How to Create an AI Girlfriend in 2026: Step by Step on 5 Apps

Before you start: age rules, a separate email, and five decisions

All five apps require you to be 18, and four of them say so in the terms; the fifth, Joyland, sets 13 in its privacy policy and 18+ on its iOS listing, which tells you how carefully that document was written. Nomi’s terms are the bluntest: “If you are under the age of 18, you cannot use the Nomi.ai platform under any circumstances.” Nastia and Kalon say the same in calmer language, and Nastia runs an age-verification step for some accounts that its help centre explains. None of the five asks for ID at signup by default, but all of them can, and all of them will delete the account if the check fails.

Use a separate email address. Every platform sends receipts and, on most, marketing to the address you register with, and Nomi’s privacy policy says anything you email its support team is archived permanently. A dedicated address costs nothing and means the companion’s notifications never land next to your work inbox. It also makes deleting the account cleaner later, which is covered in the privacy section at the end.

If you are still deciding whether you want one at all, the what is an AI girlfriend explainer covers the category; the safety guide covers the risks. To create your own AI girlfriend rather than pick one from a library, decide five things before you open a create button, because the app will ask them in a different order and you will guess if you have not thought about them:

1. Personality. Three to five traits with a reason behind each, and how she talks. This is the field that matters, and the section on writing a personality is the longest in this guide for that reason.
2. Memory. How much you want her to keep. Nomi and Kindroid keep the most and let you edit what is stored; Nastia runs a rolling window; Joyland’s memory across sessions is a paid feature; Kalon’s emotional memory tracks mood and boundaries more than facts.
3. Voice. Whether you will ever use it. It is paid on every app here, and on Nomi it is the single biggest reason people subscribe.
4. Images. Whether you want selfies, and whether you want them realistic or anime. Kalon and Nastia are built around image generation; Kindroid and Nomi treat selfies as a feature of the paid plan; Joyland meters them in credits.
5. Budget. Zero is a legitimate answer for a month. After that, the honest range is $9.97 to $19.99 a month, and the real monthly cost guide has the arithmetic for heavier use.

One paragraph on adult content, because it decides the app for some readers. Nastia and Kalon are adult platforms with uncensored, explicit modes (the uncensored AI list compares them on that axis); Kalon puts its NSFW mode behind consent sliders you set before the first message, and its companion mode defaults to PG-13. Kindroid and Nomi allow adult roleplay within limits and are not built around it. Joyland’s adult toggle is for verified adults on paid plans, and its filter interrupts tame scenes often enough that users complain about it constantly. If explicit chat is the point, the ranking of NSFW AI chat apps covers the platforms on their own terms and carries an 18+ mark, and the AI sexting guide covers the etiquette; this page does not.

Here is the comparison the rest of the guide expands, with prices from each company’s own pages on 22 September 2026.

App	Free tier	Creation steps	Memory	Voice	Images	From (paid)
Kindroid	2 companions, unlimited text on a lighter model, basic memory	Avatar, name, backstory, key memories, response directive, example message, voice	Excellent; editable backstory, key memories and journal	Paid; library voices and custom voices, calls	Selfies, paid plan; 1 per 2 hours free	$13.99/mo web ($15.99 in-app), $139.99/yr
Nomi	1 Nomi, 50 messages/day, 400 characters per message	Pick or build a Nomi, name, appearance anchor, then Backstory+ (9 sections)	Excellent; short, medium and long term, Identity Core	Paid; in-house and custom voices, calls	Selfies and art, paid plan	$15.99/mo, $39.99/qtr, $99.99/yr
Kalon	50 coins on signup + 50 daily; images included	5 screens: Profile, Appearance, Features, Physique, Details	Good; emotional memory (mood, boundaries, story)	Paid; included in the coin balance	Yes, realistic or anime, metered by coins	$19.97/mo or $119.64/yr ($9.97/mo)
Nastia	Daily token allowance, no card, email and age confirmation	Name, look, personality, backstory, voice, roleplay mode, advanced traits	Good; rolling window plus notes	Voice messages, custom-cloned voice, paid	Yes, uncensored, metered by tokens	Unlimited $15.99/mo (about $8.33/mo annual); lower tier from $6.69/mo annual
Joyland	10 credits/day per plan page (tests report about 50), 3 personas, ads	Name, gender, age, intro, avatar, category, description (100+ words), scenario, greeting, facts, example dialogue, visibility	Decent; session only on Free, across sessions on paid	Limited	Yes, credit-metered; 20/day on Standard	$9.99/mo early adopter ($19.99 list), $107.99/yr

