What made the list
- It is built or widely used as a companion: an ongoing conversation with a character, not a tool for tasks.
- It is operating today, with a working sign-up in the US.
- We could source its prices, free tier, content policy and privacy terms from the app's own pages and date them.
- Ranking follows app-store ratings where 25 or more exist; apps without a qualifying store rating follow, in no order of merit. Affiliate payouts play no part.
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★★★★★ 4.8 App Store · Free preview / $13.99/mo · Web, iOS, Android
A build-your-own companion. You write the backstory, choose and customise a voice, and Kindroid's documented memory, split across five systems including an editable journal, carries details between conversations. Free access is now a short preview on the flagship model followed by a three-day trial, and paid add-ons (Ultra, MAX) stack on the Standard plan. Kindroid's own guidelines allow adult roleplay.
Read the Kindroid review ·
Visit Kindroid
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★★★★½ 4.7 App Store · Free, Talkie+ priced in the app · Web, iOS, Android
A character-chat and roleplay community run by SUBSUP PTE. LTD. of Singapore, a subsidiary of the Chinese AI company MiniMax, with voice calls, image generation and collectible character cards on top of text chat. Its Community Guidelines prohibit explicit and suggestive sexual content, so it is not an adult app. In the US App Store it is listed as Talkie Lab; Android and the web keep the Talkie name.
Read the Talkie review ·
Visit Talkie
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★★★★½ 4.6 App Store · Free / $15.99/mo · Web, iOS, Android
A memory-first companion from Glimpse.ai. Nomi documents short, medium and long-term memory as its core feature, and paid accounts can run up to ten Nomis and ten group chats at once. Its guidelines allow unfiltered text roleplay for adults, while nude or explicit images are banned across the platform. Available on the web and iOS; the Android app is temporarily off Google Play.
Read the Nomi.ai review ·
Visit Nomi.ai
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★★★★½ 4.5 App Store · Free / $12.99/mo · Web, iOS, Android
A community character platform where the chat itself is unlimited on the free tier, running a standard model with a shorter context. Its content policy permits adult content between consenting adult characters, and you can connect your own model provider through a proxy. The janitor+ subscription is its only paid plan.
Read the Janitor AI review ·
Visit Janitor AI
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★★★★½ 4.4 App Store · Free / $79.99/yr · Web, iOS, Android, Meta Quest VR
The companion app that started the category: Luka, Inc. says it built the first AI companion ten years ago. Replika remembers your people, plans and goals, offers text, voice calls and video chat, and frames itself around wellbeing and daily check-ins. Its terms prohibit pornographic content. Available on the web, iOS, Android and Meta Quest.
Read the Replika review ·
Visit Replika
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★★★★½ 4.3 App Store · Free / $4.99/mo · Web, iOS, Android
The largest character-chat platform, home to millions of user-made characters, with voice calls, group chats and in-chat images. Its Community Guidelines prohibit pornographic content for everyone, and since late 2025 users under 18 can no longer have open-ended chats. The free tier allows unlimited chats with ads and slow mode; c.ai lite and c.ai+ cut the ads and add memory.
Read the Character AI review ·
Visit Character AI
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★★★★½ 4.3 App Store · Pay per message / app Premium $9.99/wk or $134.99/yr · Web, iOS, Android
Chai Research's character-chat platform, with more than 25 million user-created characters by its own count. Chai's terms restrict it to adults and allow adult-oriented text, while explicit images and video are not allowed. It runs on iOS and Android, and a separate Chai Web Pro service has its own subscription.
Read the Chai AI review ·
Visit Chai AI
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★★★★ 4 App Store · Free / $9.90/mo · Web, Android
A character-chat app, formerly Poly.AI, with a large library of user-made characters, voice listening, image generation and several paid memberships that add stronger models and longer memory. Its terms are 18+ only and ban sexual content, though Apple's listing, which rated the iOS app 18+, warned of frequent sexual content. The iOS app left the App Store on October 15, 2026; it runs on Android and the web. Google Play names Cloud Whale Interactive Technology of Delaware as developer; its terms name a Hong Kong operator.
