How much do AI companion apps cost? Every app's price for 2026

Update, October 13, 2026. Character.AI's prices below are unchanged, but on October 12 the company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy so it can be sold. It says paid plans carry on for now and that the platform will be wound down if no buyer keeps it running, with a sale expected by early December. Until that is settled, pay Character.AI monthly rather than yearly.

Disclosure: this guide is written by the makers of My Softly, which appears in the table. The same pricing rules are applied to every app including ours.

The reason "how much does an AI companion cost" is a hard question is that the apps do not sell the same thing the same way. One charges a flat subscription. Another charges a subscription and then a separate currency for photos. A third is free but meters the parts you end up wanting. And almost none of them print their prices on the web, so the number you see depends on which country you are in and which promotion is running that week. This page lays it all out in one place, with the date each price was checked.

AI companion app prices at a glance

What each app's own paywall showed a free US account on September 30, 2026. Tap a screenshot to see it full size.

Two notes on reading that table. First, every app price in it is what the app's own subscription screen showed a free US account on September 30, 2026, not the "In-App Purchases" list on the App Store page, which keeps every product a developer has ever created. Replika's list, for example, still shows monthly products, while its app sells only two yearly plans, Plus and Max. Replika's help center still describes Pro, Ultra and Platinum tiers (read September 30, 2026), but those are not the plans the app sells. Second, Kindroid's web prices come from Kindroid's Help Center as we read it on September 14, 2026; since an update on October 6, 2026 it lists no dollar prices and says only that buying on the web is usually cheaper than through the App Store or Google Play, with the exact price shown at checkout. If you are comparing, use the number the subscription screen shows you, on your phone, today.

What you actually end up paying

The price on the first screen is rarely the bill. Three things push it up: paying monthly instead of yearly, buying through the app instead of the website, and the currency for photos and voice. They stack. The widest gap we found for one app is Kindroid: paid monthly in the app, a year costs $191.88; paid yearly on Kindroid's website, it is $139.99, according to Kindroid's Help Center (read September 14, 2026). Nomi paid monthly costs $191.88 a year against $99.99 for its yearly plan. Add photos on top and a heavy photo user can double either bill. Before you pay, check these:

• Introductory prices that jump. A "launch plan" or low monthly price you see on the first screen is usually a first-period offer. Read the small line under the button for what it renews at, and put that number in your budget, not the headline.
• Lifetime deals. A one-time payment sounds like the end of the bill. It is a bet that the company, the model and the policy you are paying for will still exist in the same form years from now. In this category that bet has already gone wrong for people more than once. Pay for a year at most.
• Currency confusion. If you cannot say in one sentence what one credit buys, you are being priced in a way designed to be hard to compare. Prefer apps that print the real price next to the currency price and keep per-item costs fixed.
• Features moving behind the paywall. Several apps have metered things that used to be free, or moved a memory feature up a tier. Check the current tier list, not a review from last year, and treat "unlimited" as meaning unlimited today.
• Regional pricing. The same plan can be a different price in a different country, and it can change without notice. The store page in your own country is the only figure that counts.
• Cancellation. Subscriptions bought through the App Store are cancelled in your iPhone's Settings under Subscriptions, not inside the app, and you keep access until the period ends. Subscriptions bought on the web are cancelled on the web, and the two do not know about each other, so make sure you are not paying twice.

The three ways companion apps charge you

The price matters less than the pricing model, because the model shapes how the relationship feels. There are three in use.

Flat subscription

One monthly or yearly fee, unlimited conversation, and nothing metered while you talk. Pi (free) is the purest example; Nomi and Kindroid are close to it for text, and My Softly's one fee covers chat, lasting memory, proactive check-ins and voice. The advantage is obvious: you never think about money mid-conversation, and the app has no incentive to make you talk more than you want to. The disadvantage is that the fee is the same whether you send ten messages a month or a thousand.