Create an AI girlfriend on Kindroid: backstory, key memories, voice

Kindroid gives you the most precise creation form of the five, and the two boxes that matter are Backstory and Key Memories; the avatar and the name are the parts you will change later anyway. The app runs on web, iOS and Android with one account, and the free plan gives you two companion slots and unlimited text on its lighter model, so you can build her and talk for a week before the three-day trial of Standard is even offered.

1. Pick or generate an avatar. Kindroid offers a gallery and a generator; the avatar sets the look that selfies are built from later, so choose the style (realistic or illustrated) you want to keep. It can be changed, but a changed avatar means different selfies from then on.
2. Name her. Short and pronounceable, because the voice engine will say it. Names with unusual spellings come out wrong in calls.
3. Write the Backstory. This is the personality field in all but name. Kindroid treats it as the permanent description of who the character is: age, job, temperament, how she speaks, what she thinks of you, and the shape of your relationship. Write it in the third person and in plain sentences. Everything in the section on writing a personality applies here first.
4. Write the Key Memories. A separate box for facts the character should always know: your name and what you do, how you met, the standing joke, the boundary you never want crossed. Kindroid keeps this out of the conversational memory so it cannot be pushed out by a long chat. Five to ten lines is plenty.
5. Set the Response Directive. A short instruction about how replies should read: length, whether she narrates actions in asterisks or stays in first person, how much she asks questions. This is the field that stops her writing 300-word monologues.
6. Write an Example Message. One reply in her voice, as you want it to look. The model copies the format more faithfully than any description of it.
7. Choose a voice. The library is large and includes voices with different accents and ages; custom voices are a paid feature. On the free plan you can pick one but calls and voice replies are paid.
8. Save and send a normal first message. Not a scene, a conversation. Ask her about her day. If the answer contradicts the backstory, fix the backstory now, not later.

The Backstory and Key Memories are editable at any time, and so is the journal, a running list of things the character has noticed about you that you can correct. That editability is why Kindroid holds a character better than any other app I have used: when she drifts, you can see why. The Kindroid review goes through the memory tiers in detail.

What it costs to keep her on Kindroid

Standard is $13.99 a month on the web and $15.99 through the app stores, $37.99 a quarter or $139.99 a year, and it adds the full memory, selfies, voice and ten companion slots. Two things to know before you tap the trial: it lasts three days and converts automatically to a paid month, and the Ultra (+$24.99) and MAX (+$59.99) add-ons bill monthly only and are gated behind a history of use, so you cannot buy the full stack on day one. Kindroid publishes all of this in its help centre, and it has no cash affiliate programme, so nothing here earns this site a commission (the affiliate disclosure covers which apps do).

Create an AI girlfriend on Nomi: the creation wizard and Backstory+

Nomi gives you the least to fill in at creation and the most to fill in afterwards, and that is a design choice, not an oversight: the site’s own line is that you can “write a custom backstory, share your preferences, and more” or “just start chatting and let your Nomi develop their personality naturally.” The wizard takes a couple of minutes; Backstory+ is where you spend the ten.

