How Safe Do People Feel Walking Alone at Night? Solo Travel Data by Country (2026)

The headline: a record 73% feel safe walking alone at night

In 2024, 73% of adults worldwide told Gallup they feel safe walking alone at night in their city or area — the highest since Gallup began tracking nearly two decades ago. But a global average hides enormous variation. At the top, Singapore stands out: 98% of residents say they feel safe walking alone at night, the safest in the world on this measure. Several countries cluster at 90% or above, including Norway (91%) and the United Arab Emirates (90%). At the other end, in South Africa just 33% feel safe walking alone at night.

For a solo traveller, this perceived-safety measure is a practical starting point — it reflects how ordinary people experience their own streets, not just headline crime counts. It is not the whole picture: perception can diverge from recorded crime, and conditions vary sharply by neighbourhood and time. Treat it as one input, alongside official travel advisories and local advice.

Feel-safe-walking-alone-at-night, by country

The table below shows the share of residents who say they feel safe walking alone at night, from Gallup's 2024 report. Where Gallup published the gender split, both figures are shown — and the gap is stark. In the United States, 84% of men but only 58% of women feel safe walking alone at night; in Italy, 76% of men versus 44% of women. This is the single most important number for solo female travellers: in much of the world, the lived safety experience differs by roughly 20–30 points between men and women.

What this means for solo travelers — especially women

The gender gap is the actionable insight. A destination that feels safe to most men may feel very different to a woman walking alone after dark, and the Gallup numbers quantify that gap rather than leaving it to anecdote. Practical takeaways: weight perceived-safety data by the figure for your own situation (the women's column if you are a woman travelling alone), cross-check against official advisories, and plan the highest-risk windows — late-night arrivals, unfamiliar transit, walking back to accommodation — in advance.

None of this removes the core solo-travel problem: when you are alone in an unfamiliar place, no one close by knows your plan or would notice quickly if it went wrong. That is a logistics gap, not a destination-safety one, and it exists even in the safest-feeling countries. The fix is simple — make sure someone reliable knows you're okay on a schedule, and is alerted automatically if you go quiet.

The check-in layer that works in any country

I Am Alive adds the missing layer for solo travel without constant tracking. You set a daily check-in (or more than one per day on paid plans); if you don't check in by your chosen time, your emergency contact is alerted and the alert escalates. It is alert-only — your people hear from us only if you go silent, never on a successful check-in — so it works the same whether you're in Singapore or somewhere far down the perceived-safety table.

For travelers specifically, Protect Me On The Move ($39.99/year) adds emergency-only location sharing and an AI voice check, so a contact can see your last known or live location during an alert without you being tracked the rest of the time. It is the difference between hoping someone notices if a check-in is missed and knowing they will. Pair the destination data above with a daily check-in and you have both halves of solo-travel safety: an informed choice of where, and a reliable safety net for when.