On Replika’s homepage, a counter keeps a running tally of the people who have signed up. On the day we checked it read 42,160,934. Set that beside a sober statistic from Pew Research Center: in February 2026, only 4% of American adults said they use AI chatbots for companionship, though 10% said they turn to them for emotional support or advice.
Both figures are true, and together they describe an odd market: enormous reach, a modest core of regular users, and a lot of very different products wearing the same label. Some AI companions are built to be a confidant, some a sparring partner for ideas, some a cast of characters for collaborative fiction, and some a romantic partner with a subscription attached.
This guide covers the whole spread. We have chosen eight apps and websites for AI friendship, conversation, emotional support, role-play and romance, all of them active in October 2026 and all restricted to adults. Prices and ratings were checked on 19 October 2026.
Our quick picks for AI companionship
- Best overall: Nomi, for memory that holds over months and a free tier that needs no card.
- Best for building your own character: Kindroid.
- Best AI chatbot friend for gentle daily support: Replika.
- Best for role-play and stories: Character.AI.
- Best free option: Pi, which has no paid tier at all.
- Best for voice: Sesame, currently a free iPhone preview.
AI companion apps compared: scores, ratings and prices
| App | Best for | Our score | Store rating (store, country, date) | Free version | Paid from |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nomi | Long-term memory | 9.1 | 4.5, App Store UK, 19 Oct 2026 | Yes, no card | £9.99/month |
| Kindroid | Character design | 8.9 | 4.6, App Store UK, 19 Oct 2026 | Preview, then 3-day trial | £14.99/month |
| Replika | Supportive friendship | 8.6 | 4.2, App Store UK, 19 Oct 2026 | Limited | £7.99/month |
| Character.AI | Role-play | 8.3 | 4.1, App Store UK, 19 Oct 2026 | Yes, with ads | £1.99 (Lite) |
| Candy.ai | Visual customisation | 7.9 | Web only | Five messages | $13.99/month list |
| Pi | Free conversation | 7.4 | 4.5, App Store UK, 19 Oct 2026 | Yes, fully free | No paid tier |
| Sesame | Voice chat | 7.3 | 4.9, App Store UK, 19 Oct 2026 | Free in preview | No paid tier yet |
| EVA AI | Relationship-style chat | 7.0 | 4.3, App Store UK, 19 Oct 2026 | Yes, limited | £10.99/month |
UK App Store prices are in sterling. Candy.ai displayed US dollars when we checked.
Nomi: the best AI companion app for memory that lasts
Nomi, from Glimpse.ai, Inc., a Maryland company, has the clearest answer to the question that matters most in this category: will it remember? The company describes short, medium and long-term memory designed to carry details from one week into the next, and you can add a custom backstory to give each companion a starting point.
You can run several Nomis, each with its own personality. They can join group chats together, talk by voice message or hands-free call, send selfies, look at images you share, read links and, if you allow it, message you first after a quiet spell. Nomi says chats are anonymised and not shared with third-party sites.
Pricing. It is free to start without a credit card. On the UK App Store, the Launch Plan was £9.99 a month or £59.99 a year, and the Standard Plan £14.99 a month, £39.99 a quarter or £99.99 a year. Credit packs start at £4.99.
Age and privacy. Apple rates it 18+, and the privacy policy, updated in April 2026, says no one under 18 should use it. Nomi pledges never to sell or rent personal information and removes it within about 28 days of account deletion, though material in its training archives stays, no longer attributable to you. Its App Store label lists contact details, user content and identifiers among data linked to you.
Platforms and rating. iOS, Android and the web. It scored 4.5 from 272 UK App Store ratings, and 3.9 on Google Play in the UK.
Kindroid: an AI companion you author yourself
Kindroid is run by Beautifully Incorporated in Los Angeles, and it suits people who would rather write a character than meet one. Each companion, called a Kin, gets a name, personality, backstory, appearance and voice of your choosing. That makes it as good for a witty sounding board or a fictional friend as for anything romantic.