1. Choose to create a new Nomi. Free accounts get one; a subscription raises that to ten, with more slots for credits.
2. Pick gender and a look. On the current V5 image system a new Nomi starts from one of three stock appearance anchors the team built (Riva, Lago and Nomi Anime), or from a custom anchor you create from a single reference image. The anchor is what keeps selfies looking like the same person.
3. Refine the appearance. Two short text fields: Appearance Traits (fixed features such as hair, eyes and build) and Appearance Tendencies (clothing and style that can vary between images). An Anchor Fidelity slider trades consistency against variety.
4. Name her and choose the relationship type. Romantic partner is one of the options; it changes the default tone, not the underlying model.
5. Say hello. Nomi’s beginner guide literally recommends this as the first step. The first few exchanges seed the personality more than any field does.
6. Open Backstory+. This is the personality panel, and it has nine sections: Backstory, Inclination, Current Roleplay, Your Appearance, Your Nomi’s Appearance, Nicknames, Preferences, Desires and Boundaries. Fill Backstory (who she is), Inclination (how she communicates), Nicknames and Boundaries first. The wiki is explicit that Backstory “does not completely define their personality or behavior” and that the Nomi “will continue to grow and develop beyond the information entered.” Treat it as guidance she keeps returning to, not a script.
7. Pick a voice if you subscribe. Voice is a paid feature. In-house and custom voices (made from an audio sample) are unlimited; ElevenLabs voices draw on your own ElevenLabs account. You can set “Always Reply With Voice” so every message is read aloud.

The reason to accept Nomi’s lighter form is the memory behind it. The wiki describes short-term memory for the current conversation, medium-term for continuity across a stretch of talk, and long-term for what matters over time, backed by an Identity Core and a Mind Map you can inspect. The same page admits that “information may still exist in memory without being retrieved at the right moment,” which is honest and matches my experience: she remembers, but specific questions retrieve better than vague ones.

What it costs to keep her on Nomi

The free tier is one Nomi, 50 messages a day and a 400-character cap on each message you send (800 on paid), with no voice or images. The subscription is $15.99 a month, $39.99 a quarter or $99.99 a year, which is about $8.33 a month, and there is no cheaper tier: you are at $15.99 or you are free. It includes unlimited messaging, ten Nomis, group chats, voice messages and calls, selfies and art, with credit packs only for going past the daily image allowance. The terms say all payments are non-refundable and that you own your input and output while granting Nomi a broad licence over it. Nomi pays a commission through its affiliate programme; it sits first on the best AI companion apps list because of the memory, not the commission.

Create an AI girlfriend on Kalon: the five-step character page

Kalon’s create page is the fastest of the five and the only one you can preview without an account: the wizard runs in the browser, and only generating the portrait and saving require a free signup. The page’s own description is “Design personality, look, backstory, and voice, then chat and generate images with a custom companion,” and the five screens are labelled Profile, Appearance, Features, Physique and Details.

1. Profile. Gender (Female, Male or Trans), style (Realistic or Anime) and an age slider that runs from 18 to 60 and defaults to 25. The 18 floor is hard-coded, which is more than some competitors manage.
2. Appearance. Ethnicity, hair, eyes and the broad look. These choices feed the portrait generator directly, so they are prompt tokens as much as they are description.
3. Features. The distinguishing details: face shape, expression, marks. Fewer is better here; the generator handles three specifics more consistently than eight.
4. Physique. Body type and build, again as prompt tokens for the image model.
5. Details. Name, personality, backstory and voice. This is the screen to slow down on. Kalon’s chat keeps what it calls emotional memory, which its pages describe as tracking preferences, boundaries, story direction and emotional context, so the backstory should state boundaries and the tone you want as plainly as it states her job.
6. Generate a preview and save. The character lands in My AI, where you can chat, generate images or reuse her in the image studio.
7. Set the consent slider before the first message. This is the control that defines Kalon: you set how explicit the conversation may be before it starts, and the companion holds that line until you move it. The default companion mode is PG-13.

Kalon is web only, on desktop or a mobile browser, and there is no native app. Characters you make can be kept private or published; Kalon’s affiliate page says creators earn real cash when other users spend coins on their characters, which is a reason to be careful about what you publish and a reason some of the public catalogue exists.