Read the PolyBuzz review ·
Visit PolyBuzz
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No App Store rating · Free / $13.99/mo · Web
A web companion from EverAI Limited in Malta with more than 100 ready-made characters and a builder for making your own. Premium adds 18+ image and video generation, unlimited text chat and a monthly token allowance; free accounts get five messages per character. There is no App Store or Google Play app: on phones it installs from the browser.
Read the Candy.ai review ·
Visit Candy.ai
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Pi
Unranked (general-purpose LLM) · Free · Web, iOS, Android
Inflection AI's personal assistant, the general-purpose model built most like a companion: a conversational style, a voice mode and memory across chats. Pi is entirely free, with no paid tier, and its terms prohibit sexually explicit content.
Read the Pi review ·
Visit Pi
Side by side
Every price is dated on the app's review. Scores follow our published rubric.
Three kinds of companion app
The apps on this page do three different jobs. Kindroid, Nomi and Replika give you one companion, or a few, built to keep a relationship going: they remember your name, your people and what you said last week, and the whole product is shaped around that continuity. Character.AI, Talkie, PolyBuzz, Janitor AI and Chai are character platforms: huge libraries of characters written by other users, where you move between stories, fandoms and scenarios. Pi is a general-purpose assistant designed to talk like a kind friend, with no character to build at all.
Most disappointment with companion apps comes from picking the wrong kind. Someone who wants a daily confidant will find a character platform shallow; someone who wants adventure will find a single companion repetitive. Decide which you want first, then pick the app.
If memory matters most
Memory is what turns a chatbot into a companion, and the apps document it very differently. Nomi makes it the headline, with layered short, medium and long-term memory and a Mind Map you can read and edit. Kindroid splits memory into persistent, cascaded and retrievable types across five systems and says it recalls everything you talk about. Replika says it remembers your people, plans and goals and follows up on them.
Character platforms remember less by design, because each chat is a separate story with a separate character. They offer tools instead: pinned messages, lorebooks and character descriptions that carry facts forward. If you want to be remembered, start with one of the first three.
If you want adult conversation
The apps here take opposite positions. Kindroid, Nomi, Janitor AI, Chai and Candy AI allow adult text for adult users under their own rules. Replika, Character.AI, Talkie, PolyBuzz and Pi do not: romance and flirting can be part of the conversation on some of them, explicit content cannot. Image rules are stricter again: Nomi and Chai allow adult text but ban explicit images, while Candy AI sells adult images on its paid plan.
If adult content is the main point, our list of the best NSFW AI chat apps covers the adult-first platforms in more depth. If you want to be sure it never comes up, pick from the second group.
If you do not want to pay
Pi is free with no paid tier at all. Character.AI and Janitor AI let you keep chatting free without a hard cap, on a lighter model or with ads. Nomi, Replika, Talkie, PolyBuzz and Chai have permanent free tiers with limits, which are enough to find out whether you like them. Kindroid now offers only a one-time preview and a trial, and Candy AI only a few free messages.
What paying buys is mostly memory, a better model and pictures, and it is worth testing the free tier for a week before deciding. Our guide to free and paid AI companions sets out what each upgrade is worth.
Safety, privacy and age
None of these apps is private the way a diary is: chats are stored so the companion can remember you, and several policies allow chats to be used to train models. Most are for adults only, and most check age by asking. Character.AI is the exception in both directions: it accepts users from 13, bans adult content, and now estimates age and asks some users for a selfie or ID check.
Each app's safety page quotes its privacy policy and records its incidents, from regulator findings to lawsuits. Use an email address that does not carry your name, keep identifying details out of chats, and pay through an app store if you want the easiest cancellation and refund route.
The apps that did not make this list
General assistants such as ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini are used as companions by many people but are not built as one, so they have their own page. Adult-first companion sites such as Nectar, GirlfriendGPT and DreamGF are on our AI girlfriend and NSFW lists. Apps that have closed or retired their companions, such as Grok's animated characters, are recorded on our shutdowns page rather than ranked.
Prices, alternatives and safety for each app
How we chose
We started from every companion app we track, grouped them by the job they do, and kept the strongest documented app of each kind: the ones whose prices, free tiers, policies and privacy terms we could source from their own pages and date. Store ratings set the order because they are the one measure of satisfaction the apps cannot write themselves; our rubric score, built only from published facts, sits in the table. Affiliate payouts play no part.
Explore other use cases