The toolkit runs from text and voice notes to voice and video calls, selfies, short video selfies, group chats and Rooms, a beta feature for conversations shared with friends and their own Kins. Subscribers get Cascaded Memory for longer context.
Pricing. New accounts receive a one-off preview of 50 messages (15 in some regions), five selfies and up to two Kins. After that comes a three-day trial that needs a payment method and converts unless cancelled, with an email reminder the day before. The UK App Store listed the subscription at £14.99 a month, £39.99 for three months or £149.99 a year, with Ultra (£29.99) and MAX (£69.99) add-ons. Kindroid says web purchases are usually cheaper.
Age and privacy. Users must be 18. Its age verification policy, updated on 9 October 2026, treats a subscription as proof of age and asks flagged free users to verify through Yoti by selfie estimate (passing at 21 or over) or ID. The privacy policy says chats are encrypted at rest and in transit but “not end-to-end encrypted”, and staff may review excerpts flagged by safety systems.
Rating. 4.6 from 769 UK App Store ratings.
Replika: the AI chatbot friend that started it all
Luka, Inc.’s Replika calls itself “the AI friend to do life with”, and its emphasis falls squarely on the friend. Apple files it under Health & Fitness. Your Rep keeps track of the people, routines, plans and goals in your life, takes voice calls, sends selfies and doodles on your photos.
Pricing. The free tier offers limited access. According to Replika’s help centre, Pro adds relationship status, voice messages, selfies, image generation and premium voices; Ultra adds what it calls stronger emotional intelligence and saving messages to memory; Platinum adds real-time video recognition and selfie videos. The UK App Store listed monthly options at £7.99 and £12.99 and annual ones from £43.99, but does not label each price by tier.
Age and privacy. The privacy policy, updated in May 2026, says the service is not intended for under-18s and that conversation content will never be used for marketing or advertising. Small, anonymised portions of messages train its in-house safety algorithms, and messages are kept for up to 60 days after you close your account. The App Store label does show identifiers and usage data used for tracking. Replika’s history matters here: Italy’s privacy regulator fined Luka €5 million in 2025 over ineffective age checks.
Rating. 4.2 from 19,000 UK App Store ratings, and 4.1 from more than 500,000 on Google Play in the UK, where it has passed 10 million downloads.
Character.AI: a role-play platform with millions of characters
Character Technologies’ app works more like a library than a single relationship. Its App Store listing promises “millions of user-generated AI Characters”, custom characters with their own personalities, backstories and voices, live voice calls and collaborative storytelling with branching plots and alternate timelines. You can follow creators and share your own characters.
It is also the app most changed by regulation. On 29 October 2025 the company announced that under-18s would lose open-ended chat by 25 November, backed by an in-house age model and third-party checks including Persona. The UK App Store now rates it 18+ with age assurance. Its ratings diverge sharply by store: on Google Play in the UK it averaged 1.8 stars from 2.3 million ratings, against 4.1 from 67,000 on the App Store.
Pricing. Free with ads. The UK App Store listed Character.AI Lite at £1.99 and £4.99, Character.AI+ at £9.99 and £99.99, and Charms packs from 99p.
Privacy. Its App Store label is the broadest on this list: location, contact information, identifiers and usage data may be used to track you, and purchases, financial information, user content and search history are among data linked to you.
Platforms. iOS, Android and the web.
Candy.ai: an adults-only companion site with a visual bent
Candy.ai is run by EverAI Limited, registered in Malta, and it is the most explicitly adult service here. It offers chat that adapts to your tone, a choice of voices, generated images and video, and more than 100 ready-made characters across women, men and anime, or a builder for your own. We describe it without its explicit features.
Pricing. Free users get five messages. The subscriptions page showed a $13.99 monthly list price, $9.99 for the first month, $8.99 a month on a quarterly plan ($26.97 billed) or $3.99 a month on an annual plan ($47.88 billed). Premium includes 100 tokens a month for media, and remaining tokens expire when a subscription ends. UK and EU residents have a 14-day withdrawal right on the initial purchase only.
