a week or two and you want a couple of evenings that are not the hotel, paying per dinner is the simpler answer, and you can see the price before you commit to anything. If you live somewhere Timeleft covers and you will genuinely go most weeks, the subscription is built for you. Either way, find out the number before you agree to a six month period. See the tables coming up in London.