If every hangout comes with a favor request, you’re not friends. You’re a vending machine they visit.

The tell is not the asking, it is the timing. Friends ask each other for things constantly and that part is fine. The difference is whether they also turn up on days when there is nothing to collect. When contact tracks your usefulness rather than your company, you end up doing a lot of quiet accounting and feeling guilty for noticing, and noticing is fair.

Test it once instead of deciding it in your head. Say no to the next ask, politely and with no excuse attached, and see whether they are still around next month. Then spend your time accordingly.