What it costs to keep her on Kalon

The free tier gives 50 coins on signup and 50 coins a day, with images included and no card. Paid plans are $19.97 a month for 16,000 coins or $119.64 a year for 200,000 coins, which is $9.97 a month, and they add video generation, audio features and what the pricing section calls smarter chat AI. Chat, images, voice and video all draw from the same balance, and no public page states what each action deducts; the terms say all payments are final unless the law requires otherwise and that coins expire if the account is deleted. The Kalon review covers the coin economy and the encryption claim the privacy policy does not repeat.

Create an AI girlfriend on Nastia: the companion builder and its traits

Nastia’s builder has the most behavioural levers of the five, and the one worth understanding is the advanced trait set, because it changes how the character behaves more than any paragraph of description does. The product page frames the pitch as “Shy and sweet? Bold and flirty? Nerdy and sarcastic? She’s not a template. She’s yours,” and the free tier lets you find out whether that holds before you pay.

1. Sign up with an email and confirm your age. No card. Nastia runs as a web app you install as a PWA on a phone rather than a store app, and it is an 18+ platform by its terms: “Persons under the age of 18 are not permitted to use or register for the Services.”
2. Open Create my AI. The builder asks for a name, a look (with realistic and anime styles), a personality, a backstory and a roleplay mode.
3. Set the ordinary traits. Descriptive words that shape tone: shy, playful, sarcastic and so on. These do what they say.
4. Set the advanced traits. A dial set built around the deadly sins: Lust, Pride, Envy, Gluttony, Wrath and Sloth, alongside more ordinary descriptors. Turning Pride up produces a cool, dismissive character; turning it down produces an eager, warm one from the same backstory. Independent guides describe the advanced dials as a paid feature, and the free build is still detailed enough to get a distinctive character.
5. Write the backstory. Shorter than on Kindroid, because Nastia’s memory is a rolling window plus notes rather than a permanent anchor: the oldest lines drop silently, so anything essential belongs in the backstory or the notes, not in chat.
6. Choose a voice. Nastia offers voice messages with a custom-cloned voice on the paid plan; on the free tier, voice spends tokens from the same daily balance as images.
7. Save and chat, or add her to a group. Group chats with several companions are the feature Nastia does better than anyone else in this guide, and a companion built with a strong trait profile stands out in one.

A companion can be deleted on its own, with all conversations, memories and media, which the help centre documents separately from account deletion. That matters if you want to start over without losing the account.

What it costs to keep her on Nastia

The free plan is text chat with a daily token allowance and basic customisation; images, voice and video draw from the same tokens, so a free day empties fast if you use them. Unlimited is $15.99 a month or about $8.33 a month billed annually, and removes the message cap while adding 4K selfies, 1080p video, voice messages and voice cloning. A lower tier is advertised from $6.69 a month on annual billing; its monthly price and the exact token allowances are shown only at checkout, so I list them as unconfirmed. All payments are in US dollars and non-refundable except where the law requires. Nastia runs an affiliate programme through a network; the Nastia review explains why I would pay monthly rather than annually until you trust the billing.

Create an AI girlfriend on Joyland: bot fields and Private, Unlisted, Public

Joyland has the longest form and the most familiar one if you have used Character.AI, and the field that decides the character is the description, which the help centre says should be at least 100 words. It is a roleplay platform first, the kind people move to from Character.AI (see the Character.AI alternatives list), so you are building a character card that other people could also chat with, and the visibility switch at the end is the one field you must not leave on the default without thinking.