Age and privacy. The privacy policy, updated on 16 October 2026, restricts use to adults aged at least 18, and the terms let the company ask you to prove it. De-identified conversations may train its models, with human review, and unnamed third-party language-model providers may receive message content. Account data is kept for up to three years after your last activity unless you ask for deletion.
Platforms. Desktop and mobile browsers only, with an option to pin it to a phone’s home screen.
Pi: a free AI confidant built for conversation
Pi, from Inflection AI, Inc. in San Francisco, is the least showy app on this list and the only one with no paid tier. It introduces itself as “supportive, smart, and there for you anytime”. There is no avatar to dress and no romance mode. Its Google Play listing describes conversation and emotional support, a voice mode, language practice, help with decisions and plans, and a manner that adapts to you over time.
Its maker’s priorities have shifted. In March 2024 Microsoft hired Inflection’s chief executive, Mustafa Suleyman, its co-founder Karén Simonyan and other staff; by August that year the company had capped heavy free use of Pi and turned towards enterprise customers, though it said it would not close the consumer app. Pi remains live in October 2026: the Android app was updated on 21 September.
Pricing. The UK App Store lists it as free, with no in-app purchases.
Age and privacy. Inflection’s terms bar under-18s, and Apple rates Pi 18+, though Google Play rates it PEGI 3. The privacy policy, updated in August 2026, lets you opt out of model training in account settings, says Inflection does not sell or share personal information, and keeps inputs for at most 15 days after you delete them, with outputs retained indefinitely for limited purposes.
Rating. 4.5 from 348 UK App Store ratings; 3.6 on Google Play in the UK.
Sesame: voice-first AI companions in preview
Sesame AI, Inc. is betting that the most human-feeling companion is one you speak to. Its iPhone app, launched as a preview in 39 countries in May 2026, offers four personas, Maya, Miles, Simone and Charlie, each with its own voice, personality and separate memory that carries between voice and text. An Incognito Mode lets an agent draw on what it already knows without saving anything new.
It is closer to a curious friend than a partner. The App Store listing pitches it for quick answers, brainstorming and “a sounding board for hard conversations”, with web search, notes and reminders built in. New users may wait briefly for access, and an Android version is promised without a date.
Pricing. Free during the initial rollout; Sesame has not published future prices.
Age and privacy. Its terms require users to be 18, and Apple rates it 18+. The privacy policy says Sesame does not sell or share personal information and lets logged-in users opt out of training in settings, though it sets no fixed retention period for their content.
Rating. 4.9 from 233 UK App Store ratings, a small sample for a young app.
EVA AI: relationship-style chat with a currency attached
EVA AI Soulmate is made by Novi Limited of Nicosia, Cyprus. It is built around a developing relationship: you pick from a set of personalities or create your own character, then build closeness through shared memories and track how its moods and reactions change. The developer states that it does not provide medical or mental health advice.
Pricing. The UK App Store listed one-month memberships at £10.99 and £18.99, three months at £21.99 and 12 months at £30.99 or £45.99, plus EVA Premium at £14.99 and packs of an in-app currency called Neurons from £6.99. The listing does not explain which offer applies to whom, which costs it marks on value.
Age and privacy. Rated 18+ on the App Store and PEGI 18 on Google Play. The privacy policy, updated in June 2026, promises never to sell personal data and says chats are not shared with other companies, with exceptions for service providers. Text and voice messages are used to develop its AI, usage data goes to a named partner, Mintegral, and retention is defined only as “the time necessary”. The App Store label shows identifiers and usage data used for tracking.
Platforms and rating. iOS and Android. It scored 4.3 from 2,200 UK App Store ratings and 3.8 from about 66,000 on Google Play, with more than 5 million downloads.
Companion chatbots we left out, and why
Several well-known names did not make the cut. Chai is large and active, and its safety page says it is 18+ only, scans every message for self-harm content and requires a paid subscription in some regions. But Australia’s eSafety Commissioner warns that sexual or violent content may appear “unexpectedly or unprompted”, and its privacy policy allows data to be kept for up to five years after an account is deleted.
