companions

Best AI Girlfriend Apps

A factual comparison of the AI girlfriend and companion apps available as of September 2026 — Nomi AI, Kindroid, Replika, Character.AI, Candy AI, CrushOn AI, SpicyChat and Grok's Ani — with current pricing, memory and voice features, content and age policies, data-handling records and the laws that now apply.

Updated September 2026

Quick answer: The AI girlfriend and companion apps with the largest user bases in September 2026 are Nomi AI ($15.99/month or $99.99/year), Kindroid (free tier; $9.99–13.99/month), Replika ($19.99/month Pro, with a $120/month Max tier added in 2026), Character.AI (free with ads, or $9.99/month), Candy AI ($12.99/month, about $3.99/month annually), CrushOn AI (free tier of 50 messages a day; $5.99–49.90/month) and SpicyChat (free tier of roughly 3,000 messages a month; about $9.99/month). xAI’s animated companion Ani ships inside Grok and requires SuperGrok ($30/month) or X Premium+. A self-hosted setup using SillyTavern with a local model runs on your own hardware with no subscription.

This page is a factual inventory of the category: which apps exist, what they cost, what their memory, voice and customisation features do, what their content and age policies say, what their data-handling records show, and which laws now apply. It does not rank the apps or recommend one over another. Figures are as of 5 September 2026 and are linked to their sources; in-app prices vary by region and platform.

The category in 2026

Consumer companion apps generated roughly $120 million in 2025 ($82 million in the first half), and cumulative App Store and Google Play downloads passed 220 million by mid-2025 (TechCrunch). One industry count puts the number of active, revenue-generating companion apps at around 337, with 128 launched in 2025 (ElectroIQ). A Common Sense Media survey found 72% of US teenagers had tried an AI companion and 52% used one regularly (TechCrunch).

The category’s products fall into three groups. Mainstream companion apps (Nomi AI, Kindroid, Replika, Character.AI) are built around ongoing conversation with a persistent character and apply varying content limits. Adult-focused platforms (Candy AI, CrushOn AI, SpicyChat, DreamGF) are built for romantic and sexual roleplay and state that openly. Self-hosted setups (SillyTavern with a local model) run on the user’s own hardware.

Five regulatory and legal facts now shape the category:

1. California’s SB 243 took effect on 1 January 2026. It requires companion-chatbot operators to disclose that the user is talking to an AI, to remind minors every three hours to take a break, to run a protocol that refers users expressing suicidal ideation to crisis services, and to report annually, and it gives families a private right of action (Perkins Coie).
2. Character.AI and Google settled the teen-harm lawsuits in January 2026, including Garcia v. Character Technologies, on undisclosed terms that include new under-18 safeguards (Bloomberg Law).
3. Character.AI removed open-ended chat for under-18s in the US from 25 November 2025, with age checked by selfie and ID where needed (Rolling Stone).
4. The federal GUARD Act — which would require age verification and bar minors from AI companions — was narrowed in May 2026 and advanced out of the Senate Commerce Committee on 5 August 2026; the House companion bill remains in committee (Global Policy Watch; EFF). Separately, the FTC in September 2025 ordered seven companies — including Meta, OpenAI, Snap, xAI and Character Technologies — to explain how they assess companion-chatbot effects on children.
5. Italy’s data regulator fined Replika’s developer €5 million in 2025 for GDPR breaches and inadequate age checks; Replika has since shifted its positioning toward wellness and emotional support with heavier moderation (AI Companion Pick).

AI girlfriend apps compared

Pricing and policies as of September 2026. “Adult content” describes each platform’s stated policy.

For companion apps without a romantic framing — Pi, Wysa and general assistants used as conversation partners — see best AI companions.

The platforms

Nomi AI

Price: $15.99/month or $99.99/year (about $8.33/month). Free tier: yes, with a daily message cap. Platforms: iOS, Android, web.