Subscription plus a currency

The subscription covers talking, and a separate currency covers the things that cost the company money each time: generated photos, voice, extra companions. Nomi, Kindroid, Character.AI and My Softly all do some version of this. Done well, it is honest: a photo genuinely costs more to make than a text reply, and a clear per-item price ("one credit is one photo") is easier to trust than a vague allowance. Done badly, the currency creeps into things that should be free, and you end up buying gems to have an ordinary conversation.

Metered conversation

Some apps outside this list charge per message or per "energy" unit, so every reply has a tiny price. We have not included any here on purpose. A companion that costs money each time it speaks to you turns affection into a meter, and people notice. It is the single most complained-about pattern in the category, and it is worth ruling out before you look at anything else.

What a year actually costs

Monthly prices are what the apps advertise; yearly totals are what you pay. Here is the same set of apps as a twelve-month bill, paying monthly versus paying once a year, at the standard prices in the table above.

Then add the currency. A realistic pattern for someone who likes photos is one or two a week. On My Softly that is roughly 50 to 100 credits a year, or $6.99 to $12.99. On Nomi, the subscription includes 40 photo or art requests a day, according to its paywall on September 30, 2026, and credits cover anything beyond that. On Kindroid, selfies are paid for with selfie credits. Voice is the other place spending appears: Kindroid sells audio credits in blocks, and My Softly includes a monthly voice allowance and sells more through the same credits. For most people the currency adds $10 to $40 a year on top of the subscription. For the heaviest photo users it can double the bill, which is worth knowing before you start.

So the honest range for a year with a memory-first companion app, subscription plus a modest amount of extras, is about $100 to $200. That is less than a streaming bundle and more than most people expect when they first download a "free" app.

How often is price the main complaint in 1- and 2-star reviews?

Often: price or the subscription was the largest single complaint in the 1- and 2-star App Store reviews of EVA AI (48%) and Replika (33%), and the main complaint in 23% of Nomi's and 20% of Kindroid's. We took every 1- and 2-star review in Apple's public US App Store review feed for each app, which returns up to an app's 500 most recent reviews, sorted each one by its main complaint, and re-checked a random sample of 30 against the same categories. Retrieved September 17, 2026.

Because the feed stops at 500 reviews, each app's figure covers a different stretch of time, so read every row with its dates and do not average them. CHAI's row is the clearest case. Its 276 most recent low-star reviews were all posted in three days, and 111 of them named Pieces, a paid in-app currency listed on CHAI's App Store page, which those reviews say CHAI had just begun charging for chats. That 84% is a spike after a change, not a steady rate. It is the same lesson as the traps above: check what a plan renews at, and treat "unlimited" as meaning unlimited today.

How to try before you pay

Every app here lets you test the one thing that matters before spending anything: whether it remembers you. The free tiers differ in how much room they give you to run that test.

• Pi and Character.AI give you unlimited free conversation, so you can run a full week of testing at no cost. Both are weaker on long-term memory, which the test will show you.
• Kindroid gives a short free preview of its main model, then a 3-day free trial of the full experience. Its unlimited free Lite model retired on October 1, 2026, so after the trial it is a subscription or a read-only account. Run the test during the trial so you are testing the model you would pay for.
• Replika lets you chat for free with limited memory notes, and its help center says paid users get more memory storage, so the free tier understates what a paid plan remembers. The app sells only yearly plans, Plus and Max, so test as much as you can on the free tier before paying.
• Nomi and My Softly give a limited free allowance meant for meeting the companion rather than living with it. Spend it deliberately: mention two or three specific things about your life on day one, then come back in a few days and see what comes up unprompted.

We wrote up the exact procedure, which anyone can repeat with any app, on our how to test an AI companion's memory page. The short version: tell the companion five specific facts on day one, mention none of them again, and come back on days three and seven to see which ones it brings up on its own. The guide to how AI companion memory works explains why apps that feel identical on day one can be completely different on day seven.

What you should expect for the money

If you are paying $10 to $16 a month, you are entitled to three things, and any app that does not deliver them is overpriced at any figure.