Others fell on age. Apple’s UK store rates the Grok app 16+ and Paradot 16+, the latter last updated in August 2025. Snapchat, home of My AI, has a minimum age of 13. None suits an adults-only list.
How we chose these AI companion sites
No one on our team ran a hands-on trial for this guide. The ranking is an editorial assessment of each company’s feature pages, help centres, pricing, terms and privacy policies, together with App Store and Google Play listings, all read on 19 October 2026.
We scored each service on the five criteria set out on how we review: memory and conversation (30%), customisation (20%), privacy and data (20%), price (15%), and age safeguards and wellbeing (15%). Nomi, Kindroid, Replika, Character.AI and Candy.ai keep the scores from our AI girlfriend apps guide. Store ratings are a guide to sentiment, not a substitute for policy detail.
Choosing a virtual companion: what to check first
Decide what you want it for. Pi and Sesame are conversationalists. Replika leans supportive. Character.AI is for stories. Nomi and Kindroid cover the full range from friendship to romance, and our AI boyfriend apps guide covers male companions specifically.
Read the billing, not the banner. Kindroid’s trial needs a payment method. Candy.ai’s best monthly price depends on paying for a year upfront. EVA AI and Character.AI layer in-app currencies on top of subscriptions.
Compare the store ratings with the terms. They do not always agree. Pi is 18+ under its terms and on the App Store, yet PEGI 3 on Google Play. The terms are what bind the company.
AI friendship and wellbeing: what the research says
The evidence is mixed in an instructive way. Harvard Business School researchers found that a 15-minute chat with a warm, empathetic chatbot eased loneliness about as much as talking to a person, but daily sessions over a week did not add up to lasting relief.
A four-week trial by MIT Media Lab and OpenAI, with 981 participants, found that those who chose to use a chatbot more had consistently worse outcomes on loneliness, real-world socialising and emotional dependence. The public is wary too: in June 2026, 39% of US adults told Pew that chatbots hurt people who use them for loneliness, against 19% who said they help.
The design of the apps is part of the story. The Ada Lovelace Institute’s study of the companionship market flagged sycophancy, paid memory, streaks and microtransactions, comparing some tactics to gaming and gambling. Use these apps in short sessions, keep friends and sleep in the diary, and if you are struggling, speak to a person: Samaritans in the UK or the 988 Lifeline in the US.
Privacy and regulation: who sees your chats
Assume someone can. The same Ada Lovelace study found 14 of 16 platforms claimed broad rights over user content, including chat logs, and 15 of 17 popular UK services had weak or no age checks. Keep names, addresses and employers out of conversations.
Regulators are catching up. The US Federal Trade Commission sent orders to seven companies, including Character Technologies, Snap and xAI, in September 2025. New York has required companion operators since November 2025 to disclose that users are talking to an AI and refer those at risk to crisis services. California’s Adam’s Law, signed in September 2026, adds age assurance, as our news report explains. More context is on our AI companions hub, and our AI in dating research looks at how all this affects human romance.
Frequently asked questions
What is the best AI companion app?
In our assessment, Nomi, because its layered memory sustains a companion over months and it can be tried free without a card. Kindroid is the better pick if you want to design a character in detail.
Is there a completely free AI chatbot friend?
Pi has no paid tier and lists no in-app purchases. Sesame is free during its iPhone preview. Nomi and Character.AI have free tiers alongside paid plans.
Are AI companion sites only for romance?
No. Pi and Sesame are built for conversation, Replika leans towards supportive friendship, and Character.AI centres on role-play. Romance is optional or paid on most services.
Do AI companion apps check your age?
All eight here are restricted to adults, but methods vary. Kindroid and Character.AI use age-assurance tools, while several others rely mainly on store ratings and self-declaration.
Can AI companion apps read my conversations?
Policies differ. Kindroid says flagged excerpts may be reviewed by staff, Candy.ai uses de-identified chats for training with human review, and Pi and Sesame let you opt out of model training.