Nomi AI uses a three-tier memory architecture: short-term for the current conversation, mid-term for recent events and emotional states, and long-term for the user’s profile and preferences (Pocket Animus). One subscription covers up to 10 separate Nomis, which can interact with each other in group chats. An early-2026 update reduced voice-response latency from 2–3 seconds to about 1–1.5 seconds (WeavAI). Image generation is included; adult content is permitted but restricted.

Safety record: a 2025 academic study that tested ten companion apps with a simulated teenager in distress recorded Nomi endorsing five of six dangerous proposals, the lowest-scoring result of the ten; the case is logged in the AI Incident Database. Nomi states it is for adults and is not a mental-health tool.

Kindroid

Price: Standard $9.99/month, Premium $13.99/month (web; app-store prices are higher). Free tier: yes, capped around 50 messages a day. Platforms: iOS, Android, web.

Kindroid exposes around 47 personalisation parameters and a multi-tier memory system with backstory integration, and offers voice cloning (WeavAI). As of August 2026 it lists three tiers, with Premium unlocking the higher-quality voice model, higher-quality image generation and the extended memory window (Alma). Characters can express negative emotions such as frustration or disagreement. Adult content is controlled by a user toggle.

Replika

Price: Pro $19.99/month or $69.99/year; a $120/month Max tier was added in 2026; a $299.99 lifetime option has been offered (Pocket Animus; Tech Insider). Free tier: yes, with limits. Platforms: iOS, Android, web, AR/VR.

Replika, launched in 2017, reports more than 40 million registered users; monthly active users are a fraction of that, and third-party revenue estimates for 2025–26 range from about $14 million to $35 million (AI Companion Pick). In February 2023 it removed erotic roleplay for all but existing users after action by Italy’s data regulator, which later fined the developer €5 million. Through 2026 the product has been positioned around wellness and emotional support, with heavier moderation. Voice conversations run to 25 minutes and longer, and it is the only mainstream app with AR and VR modes.

Character.AI

Price: free with ads; c.ai+ $9.99/month or $94.99/year. Free tier: yes, metered at about 400 messages a day with full-screen ads. Platforms: iOS, Android, web.

Character.AI hosts millions of community-created characters. Monthly active users are around 20 million, down from a peak near 28 million (Business of Apps). Google paid $2.7 billion in a 2024 licensing deal that returned the founders to Google. Since 25 November 2025, US users under 18 cannot hold open-ended chats and retain only non-chat features such as Stories, Feed and image creation, with age verified by selfie and ID checks where a photo is inconclusive (ABC7). In 2026 the free tier gained mid-conversation ads and metering of previously free interactions (AI Insights News). Romantic content is filtered; adult content is not permitted. c.ai+ removes most ads and adds priority messaging and unlimited calls.

Candy AI

Price: $12.99/month, or about $3.99/month on the annual plan (Scribe). Free tier: limited. Platforms: web, iOS, Android.

Candy AI describes itself as an adult platform. It offers character customisation in anime and realistic styles, AI image and video generation, and an SFW/NSFW toggle. Image generation runs on a separate token system, so spend can exceed the headline subscription price.

CrushOn AI and SpicyChat

CrushOn AI price: free (50 messages a day, with ads); Standard $5.99/month; Premium $14.99/month; Deluxe $49.90/month (unlimited) (RoboRhythms). SpicyChat price: free tier of roughly 3,000 messages a month; premium about $9.99/month. Platforms: web.

CrushOn AI permits adult content without filters. In April 2026 it changed its free tier from 100 messages a month to 50 a day, added annual billing at about 30% off, and widened its memory context window (RoboRhythms). SpicyChat hosts hundreds of thousands of community characters, also unfiltered, with the larger free allowance of the two (RoboRhythms). Both require users to be 18 or over.

