A Craigslist clone for the town you know best.
A Craigslist clone is a classifieds board with plain lists, local categories and free posting, and Yclas gives you one without writing code. Start with one town, county or trade, keep posting free, charge only where sellers earn the most, and let your readers flag what does not belong.
Free for 15 days · No credit card · Plans from $19 a month
Craigslist grew on four plain ideas.
Craigslist began in 1995 as an email list of events in San Francisco and became a set of city sites around the world. The design has hardly changed since. People kept coming back for four habits that any new board can copy.
What to launch your Craigslist clone with, and what can wait.
Craigslist has dozens of sections because it has had decades to fill them. A new board with a hundred listings spread over sixty categories looks empty everywhere. Launch with fewer, fuller sections, and split one only when it no longer fits on a page.
A useful rule: no category goes live until you can fill its first page with real listings.
| Part | Launch with it | Add it later |
|---|---|---|
| For sale | Furniture, bikes, electronics, tools, kids' things, free stuff | Antiques, collectables, musical instruments |
| Housing | Rooms and flats to rent, if your area is short of them | Holiday lets, parking spaces, storage |
| Services | Trades, cleaning, tutoring, removals | A full directory of local businesses |
| Community | Lost and found, events, notices | A forum for local discussion |
| Money | Free posting everywhere | Paid categories, featured listings, banners |
| Safety | Messages on the site, reports, banned words | AI scam checks and verified sellers |
Win one town or one trade before anything else.
Nobody replaces Craigslist in a big American city by copying it, because the listings are already there. The boards that grow pick a patch the big site serves badly: a county an hour from the nearest Craigslist city, an island, a university town, a language community, or a single trade such as farm machinery, horse tack or music gear.
In that patch you can do things a global site cannot. Your locations use the neighbourhood names people actually say. You can call the three shops that sell every week and post their first listings with them. You can pin a poster in the hardware store. Once your board has more of the right listings than the big one, people stop checking both.
Shown on Harlow Bay Herald, our newspaper demo, with a minimal text-only layout.
Listings readers can scan in seconds.
Each category and location lists its listings newest first, with a search box and filters on the fields you add, such as price, size or condition. Readers save a search and get new matches by email, which is how a local board brings people back without a feed.
- Locations for towns, counties or neighbourhoods, each with its own page.
- Saved searches with instant or daily emails.
- Map search on free OpenStreetMap tiles.
Buyers reach sellers without seeing their email.
Craigslist hides addresses behind a relay. On Yclas, switch on messaging and the contact button opens a conversation on your site instead. Both sides get an email and a push notification for each reply, and neither sees the other's address. You can also show phone numbers to signed-in visitors only.
- Offers in the conversation: accept, decline or counter.
- Report a conversation, and only then can your team read it.
- Safety tips when a message looks like a common scam.
Readers flag it. Your team decides.
Every listing has a report button with a reason. Reports land in one queue in your admin, where you hide, edit or keep the listing. A listing is not removed by a count of flags, so a rival cannot knock a seller off the board. Banned words, a blacklist, reCAPTCHA and Akismet stop most spam before anyone sees it.
- Moderation modes: publish at once, after your approval or after email confirmation.
- AI moderation on paid plans holds suspicious listings for you: 250 to 1,000 a month by plan.
What Craigslist is known for, and the Yclas part that does it.
What a Craigslist clone script usually promises, mapped honestly to Yclas, including the parts you will not get.
| Craigslist is known for | On Yclas |
|---|---|
| A board for each of hundreds of cities | One site with your own locations: towns, counties or neighbourhoods. A network of separate city sites is not included; each would be its own Yclas site. |
| Free posting in most sections | Free posting by default, in every category. |
| Fees in a few categories | Paid categories: a posting price per category, on every plan. |
| Plain lists, newest first | Newest-first lists with list or grid view, and a minimal look if you want one. |
| An email relay that hides addresses | Messages on your site; addresses are never shown. |
| Flag for removal | A report button and a reports queue. Your team decides, not a vote count. |
| Discussion forums | A forum, included on every plan. |
| Phone apps | The site installs on the home screen like an app. A branded iPhone app is part of the Marketplace plan. |
| One search across every city | Not included: search covers your own site. |
| Decades of listings and a household name | Not included. That part you earn, one town at a time. |
Craigslist is a trademark of its owner. Yclas is not affiliated with Craigslist. This table uses public information; your site gets its own name, look and listings, not a copy of Craigslist.
How a Craigslist-style board pays for itself.
Craigslist shows a board can stay mostly free and still earn: charge the few who make money from your readers.
Prices are examples: you set your own, in your currency. Yclas takes no commission on what you earn. All the ways to make money →
A launch plan for one town.
- Choose the patchOne town, county or trade where the big boards are thin. Write down the place names people use.
- Set ten categoriesOnly the sections you can fill. The setup wizard writes them from a sentence and adds example listings.
- Seed fifty listingsPost your own things, ask friends, and paste posts from the local group: the AI turns up to 20 posts into listings at a time.
- Go where people areSend the ready-made group message and print the QR poster for the café, library and hardware store.
- Charge laterWhen a category fills a page every week, add a posting fee there and sell featured listings.
Is it legal to build a Craigslist clone?
Yes. A classifieds board that works the way Craigslist does is a legal business: lists, categories and free posting are common ideas. You may not copy the Craigslist name, logo, design, text, code or listings. Choose your own name and write your own pages.
How much does a Craigslist clone cost with Yclas?
Starter is $19 a month for up to 5,000 listings, Professional is $99 and Marketplace is $149. Each starts with a 15-day free trial and no credit card. Your domain is extra; hosting, SSL, updates and backups are included.
Can I copy Craigslist listings to fill my board?
No. Copying them breaks Craigslist's terms and puts strangers' details on your site without their consent. Ask sellers to post, paste posts from groups you run, or invite local shops.
Can I have a board for each city?
One Yclas site holds as many locations as you need, each with its own page and search. Separate sites per city, each with its own domain, are separate Yclas sites.
Can posting stay free?
Yes. Posting is free unless you set a price for a category. Many owners keep it free for the first year and earn from featured listings and banners.
Can a website like Craigslist look this plain on Yclas?
It can be just as quick to scan: pick a minimal look and keep the home page to categories and the newest listings. Use your own name, colours and layout, not Craigslist's.
How do I keep scams out?
Keep contact on the site with messaging, hold new sellers for approval, use banned words and the blacklist, and check reports every day. On paid plans, AI moderation holds suspicious listings and the chat shows safety tips.
Related pages.
The parts of Yclas this leans on.
Your own local board, open today.
Name your town, say what people sell, and the wizard sets up categories and example listings. Free for 15 days, no credit card.
Start my local board
Photo credits
The screenshots show demo sites with made-up sellers. Their photos come from Wikimedia Commons, some cropped or with signs and plates blurred; these ones are under Creative Commons licences: