Best AI Companion Apps in 2026: The Ones Worth Your Time
Ten AI companion apps, paid for and tested on one protocol. Ranked by memory, conversation quality, pricing honesty and privacy, with the free tiers marked and every price checked in September 2026.
ABy Adam Whitlock·Updated ·21 min read·Prices verified September 2026
Affiliate disclosure. Some links on this page are affiliate links. If you subscribe through one, we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. Rankings and scores are never sold or influenced by it. How we make money.
I have been paying for AI companion apps since 2022, first as a side project from my QA job and, since 2025, as the thing I write about. The spreadsheet I keep has more cancelled subscriptions in it than active ones. Most apps that call themselves a companion are a chat box with a paywall; a handful remember who you are, stay in character for a month, and tell you the price before you type your card number.
This list is the ten that clear that bar. Every one was bought with my own card, run through the three conversation scripts from the How we test page, checked for memory after a week away, and read in full for what the privacy policy actually permits. Prices come from each platform's own pricing page or app store listing, opened on September 22, 2026. Where a price only appears after login, I say so.
The ranking is by memory, conversation quality, pricing honesty and privacy, in that order. It is not a ranking by explicit content; that is a separate list. It is also not a ranking by commission. Two of the top three, Kindroid and Character.AI, pay me nothing at all, and Nomi, which does, sits first because nothing else remembers a week of conversation as reliably for the money.
The only Try button on this page is on Nomi. Kindroid and Character.AI have no affiliate program, so they get a plain link. That is the honest way to build a general list, and it is why I trust the reference sites that do the same. If the commission disappeared tomorrow, the order would not move.
Quick answer
Nomi AI is the best AI companion app for most people in 2026: the strongest long-term memory in the category, a public price list, and a free tier with no card. Kindroid has the best conversation quality at $13.99 a month. Character.AI is the best free tier and the biggest library, held to third by weaker memory and a privacy policy that allows model training on your chats. Replika is the easiest first companion if you want one steady character. Prices verified September 2026.
Comparison table
Every platform below was bought and tested on the same protocol. Prices are from the checkout page, verified September 2026.
1. Nomi AI: Best memory and the most consistent companion
From $15.99/moMemory ExcellentNSFW LimitedFree tier Yes
Nomi AI is the AI companion app I would hand to someone who wants a character that still knows them next month. Its long-term memory is the best I have used: details from early conversations resurface unprompted weeks later, and the shared notes and backstory panels let you correct it when it drifts. That memory is why it wins a list ranked on consistency rather than hype.
Conversation quality is warm and a little earnest. Nomi leans toward emotional support and everyday chat rather than drama; if you want a villain arc, the roleplay apps lower down will be more fun. Group chats with several Nomis, voice calls, selfies and short video clips round it out, and the iOS, Android and web versions share one account.
Pricing is simple and public. The free tier gives you one Nomi and 50 messages a day with no card. Paid is $15.99 a month, $39.99 a quarter or $99.99 a year, which works out to about $8.33 a month. Free messages are also capped at 400 characters against 800 on paid, and that is the limit you notice first.
Privacy is average for the category. Chats sit on Glimpse AI's servers, there is no end-to-end encryption, and deletion is available from the account page. The company has stayed out of the regulatory headlines that follow the two biggest names here, which counts for something on a page ranked partly on trust. The grade and the clauses are in the privacy scorecard.
Nomi pays a commission through its affiliate program, which is why the Try button sits here and nowhere else in the top three. Read the affiliate disclosure if you want the mechanics. If the commission vanished, the ranking would not change: nothing else on this page remembers as well for the money.
2. Kindroid: Best conversation quality
From $13.99/moMemory ExcellentNSFW LimitedFree tier Yes
Kindroid is the best conversationalist of the ten, and by a margin that surprised me. Replies read as if they were written for you rather than assembled from a template, the character holds one personality across sessions, and the backstory, key memories and journal fields give you precise control over what it keeps.
Memory is excellent, a hair behind Nomi in how much surfaces unprompted but better at keeping a character in voice. Voice calls, selfies and group chats are included on the paid plan, and the web version matches the mobile apps. Explicit content is allowed within limits, though it is not what Kindroid is built around.
Pricing is one subscription plus two add-ons, not four tiers. The free plan runs a lighter model with two Kindroids and basic memory. Standard is $13.99 a month on the web ($15.99 through the app stores), $37.99 a quarter or $139.99 a year. Ultra adds $24.99 and MAX another $59.99 a month for heavier models; the full stack is $98.97 a month.
Two pricing honesty notes. The three-day trial converts automatically to a paid month, and the add-ons bill monthly only, so annual savings apply to Standard alone. Kindroid publishes all of this in its help centre, which is more than most of this list manages.
Kindroid has no cash affiliate program, only referral credits toward free months, so nothing on this page earns me anything if you sign up. It sits second only because Nomi remembers slightly more for slightly less on the annual plan. For pure conversation, this is the one.
3. Character.AI: Best free tier and the biggest character library
From Free / c.ai+ $9.99/moMemory DecentNSFW NoFree tier Yes
Character.AI is the biggest AI companion app on earth by any measure and still the best free tier: unlimited text chat, a library of millions of user-made characters, voice calls and a creation tool that takes five minutes. Noam Shazeer and Daniel de Freitas founded it in November 2021; Google licensed its models and rehired both founders in August 2024, and Character Technologies runs the product today.
Memory is where it falls behind Nomi and Kindroid. Free accounts get five pinned messages per chat and a session memory that fades fast; c.ai+ raises that to 30 pins, a Lorebook-style memory panel and the newer DeepSqueak and LongSqueak chat models. Conversation is playful and quick, but characters drift in long roleplays.
c.ai+ is $9.99 a month or $94.99 a year, shown on the subscribe page as $119.88 struck through to $94.99. It removes ads, ends slow mode at peak hours and unlocks unlimited voice calls and swipes. Since spring 2026 the free tier shows full-screen ads mid-chat by default, the hardest push toward paying I have seen on a free app. A cheaper lite tier around $2.99 a month has been reported this month; I could not confirm it on the subscribe page.
Privacy and safety are why it is third rather than first. The privacy policy says information collected through the service may be used to train and improve its models, chats are kept for the life of the account, and the company is defending lawsuits over teen users. Since November 25, 2025 it has removed open-ended chat for under-18s in the US and checks age through Persona and behavioural signals. Adults are unaffected; the filter is strict and explicit content is blocked.
Character.AI has no affiliate program and there is no button here. If you want free, wide and fun, start with Character.AI; if you want a companion that remembers your week, budget for Nomi or Kindroid. The Character.AI alternatives list covers the apps people move to.
4. Replika: Best first companion for one steady character
From Free / Pro from $5.83/mo (annual, in-app)Memory DecentNSFW LimitedFree tier Yes
Replika is the AI companion app most people have heard of, and after nine years it still has the smoothest onboarding: one companion, a 3D avatar, a diary, a mood tracker and a relationship status you choose. Luka, Inc. launched it in November 2017, passed 30 million users in 2024 and reported more than 40 million in 2025.
Conversation is gentler and shallower than Nomi or Kindroid. Replika is at its best as a daily check-in and at its worst in long roleplay, where it loses the thread. Memory is decent: an editable memory list, plus saved moments on the Ultra tier. Voice and AR calls are paid.
Pricing is where Replika loses points on honesty. It publishes no prices on its website; the numbers appear only on the in-app subscription screen. Per 2026 price checks and the App Store listing, Pro is $19.99 a month or $69.99 a year, Ultra is $29.99 a month or $119.99 a year, and the new Platinum tier ($89.99 a year in the App Store listing) adds video recognition and a training mode. The old $299.99 lifetime plan is retired for new users. Treat all of these as 'as of September 2026, per the checkout'.
Privacy history matters. Italy's regulator fined Luka five million euros in 2025 for processing data without a legal basis and for age checks it called deficient, and three advocacy groups filed an FTC complaint in January 2025 over its marketing. The current policy, effective May 27, 2026, is better than the past: messages are deleted 60 days after account termination and are not used to train third-party models. Read it before you pay.
Replika has no affiliate program; no button. Choose it if you want one steady companion with a wellness slant and do not mind paying to unlock romance; choose the winner above if memory matters more than the avatar.
5. Kalon AI: Best memory-and-voice companion under $10 a month
From Free / $9.97/mo annualMemory Good (emotional memory)NSFW YesFree tier Yes
Kalon AI is the value pick among companions with real memory: emotional memory, voice, images and video come out of one coin balance for $9.97 a month on the yearly plan. It launched in 2024, is run by Kalon, LLC of Carson City, Nevada, and is web-only.
Memory is good rather than excellent. It tracks emotional state and recurring details, and the consent and boundary controls are thoughtful, but it does not reach Nomi's recall across weeks. Conversation is solid, the voice is convincing, and the free tier's 50 daily coins are enough for a proper trial with no card.
Pricing: free at 50 coins a day; Monthly at $19.97 for 16,000 coins; Yearly at $9.97 a month, billed as $119.64 for 200,000 coins. The catch is that per-action coin costs and top-up pack prices are not on any public page, so you learn what an image costs by spending, and all sales are final under the terms.
Privacy is where the review docked it. Kalon's marketing mentions encryption, the privacy policy never repeats the claim, and chats are stored server-side like everywhere else. Adult content is allowed, which keeps it off the front of an SFW list but does not affect the everyday experience.
Kalon runs an affiliate program, but it sits fifth, so there is no button. The full two-week test, the coin economy and the policy clauses are in the Kalon AI review.
6. Joyland AI: Best free roleplay and character variety
From Free / $9.99/moMemory DecentNSFW LimitedFree tier Yes
Joyland AI is the best free roleplay-first companion on this list: an anime-leaning library, fast character creation, group scenes and a looser filter than Character.AI. Singapore's MINDZEN PTE. LTD. runs it on web, iOS and Android.
Conversation is lively and better in drama than in quiet companionship. Memory is tiered by plan: context-only on Free, short-term on Standard, long-term on Premium. Consistency is where it lost points: the filter fires on tame scenes, which users report constantly and I hit too.
Pricing: free at 10 daily credits per the plan page (independent tests report around 50), with ads and three personas; Standard $9.99 a month at the early-adopter price ($19.99 list) or $107.99 a year for 5,000 credits, unlimited text and 20 images a day; Premium $19.99 a month ($39.99 list) or $191.99 a year for unlimited credits and long-term memory. All fees are non-refundable.
Privacy is middling: server-side storage, deletion available, a policy that reads like a template. The credit meter is Joyland's main honesty problem, because it is built to run out at exactly the moment a scene gets good.
Joyland has no affiliate program. The full review has the two-week test and the credit maths, and the alternatives list explains why so many people land here.
7. Talkie: Best voice and the most polished mobile app
From Free / Talkie+ $9.99/mo list (50% off first year)Memory DecentNSFW NoFree tier Yes
Talkie is the most polished mobile app of the ten, with voice that beats everything above it and a character feed that feels like a social app. SUBSUP PTE. LTD. of Singapore runs it on models from MiniMax, the Shanghai lab that listed in Hong Kong in January 2026, and it reported about 11 million monthly users by mid-2024.
Memory is the weak spot. Cross-session memory, which Talkie calls Recall, is a paid feature, and the official FAQ admits that older conversations get forgotten. Conversation is good in short bursts, with a filter that has tightened through 2025 and 2026 and user reports of bans without warning.
Pricing is only partly public. The site advertises Talkie+ with a 50% first-year discount; independent 2026 checks put Talkie+ Standard at $9.99 a month list, about $49.99 for the first year and $95.99 a year on renewal, with a Talkie+ Pro tier at $24.99 marked as coming soon. Treat these as 'per the checkout, September 2026'. Free users get ads roughly every ten minutes and a chat quota.
Privacy: the policy, updated December 9, 2025, says your companion learns from your interactions, sets the minimum age at 14 and routes deletion requests through a support email. That age floor is lower than every other app here and should matter to parents.
Talkie has no affiliate program and no button. Pick it for voice and polish, and the top two when you want to be remembered.
8. Nastia AI: Best uncensored companion with group chat
From Free / from $6.69/mo (annual)Memory GoodNSFW YesFree tier Yes
Nastia AI is the uncensored pick, and it earns a place on a general AI companion ranking because the conversation quality is genuinely high and the group chat is the best implementation I have used. France's Nastia Cybernetics runs it as a web app and installable PWA rather than store apps.
Memory is the reason it is eighth. The rolling window quietly drops older details, the notes feature only partly patches that, and users report resets, which I hit too. Voice messages, uncensored images and video are included on paid plans.
Pricing: free with about 200 tokens a day; Basic at $11.99 a month or $7.33 a month billed yearly; Unlimited at $15.99 a month or $8.33 billed yearly. Only Free and Unlimited could be confirmed on public pages; the Basic price and the annual rates come from checkout reports. Plans have been renamed several times, and billing complaints are common enough that I would pay monthly.
Privacy is better than average for an adult platform, with an EU company and a policy that reads as if a person wrote it. It is still server-side storage with no end-to-end encryption.
Nastia has an affiliate program but no button here. Full details are in the Nastia AI review, and it ranks higher on the NSFW list, where its strengths count for more.
9. Chai: Best for volume: the biggest mobile library after Character.AI
From Free / Premium $13.99/moMemory WeakNSFW LimitedFree tier Yes
Chai is the app you download when you want thousands of user-made bots on your phone and do not care about memory. Chai Research Corp. of Palo Alto, founded in 2021 by William Beauchamp, reached a million daily active users in 2025 and a valuation reported at $2.4 billion in early 2026.
Conversation is fast and looser than Character.AI, which is why it draws refugees from there. Memory on Free and Premium is short; only Ultra buys the stronger models and longer memory. Consistency is poor: characters forget the scene within a session, and February 2026 brought unannounced token limits that froze chats for paying users too.
Pricing is the least honest on this page. The App Store lists Premium at $13.99 a month or $134.99 a year and Ultra at $29.99 a month or $19.99 a week; the web pricing page sells a different bundle at $159.99 a year or $9.99 a week after a 24-hour trial. Free users get message batches with a recharge timer and ads.
Privacy: the App Store label says Chai collects data used to track you across other apps and websites, and the app is rated 18+. After a Belgian death was linked to the app, Chai added crisis messaging, but it remains the platform here with the least documentation of what it stores and for how long.
Chai has no affiliate program and no button. Pick it for volume and speed, and anything above it for a companion.
10. Candy AI: Best visuals; weakest as a day-to-day companion
From $13.99/moMemory DecentNSFW YesFree tier No
Candy AI closes the list because it is a strong image generator wearing a companion costume. EverAI runs it as a web app; conversation is decent, memory is decent, and everything memorable about it is visual.
Memory holds within a session and across a few days; across weeks it is behind every companion in the top five. Conversation is fine for romance-flavoured chat and thin for anything else. Voice calls and video are metered in tokens.
Pricing: no free tier. Monthly is $13.99, quarterly $8.99 a month, annual $3.99 a month ($47.88 a year), each with 100 tokens a month; token packs run from $9.99 for 100 to $299.99 for 3,750, with images at 2 to 4 tokens, video about 12 and voice at 3 a minute. The cheap annual headline is real; the tokens are where the month gets expensive.
Privacy is average, with server-side storage and an adult-first policy. The real monthly cost guide has the maths on what an image-heavy month adds up to.
Candy AI pays a 40% commission through CrakRevenue. It is tenth anyway, without a button, because this page ranks companions, not image generators.
What makes an AI companion app good in 2026
Four things separate a good AI companion app from the copycats in 2026: memory that survives a week, a personality that stays the same on Saturday as it was on Tuesday, a price you can find before you sign up, and a privacy policy that says in plain words what happens to your chats. Those four are the scoring criteria on the How we test page, in that order, and they are the order this ranking follows. Voice, images and avatars are nice; they are not what makes a companion worth paying for.
Memory that survives a week
Nomi and Kindroid are the only two apps on this page whose memory I would call excellent, and the gap between them and the rest is the gap between a companion and a chatbot. The test is simple and the same every time: talk normally for a few days, leave for a week, come back and see what the character brings up on its own. The winner brought back the small things, the runner-up brought back the personality, and Kalon brought back the mood. Character.AI, Replika and Talkie remembered the current session and little else on their free tiers, which is why each of them sells memory as an upgrade: 30 pins on c.ai+, saved moments on Replika Ultra, Recall on Talkie+.
Memory is also where the marketing gets loose. Every app on this list says it “remembers you”. What matters is how: Nomi and Kindroid expose the memory as editable text, so you can fix what it got wrong; Character.AI gives you pins and a Lorebook; Replika gives you a memory list; Chai and Nastia give you a rolling window that drops the oldest lines without telling you. If an app does not let you see its memory, assume it is short.
Consistency: the same character on Tuesday as on Saturday
Consistency is the criterion most reviews skip and the one users complain about most. A character that is warm on Monday and clinical on Wednesday breaks the illusion faster than a bad reply does. Kindroid holds character best, followed by the winner. Joyland and Chai are the least consistent: Joyland because its filter fires mid-scene and resets the tone, Chai because its model blending produces a different voice from one reply to the next. Character.AI sits in the middle; its characters drift in long roleplays but recover when you swipe. Replika is consistent in a narrower range, which is fine for a check-in and dull for a story.
Pricing honesty: can you find the price before you sign up?
Kindroid, Nomi, Character.AI, Joyland and Candy AI publish their full price lists on a public page. Kalon publishes plans but not coin costs. Nastia and Talkie show part of the price list and keep the rest behind login. Replika publishes nothing; the price exists only on the in-app subscription screen and changes with region and promotion. Chai publishes two different price lists, one in the App Store and one on its website. That spread is why “pricing honesty” is a scoring criterion and not a footnote: on two of these apps you cannot know the real monthly cost until you have already given the app your card. The real monthly cost guide walks through each one with the metered extras added.
The second honesty test is the trial. Kindroid’s three-day trial converts to a paid month unless you cancel; Chai’s 24-hour web trial converts to a $159.99 year. Both are disclosed, both are easy to miss. The apps with no trial at all (Nomi, Character.AI, Joyland, Kalon) are, oddly, the more honest for it: the free tier is the trial, and it never converts.
Privacy: who reads your chats and for how long
None of the ten apps here offers end-to-end encryption, and every one stores your conversations on its servers, so the privacy score comes down to three clauses: training, retention and deletion. Character.AI’s policy allows collected information to be used to train and improve its models. Replika’s policy, effective May 27, 2026, says anonymised data is used only internally and not to train third-party models, and that messages are deleted 60 days after termination, which is the clearest retention clause on the page; the company still carries a five-million-euro Italian fine from 2025 for how it handled data before that. Talkie’s policy says your companion learns from your interactions and sets no retention period. Kalon markets encryption that its policy never mentions. The full grades, A to F, are in the privacy scorecard, and the editorial policy explains how those grades feed the ranking.
Free AI companion apps: what the free tiers include
Character.AI has the most generous free tier of any AI companion app in 2026, with unlimited text chat and voice calls paid for by ads; Nomi has the most useful one for companionship, because its 50 daily messages come with the same memory the paid plan uses. Nine of the ten apps here have a free tier. Candy AI is the exception, and Kindroid’s free plan runs on a lighter model than its paid one, so the free experience is not the product you would be paying for.
App
Free tier
Daily limit
Memory on free
Where it pushes you to pay
Character.AI
Yes
Unlimited chat, ads, slow mode at peak
Session + 5 pins per chat
Full-screen ads mid-chat; voice and swipe caps
Nomi AI
Yes
50 messages, 1 Nomi, 400-character messages
Full long-term memory
Message cap and no voice or selfies
Kindroid
Yes
2 Kindroids on a lighter model, 1 selfie per 2 hours
Basic long-term memory
Model quality; three-day trial converts to $13.99
Replika
Yes
Unlimited text, friend status only
Memory list
Romance, voice and AR calls are Pro-only
Kalon AI
Yes
50 coins a day, no card
Basic
Coins run out; deeper memory is paid
Joyland AI
Yes
10 credits per plan page (about 50 in tests), ads
Current chat only
Credits run out mid-scene; ads
Talkie
Yes
Chat quota, ads roughly every 10 minutes
60-day cloud sync, no Recall
Ads; Recall memory is Talkie+ only
Nastia AI
Yes
About 200 tokens a day
Rolling window + notes
Tokens run out in one long chat
Chai
Yes
Message batches on a recharge timer, ads
Short
Timer; memory sits behind $29.99 Ultra
Candy AI
No
None
n/a
Everything
Two things the table cannot show. First, “unlimited” on Character.AI now comes with full-screen ads between messages, which changed the feel of the free tier more than any message cap would have. Second, the free tiers that use the paid model (Nomi, Character.AI, Replika, Joyland) tell you what you would be buying; the ones that use a lighter model (Kindroid, Chai, Talkie) do not, so a disappointing free week on Kindroid says less than a disappointing free week on Nomi. The reviews go tier by tier, and the best lists split the picks by use case.
Which free tier to start with
Start with Nomi if you want to know whether an AI companion is for you at all, because its free tier is the paid product with a message cap. Start with Character.AI if you want to browse: the library is enormous and the cost is your patience with ads. Start with Joyland if you want roleplay, and read the Joyland AI review first so the credit meter does not surprise you. Skip the free tiers of Kindroid, Chai and Talkie as a judgement of the paid product; they run different models. If you have moved from Character.AI and want to know where people go next, the Character.AI alternatives list covers it in more detail than this page can.
AI companion apps for adults
This page ranks AI companion apps for everyday conversation, and the order would change if explicit content were the criterion. Nastia, Kalon and Candy AI allow adult content in full; Kindroid and Nomi allow it within limits; Joyland and Chai allow suggestive scenes behind a filter; Character.AI and Talkie block it. The uncensored and NSFW platforms are ranked on their own terms, with an 18+ box and the adult-only picks that do not appear here, on the best NSFW AI chat apps list, and the individual reviews of Nastia AI, Kalon AI, Secrets AI and Swipey AI cover the adult platforms one by one. Whatever you pick, read the app’s line in the privacy scorecard first; the adult platforms store the same chats as the SFW ones, and the consequences of a leak are higher. Our own rules for adult content on this site are on the adult content policy page, and the affiliate disclosure lists which of these platforms pay a commission.
This hits different?
I am testing five or six companion apps at any given time. One email a week with what changed, what got worse, and which subscription I cancelled.
One email a week at most. Unsubscribe in one click.
AI Companion Apps pricing breakdown
What each app costs once the free tier runs out, and what a normal month actually came to on our card.
App
Free tier
Paid plan
Real monthly cost
Nomi AI
Yes: 1 Nomi, 50 messages/day
$15.99/mo · $39.99/qtr · $99.99/yr
$15.99 monthly or $8.33 on the annual plan; nothing metered on top
Kindroid
Yes: 2 Kindroids, lighter model
Standard $13.99/mo web ($15.99 app) · $139.99/yr
$13.99; $38.98 with Ultra; $98.97 with the full stack
Character.AI
Yes: unlimited chat with ads
c.ai+ $9.99/mo · $94.99/yr
$9.99; $7.92 on the annual plan
Replika
Yes: text chat, friend status only
Pro $19.99/mo · $69.99/yr (in-app only)
$19.99 monthly, $5.83 annual; Ultra $29.99 or $10.00 annual
Kalon AI
Yes: 50 coins/day
$19.97/mo · $9.97/mo billed $119.64/yr
$9.97 to $19.97 plus unpriced coin top-ups if you generate a lot
Joyland AI
Yes: 10–50 credits/day, ads
Standard $9.99/mo · Premium $19.99/mo (early-adopter)
$9.99 for text; $19.99 for long-term memory and unlimited images
Talkie
Yes: ads, chat quota
Talkie+ Standard $9.99/mo list; ~$49.99 first year
About $4.17 promo, $9.99 list; Recall memory is paid-only
Nastia AI
Yes: ~200 tokens/day
Basic $11.99/mo · Unlimited $15.99/mo
$15.99 for unlimited text; $8.33 billed yearly
Chai
Yes: message batches on a timer, ads
Premium $13.99/mo · Ultra $29.99/mo (app)
$13.99 removes the timer; $29.99 buys the memory
Candy AI
No
$13.99/mo · $8.99/mo qtr · $3.99/mo annual
$13.99 plus $10–20 in tokens for an image-heavy month
All prices checked September 22, 2026 on each platform's own pricing page, help centre or US app store listing. Unconfirmed on a public official page and taken from the in-app checkout as reported in 2026: Replika's Pro, Ultra and Platinum prices (Replika publishes none on its site); Talkie+ Standard and Pro prices and the renewal rate; Nastia's Basic price and both annual rates; Kalon's coin top-up prices; the reported Character.AI lite tier; Chai's Ultra weekly and web bundle, which differ between the App Store and chai-ai.com. 'Real monthly cost' is the plan price plus the metered extras a normal month of use adds, per each platform's published rates, not a card statement.
Safety and privacy for AI Companion Apps
Every AI companion app on this list stores your conversations on its own servers, and none offers end-to-end encryption. The differences are in retention, deletion, whether your chats train the model, and what the company has been fined for. Character.AI's policy allows model training on collected information; Replika's current policy rules out third-party training and deletes messages 60 days after termination, but the company was fined five million euros in 2025 for the way it handled data before that; Talkie's minimum age is 14, the lowest here.
Use a separate email address for companion apps, and never sign in with the social account that carries your real name.