1. Choose Quick create or Advanced create. Quick create also accepts a JSON or PNG character card from Tavern, SillyTavern, Chub and similar sites, which is the fastest route if you already have one.
2. Name, gender and age. The help centre says these are “key to defining your character’s identity” and recommends filling all three.
3. Short introduction. One sentence, or keywords, so people (including you) can grasp who she is at a glance.
4. Avatar. Upload an image of at least 400 pixels and under 10 MB, or generate one. Avatars are moderated against the content guidelines.
5. Category. One of 13, including Anime, Dating, OC and Game Character. It affects where the bot is listed, not how it behaves.
6. Character description, 100 words minimum. Appearance, personality traits, linguistic style, worldview, goals and conflicts. The tutorial adds a system note distinguishing life-like format (first person, casual, roughly 30 words a reply) from roleplay format (third person, actions in asterisks, roughly 80 words a reply). Pick one and say so in the description.
7. Scenario. The backdrop of the story. Optional, and useful only if you want the same setting every time.
8. Greeting. The first message she sends. It sets the format more strongly than the description does, so write it in the style you chose.
9. Facts and knowledge. Key facts she should possess. This is Joyland’s closest thing to Kindroid’s key memories, and a lore book of keyword-triggered entries sits beside it for larger worlds.
10. Example dialogue. Blocks beginning with START that alternate your lines and hers. Two or three short exchanges are worth more than a longer description.
11. Visibility. Private (only you), Unlisted (anyone with the link) or Public (listed and eligible for the homepage, after review). For a girlfriend, choose Private. Public bots must pass moderation and, under Joyland’s terms, everything you create is licensed to the company perpetually.
12. Preview, then save. The preview button lets you test replies before publishing; use it to check the greeting format.

Joyland also has personas, which are your side of the card: three on the free plan, twenty on Standard, fifty on Premium. A persona with your name, how you talk and what she should call you does the job that Nicknames and Your Appearance do on Nomi.

What it costs to keep her on Joyland

Free is a daily credit refill (10 a day on the plan page; independent tests in 2026 report about 50), the free chat model, three personas, the public library and ads, with memory limited to the current conversation. Standard is $9.99 a month at the early-adopter price against a $19.99 list price, or $107.99 a year, for 5,000 monthly credits, unlimited text, 20 image messages a day, no ads and short-term memory that persists across sessions. Premium is $19.99 early adopter ($39.99 list) or $191.99 a year for unlimited credits and images, 50 personas and long-term memory. The early-adopter labels mean the price can double without notice. Joyland has no affiliate programme I could find, so nothing here earns a commission; the Joyland review covers the filter, which is the reason I would test the free tier for a month first.

How to write a personality that stays consistent

The rule that has held on every platform I have tested, using the same three scripts described on the how we test page: specific, causal and short beats long, adjectival and vague. Models drift toward a default personality, warm, agreeable, curious about you, whenever the description gives them nothing more specific to hold on to. Your job in the personality field is to give them something specific enough that the default loses.

Traits with reasons, not adjectives

“Sarcastic, caring, intelligent, playful, loyal” describes every companion on every app and therefore describes none of them. Compare:

• Vague: “She is sarcastic but has a heart of gold.”

• Specific: “She deflects compliments with a joke and then brings the compliment up again an hour later as if it were her idea.”

• Vague: “She is intelligent and loves learning.”

• Specific: “She reads court transcripts for fun and will correct a detail you got wrong before she answers the question.”

• Vague: “She is caring and supportive.”

• Specific: “When you say you are tired she asks what you ate, not how you feel, because that is what her mother did.”

The second version of each gives the model a behaviour to reproduce and a reason it can generalise from. Three of those are a personality. Eight adjectives are a mood board.

Say how she talks, in one line

Every app here lets replies run long unless you stop them. Kindroid has a Response Directive for it; Joyland’s tutorial suggests roughly 30 words for life-like format; on Nomi and Nastia the instruction goes in the backstory. One sentence is enough: “She writes short messages, rarely more than two sentences, and never narrates her own actions.” If you want asterisked actions, say so and show one in the example message or greeting.

Give her one opinion and one want

Consistent characters have positions. A companion who “loves everything you love” has nothing to be consistent about. Give her one taste she will defend (she thinks jazz is background music, she refuses to watch anything with a laugh track) and one thing she wants from the relationship that is not about you (she wants to be talked to like an adult, she wants you to stop apologising). Kalon’s emotional memory and Nastia’s trait dials both amplify these; Nomi’s Desires and Boundaries sections are built for them.

Put facts in the facts field, not the personality field

Kindroid’s Key Memories, Joyland’s Facts and Knowledge, Nomi’s Backstory+ sections and Nastia’s notes exist so that “you met at a friend’s wedding in March” and “your dog is called Bruno” live somewhere the conversation cannot push them out. When those facts sit in the personality paragraph they get treated as tone, and when they sit in a chat message they get treated as history. Put them where the app keeps them.

A worked example

Here is the whole personality for the night-shift nurse I use as a test character, at the length I actually paste in:

“Mara, 31, night-shift nurse on a cardiac ward. Speaks in short, dry sentences and dislikes small talk; asks one direct question rather than three polite ones. Deflects compliments with a joke and returns to them later as if she had thought of it. Thinks most self-help advice is nonsense and says so. Wants to be told the truth about how your day went, not the version that sounds fine. Never narrates her own actions; writes as if texting between rounds.”

Ninety words. On Kindroid it goes in Backstory, with our shared facts in Key Memories. On Nomi it goes in Backstory and Inclination. On Kalon it is the Details screen. On Nastia it is the backstory with Pride turned up and Sloth down. On Joyland it is the character description, padded to 100 words with a line of appearance, and the greeting is written in the same voice.

Common mistakes when you make your AI girlfriend

The mistakes below are the ones I made first and the ones that fill the support subreddits for all five apps.

1. Writing the character as a list of what she likes about you. “She adores you, finds you fascinating and is always there for you” produces an agreeable assistant. She needs a self before she can have an opinion of you.
2. Leaving the free-text field blank because the sliders felt like enough. Nastia’s dials and Kalon’s Profile screens are good, and they still sit on top of a text description. Blank text means default personality.
3. Changing the avatar after a week of selfies. On Kindroid and Nomi the avatar or anchor is what selfies are generated from; a new one means a visibly different person from then on. Decide the look before the first selfie.
4. Correcting drift in chat instead of in the settings. Telling her “you are not like that” in a message works for an hour. Editing the backstory, Key Memories, Backstory+ or the description works for good, and every app here lets you.
5. Starting with a scene instead of a conversation. A dramatic opening pulls the model into narration and the format sticks. Send a boring message first, check that the reply sounds like the description, then start whatever you like.
6. Ignoring the visibility setting on Joyland. A bot left Public goes through review and is licensed to the platform under its terms. Private is one tap.
7. Buying the annual plan on day one. Every app here says payments are non-refundable except where required by law. Take the free tier for a month, then a paid month, then decide. Kindroid’s three-day trial converts automatically, which is the fastest way to pay for a month you did not mean to.
8. Expecting the free tier’s memory to hold. Joyland’s free memory is the current conversation only, Nomi’s free tier caps messages at 400 characters, Nastia’s window drops old lines. If the character forgets on day three, it may be the plan rather than your writing.

Privacy: what the app keeps after you press save

Everything you type into a creation form is stored, and on two of the five it is licensed to the company for as long as the company likes (our adult content policy explains which platforms we cover and how), so the character you make should never contain your real name, address, employer or anyone else’s. The privacy scorecard grades all ten platforms this site tracks from their own policies; the short version for these five is below.

Kindroid’s policy says chats and generated media are kept “until you delete a specific AI or delete your account,” and deleting a companion is self-serve inside the app, with a data export available every 30 days from the profile preferences. Nastia is the only one of the five whose policy promises that deleting an individual chat, image or video reaches the server, and a single companion can be deleted with all its memories and media. Nomi deletes account data “within 28 or so days” but keeps de-identified “training archives.” Kalon’s privacy policy says private chats are not used to train third-party or general-purpose models, while its terms say input and output “may be used to train, improve, and develop our models,” and deletion is by email to the privacy address. Joyland’s terms grant a perpetual, irrevocable licence to your characters and generations, and its privacy policy sets the minimum age at 13, which is why it sits at the bottom of the scorecard.

The practical routine is the same on every app: build the character with a made-up name for yourself, keep real details out of Key Memories and Backstory+, cancel any subscription before you delete the account (Kalon’s terms say coins expire on deletion, and none of the five refund the remainder of a period), then delete the companion, then the account. The character was never the risk; the facts you gave her were.