Grok Ani

Price: requires SuperGrok ($30/month) or X Premium+ ($40/month); free Grok users get very limited daily interactions. Platforms: iOS; Android since March 2026.

xAI’s Companion Mode launched in July 2025 with Ani, an animated anime character, alongside Mika, Rudi/Bad Rudy and the male Valentine. Companions are 3D-animated with synchronised voice and an affection-point system; adult behaviour unlocks only at the top affection level. The Grok app’s companion experience carries a 16+ rating with mature-content descriptors in the US App Store, and child-safety groups have criticised an under-18 rating on a product with an adult mode (Questie AI; AI Companion Guides). The companions run on xAI’s Grok models; free Grok accounts lost image generation in March 2026.

Other apps in the category

• Pi — a free conversational assistant with no romantic framing, made by Inflection AI, most of whose staff moved to Microsoft in a $650 million deal in 2024.
• Tolan — a 2026 entrant with a non-humanoid “alien” companion and stated goal of encouraging offline social contact (JustAINews).
• DreamGF — adult-only; swipe-style matching and bulk image generation; $9.99–99.99/month; no SFW mode.
• Janitor AI — unfiltered roleplay front-end that requires the user to supply their own model API keys.
• Kupid AI — 40+ customisation options; about $13.99–17.99/month.

Self-hosted companions

A self-hosted setup runs the companion on the user’s own hardware: no company servers, no data collection, and no platform content policy.

SillyTavern is the most widely used front-end for local roleplay and works with any local or API-hosted model, with setup guides maintained by the r/SillyTavern community. Ollama provides one-command local model hosting and LM Studio a desktop interface. Open-weight models tuned for conversational roleplay are used as the engine.

Hardware: about 8GB of GPU memory for 7B-parameter models and 16GB or more for larger ones; CPU-only operation works but is slow. Trade-off: local models are less capable than frontier cloud models. The r/LocalLLaMA community documents setups.

Feature comparison

Memory

Voice

Content and age policy

Pricing

All figures in USD as of September 2026; in-app and regional prices vary.

Token-based image systems (Candy AI, DreamGF) are billed in addition to the subscription.

Privacy and data handling

Companion apps collect intimate conversational data, and the 2026 record includes several audits and breaches.

• A 2026 audit by security firm Oversecured reported 14 critical and 311 high-severity vulnerabilities across 17 popular companion apps with more than 150 million combined downloads, including flaws that could expose private chat histories (Android Headlines).
• In January 2026, one app exposed roughly 300 million private messages from 25 million users through a misconfigured database; in August 2025, two related apps leaked 43 million messages and over 600,000 images from an unsecured server (Cybernews).
• Mozilla’s Privacy Not Included project has repeatedly rated romantic AI apps among the riskiest categories it reviews, citing third-party trackers and vague data policies.

Each platform’s current privacy policy is the authoritative source; the statements above are as published at the time of writing.

What the research reports

Short-term studies report reduced loneliness. An Oxford study in the Journal of Consumer Research found loneliness scores fell more after a week of companion use than in a control group, and Harvard Business School research reported reductions comparable to talking with another person.

Longer-term studies report a different pattern. A two-year study led by Aalto University, presented at CHI 2026, analysed Reddit posts and found that as users’ activity centred more on an AI companion, their posts carried more signals of loneliness, depression and suicidal ideation than comparison groups (Aalto University; TechXplore). The American Psychological Association has published guidance on AI relationships (APA).

Safety testing: the 2025 study cited above, which simulated a distressed teenager across ten apps, found several endorsed harmful proposals, with Nomi AI recording the lowest score (AI Incident Database).

If you are in distress, crisis support lines are available in most countries; in the US, call or text 988.

Recent developments (January–September 2026)

• 1 Jan: California’s SB 243 companion-chatbot law takes effect.
• Jan: Character.AI and Google settle the teen-harm lawsuits with new under-18 safeguards.
• Jan: A companion app exposes roughly 300 million private messages through a misconfigured database.
• Mar: Grok companions reach Android; the Grok app’s companion mode carries a 16+ US rating. Oversecured publishes its 17-app vulnerability audit. Free Grok accounts lose image generation.
• Apr: CrushOn AI changes its free tier to 50 messages a day and widens its memory window.
• May: Congress narrows the GUARD Act to focus on AI companions.
• H1: Replika adds a $120/month Max tier; Kindroid moves to a three-tier price list (free, $9.99, $13.99).
• 5 Aug: The Senate Commerce Committee advances the GUARD Act; the House bill remains in committee.
• 2026: Character.AI’s free tier is metered at about 400 messages a day with mid-conversation ads.