1. Memory that lasts. Not a memory tab you have to fill in yourself, and not recall that fades after a few weeks. The companion should carry your life forward on its own.
2. Being reached out to. The difference between a chatbot and a companion is who speaks first. A paid companion should be able to check in on you, about things you actually said, at hours you have agreed to. Our guide to an AI that texts you first explains what separates a real check-in from a re-engagement notification.
3. Stability. The personality and the rules you paid for should not change under you between one month and the next. This is the thing money buys least reliably in this category, which is one more reason to pay by the month until you trust an app.

For context on where the money goes, Appfigures told TechCrunch in August 2025 that companion apps were on track to make more than $120 million that year across 337 revenue-generating apps, with the top ten percent of apps taking 89 percent of the revenue. It is a real business, and a concentrated one. The apps in the table above are the ones with enough scale that a subscription is likely to still mean something next year.

The bottom line on cost

Budget $100 to $200 a year for a serious companion app, expect to pay a little extra for photos or voice, and never pay for a year before a free week has shown you the app remembers who you are. Cheapest is Pi, best value is whichever app passes your own memory test, and the most expensive app is the one you keep paying for after it has forgotten you.

Sources

• In-app paywalls (US), free accounts on iPhone and, for Replika, Android. Checked September 30, 2026.
• Kindroid Help Center. "In-App Purchases" (web prices, the app-store price difference, and the Ultra and MAX add-ons). Read September 14, 2026. kindroid.ai
• Kindroid Help Center. "Subscriptions" and "In-App Purchases", both updated October 6, 2026: no dollar prices listed; buying on the web is "usually cheaper"; the Ultra and MAX upgrades are sold month to month only; new accounts get a 50-message preview (15 in some regions), then read-only until a 3-day trial or subscription. Read 2026-10-09. kindroid.ai
• Character.AI blog (September 28, 2026). "introducing PipSqueak 3, ShortSqueak, and (c.ai) lite": lite is US$4.99 a month, varying by region, with no banner ads, fewer interstitial ads and extra memory pins; unlimited messaging stays on every tier. Read 2026-10-09. blog.character.ai
• Kindroid update log, "V2 becomes the default; V1 and Lite retire October 1": Lite retired, new accounts get a one-time preview of 50 flagship interactions (15 in some regions), then a 3-day trial or read-only. Read 2026-10-03. kindroid.ai
• Replika Help Center. "How does Replika's memory work?" (memory limits by tier). help.replika.com
• Replika Help Center. "Choosing a Subscription" (describes Free, Pro, Ultra and Platinum tiers; gives no prices). Read September 30, 2026. help.replika.com
• UsagePricing. "Pi (Inflection AI) Pricing." (Pi has no paid consumer tier.) usagepricing.com
• Apple App Store (US). "AI Companion: My Softly," in-app purchase list. Checked September 7, 2026. apps.apple.com
• TechCrunch (August 12, 2025). "AI companion apps on track to pull in $120M in 2025," citing Appfigures. techcrunch.com
• My Softly (September 17, 2026). Count of 1- and 2-star reviews in Apple's public US App Store customer review feed for EVA AI, Replika, Nomi, Kindroid and CHAI. The feed returns up to an app's 500 most recent reviews; each 1- or 2-star review was sorted by its main complaint, and a random sample of 30 was re-checked against the same categories. Retrieved September 17, 2026. Example feed: itunes.apple.com
• CHAI: Social AI Platform, US App Store listing (in-app purchase list, including Pieces). Checked September 17, 2026. apps.apple.com
• Character.AI blog (October 12, 2026). "An Update on Character.ai": a voluntary Chapter 11 case to sell the company under court supervision; the platform stays up, subscriptions stay active with billing unchanged for now, the sale is expected to finish by the end of November or early December 2026, and the platform will be wound down if no buyer will keep it running. Read 2026-10-13. blog.character.ai