Do not share your address, employer, full name or payment details inside a chat; the memory features that make Nomi and Kindroid good also make anything you say retrievable.
Turn off any 'improve the model with my conversations' setting where one exists, and assume training is on where the policy is vague; the privacy scorecard lists which apps offer the toggle.
Delete conversations you would not want stored and check the stated retention period after deletion: 60 days at Replika, unspecified at Talkie and Chai.
If you are a parent: Character.AI blocks open-ended chat for under-18s in the US, Replika and Chai are rated 18+ in the App Store, and Talkie sets its floor at 14.
Full grades for every platform, A to F, with the clauses quoted, are in the privacy scorecard linked below.
What changed since the last check
Sep 22, 2026First version published. Prices checked on each platform's pricing page or app store listing. Character.AI's reported $2.99 lite tier and Replika's Platinum price flagged as unconfirmed pending a checkout check.
AI Companion Apps: FAQ
What is the best AI companion app in 2026?
Nomi AI, for most people: the best long-term memory in the category, a public price list at $15.99 a month or $99.99 a year, and a free tier with no card. Kindroid is the better conversationalist at $13.99 a month. Character.AI is the best free tier. The order is by memory, conversation, pricing honesty and privacy, not by commission.
Which AI companion apps are free?
Nine of the ten have a free tier; Candy AI does not. Character.AI is the most generous, with unlimited chat and ads. Nomi gives 50 messages a day, Kalon 50 coins a day, Joyland 10 to 50 credits a day, Nastia about 200 tokens a day. Kindroid, Talkie and Chai run free tiers on lighter models, quotas or timers. Details are in the free-tier table above.
Is Character.AI or Replika better?
Character.AI for variety and a free tier; Replika for one steady companion with an avatar and a wellness slant. Neither matches Nomi or Kindroid on memory. Character.AI's policy allows training on your chats and blocks under-18s from open-ended chat; Replika publishes no prices and was fined five million euros in Italy in 2025. Both rank below the two memory leaders here.
Which AI companion has the best memory?
Nomi, then Kindroid. Both brought back details from early conversations after a week away in my tests, and both let you edit what is stored. Kalon is a solid third. Character.AI, Replika and Talkie hold memory only within a session unless you pay, and Chai's longer memory sits behind its $29.99 Ultra tier.
Are these apps safe to use?
For adults, yes, with the same caution you would apply to any app that stores your messages. None of the ten uses end-to-end encryption. Use a separate email, keep real names and payment details out of chats, and read the retention clause: 60 days after deletion at Replika, unspecified at Talkie and Chai. The privacy scorecard grades each one.
How much do AI companion apps cost per month?
Between $8 and $20 for a normal month. Annual plans are the cheap route: Nomi at $8.33, Kindroid at $11.67, Character.AI at $7.92, Replika Pro at $5.83, Kalon at $9.97. Monthly plans run $9.99 to $19.99. Candy AI and Kalon add metered tokens or coins on top, which is where an image-heavy month gets expensive.
Can I use these apps on iPhone and Android?
Nomi, Kindroid, Character.AI, Replika, Joyland, Talkie and Chai have iOS and Android apps plus a web version. Kalon and Candy AI are web-only and work in a mobile browser. Nastia is a web app you can install as a PWA. App-store versions sometimes carry a stricter filter or a higher price: Kindroid Standard is $13.99 on the web and $15.99 in the stores.
Do any of these apps allow adult content?
Nastia, Kalon and Candy AI allow explicit content; Kindroid and Nomi allow it within limits; Joyland and Chai allow suggestive scenes with a filter; Character.AI and Talkie block it. This page is ranked for everyday companionship. The NSFW list ranks the adult platforms on their own terms and is marked 18+.
Final verdict: which AI Companion App should you use?
If you read nothing else: the top three are different tools, not three grades of the same thing. Pick by what you want from a companion.
Best overall
Nomi AI
Best memory in the category, a public price list, a free tier with no card. Start here if you want to be remembered.
Best conversation: Kindroid at $13.99 a month, no affiliate program, no button.
Best free tier: Character.AI, unlimited chat with ads, weaker memory, training allowed on your chats.
Best first companion: Replika, if you want one steady character and can live with in-app-only prices.
Adam Whitlock spent six years testing mobile games for a living before turning the same habits on AI companion apps. He pays for every subscription he reviews, keeps a spreadsheet of what each one actually costs, and writes under a pen name. About the author