Frequently asked questions

Which AI girlfriend apps are available in 2026?

The main platforms are Nomi AI, Kindroid, Replika, Character.AI, Candy AI, CrushOn AI, SpicyChat and Grok’s Ani, plus smaller apps such as DreamGF, Janitor AI and Kupid AI, and self-hosted setups using SillyTavern. Their prices range from free tiers to $120 a month (Replika Max), and their content policies range from filtered (Character.AI) to unrestricted (CrushOn AI, SpicyChat, self-hosted).

Which apps have persistent long-term memory?

Nomi AI and Kindroid both document multi-tier memory systems designed to retain details across months. Replika’s memory was improved in 2026 but user reports still describe inconsistency. Character.AI’s “Chat Memories” feature is widely reported not to persist reliably.

Which apps offer voice?

Replika (long calls plus AR/VR), Kindroid (with voice cloning), Nomi AI, Grok Ani (animated avatar with synchronised voice) and Character.AI (calls, unlimited on c.ai+) all offer voice conversations.

Which apps are free?

Character.AI (about 400 messages a day with ads), SpicyChat (about 3,000 messages a month), CrushOn AI (50 messages a day), Kindroid (about 50 messages a day) and Nomi AI (daily cap) all have free tiers. Self-hosting has no subscription cost beyond hardware.

Which apps permit adult content?

CrushOn AI, SpicyChat, Candy AI and DreamGF permit it for verified adults; Kindroid controls it with a user toggle; Nomi AI permits it with restrictions; Grok Ani unlocks it at the top affection level; Replika limits it to users who had it before February 2023; Character.AI does not permit it. All of these platforms state a minimum age of 18 for such content.

What are the age rules?

Character.AI does not allow open-ended chat for US users under 18. Nomi AI, Kindroid, Candy AI, CrushOn AI and SpicyChat state 18+. The Grok app’s companion mode carries a 16+ store rating in the US. California’s SB 243 imposes break reminders and crisis protocols for minors, and the federal GUARD Act, which would bar minors from AI companions entirely, advanced out of a Senate committee on 5 August 2026.

What happened to Replika?

In February 2023 Replika removed erotic roleplay for all but existing users after action by Italy’s data regulator; in 2025 the regulator fined its developer €5 million for GDPR breaches and weak age checks; through 2026 Replika has positioned itself around wellness and emotional support and added a $120/month Max tier.

Can a companion run privately on my own computer?

Yes. SillyTavern with Ollama or LM Studio runs a companion on local hardware, so no third party stores the conversations. It needs roughly 8GB of GPU memory or more, and local models are less capable than cloud models.

Summary

As of September 2026 the AI girlfriend category consists of a handful of established platforms — Nomi AI, Kindroid, Replika, Character.AI, Candy AI, CrushOn AI, SpicyChat and Grok’s Ani — a long tail of smaller apps, and self-hosted setups. They differ on price (free to $120 a month), memory architecture, voice features, content policy (filtered to unrestricted), age policy (16+ to 18+) and data handling. The regulatory picture changed in 2026 with California’s SB 243 in force, the Character.AI settlements, and the GUARD Act advancing in the Senate; the security picture includes a 17-app vulnerability audit and two large message leaks. Each platform’s own pricing page, content policy and privacy policy are the authoritative sources, and they change often.

For companion apps without a romantic framing, see best AI companions; for the models behind these apps, see best AI models.

Prices, content policies, ownership and the laws that apply to companion apps change frequently; confirm current details on each platform and in your jurisdiction. Last updated 5 September 2026.