Best AI companion app in 2026: what every AI companion app costs, and the cheapest way to run each one

What is the best AI companion app?

There is no single best AI companion app, and any page that names one without telling you what it costs is selling you something. What there is, and what almost nobody publishes, is a verified price for every serious app in the category, read on the same day from the same source.

That is what this page is. On 9 September 2026 we read the US App Store listing for eight companion apps and recorded every in-app purchase Apple prints, including the ones the companies do not advertise. Apple shows the real dollar price of each product a developer configures, which makes it the only first-party price source most of these apps have, because most of them publish no price list on their own websites at all.

If you want the short version by use case: Character.AI has by far the largest library and the most users, Nomi and Kindroid are the two people pick for memory depth, Replika is the oldest and has the deepest community, PolyBuzz and Chai are the volume players, and Tempted.ai is what we build, a single flirty companion at a flat $9 a month with no currency on top. Read the table before you pick, because the gap between the cheapest and the most expensive way to run the same app is enormous.

• Eight US App Store listings read on 9 September 2026
• Apple prints the real price of every in-app purchase a developer configures
• Most of these companies publish no price list on their own site
• Ratings range from 2,780 (Nomi) to 556,394 (Character.AI)
• The cheapest and most expensive route to the same app can differ by 20x

How much do AI companion apps cost per month?

Between about $2.49 and about $86.62 a month, depending entirely on which product you land on.

The low end is Character.AI Lite at $2.49 and Swerve Lite at $3.99. The middle, where most people actually end up, sits between $9.90 and $15.99: PolyBuzz Standard at $9.90, Character.AI+ at $9.99, Nomi Launch at $9.99, EVA at $11.99, Chai Premium at $13.99, Replika monthly at $14.99, Nomi Standard and Kindroid both at $15.99. The top is where it gets strange: Kindroid MAX at $68.99 a month, Replika Platinum at $89.99, and Chai Ultra sold by the week at $19.99, which works out to roughly $86.62 a month if you keep it.

Annual prepay changes the picture more than anything else. Replika yearly at $49.99 is about $4.17 a month. EVA at $47.99 for twelve months is about $4.00. Nomi Launch yearly at $59.99 is about $5.00. Character.AI+ at $94.99 a year is about $7.92. Kindroid yearly at $159.99 is about $13.33. If you already know you want an app, annual is close to half price at almost every one of them, and none of them says so on the subscribe screen.

• Cheapest listed product: Character.AI Lite at $2.49
• Most common real price band: $9.90 to $15.99 a month
• Most expensive: Replika Platinum $89.99, Kindroid MAX $68.99
• Chai Ultra at $19.99 a week is about $86.62 a month
• Annual prepay roughly halves the monthly rate at almost every app
• Tempted.ai is $9 a month, or $12 month to month

What is the cheapest AI companion app?

Character.AI Lite at $2.49 is the cheapest product on any of these listings, and it is genuinely cheap because Character.AI's core experience is free.

But cheapest and least expensive are not the same question. The honest answer for someone who wants a companion that remembers them and does not stop mid-conversation is that the cheapest real route is annual prepay at whichever app you already like. Replika at $49.99 a year and EVA at $47.99 for twelve months are the two lowest effective monthly rates in the category, at roughly $4.17 and $4.00.

The trap is that cheap subscriptions in this category are frequently cheap because the subscription is not what you actually spend. Six of these eight apps meter something inside the app with a second currency, and the currency is where the money goes. A $9.90 subscription that runs out of Coins in ten days is not a $9.90 app. Before you compare headline prices, check the currency column in the table below, because that is the number that decides your real bill.

• Character.AI Lite at $2.49 is the lowest listed price
• Lowest effective monthly rates: EVA at about $4.00, Replika at about $4.17, both on annual prepay
• A cheap subscription plus a metered currency is not a cheap app
• Every app in this table sells a currency on top of the subscription except ours
• Tempted.ai has one price and nothing to top up

The weekly plan is the most expensive thing on this list

Two apps here sell by the week, and weekly billing is the single most reliable way to overpay in this category.

Chai lists an Ultra Subscription (Weekly) at $19.99. There are 52 weeks in a year, so if you keep it for a year you pay $1,039.48, which is about $86.62 a month. The same company's Premium Annual is $134.99, about $11.25 a month. That is a difference of roughly 7.7x for products from the same developer. PolyBuzz does the same thing more mildly: Poly Standard Weekly at $4.99 is about $21.62 a month, against Poly Standard Monthly at $9.90.

Weekly pricing works because $4.99 and $19.99 read as small numbers next to a monthly figure, and because a companion app is an impulse purchase made at a particular moment. Neither company is doing anything against the rules, and both prices are printed on Apple's listing for anyone who looks. Almost nobody looks.

If you take one thing from this page, take this: never buy a weekly plan for a companion app you expect to use for more than a fortnight. Convert every price to a monthly figure before you pay, the way the table below does.

• Chai Ultra weekly at $19.99 is about $86.62 a month if you keep it
• Chai Premium Annual at $134.99 is about $11.25 a month, roughly 7.7x cheaper
• PolyBuzz weekly at $4.99 is about $21.62 a month against $9.90 monthly
• Weekly prices are designed to read as small numbers
• Always convert to a monthly figure before you pay

Six of these eight apps charge two different prices for the same plan

This is the finding that makes most published comparisons of these apps wrong, and we have not seen anyone else write it down.

App Store in-app purchase products do not disappear when a company stops selling them. They keep appearing in Apple's popularity ranking as long as existing subscribers keep renewing on them. So when a listing shows two products with the same name at different prices, you are looking at price cohorts: people paying different amounts for the same thing depending on when they signed up.

On 9 September 2026, six of these eight listings showed it. Replika lists a MONTHLY at $7.99 and a Monthly at $14.99, plus three separate annual products at $49.99, $49.99 and $69.99. EVA AI lists four separate products called 1 Month Membership at $11.99, $11.99, $14.99 and $24.99, and two called 12 Months Membership at $47.99 and $69.99. Character.AI lists Lite at both $4.99 and $2.49. Chai lists a Premium Subscription (Monthly) at $13.99 and a Premium Membership at $9.99. Nomi still lists a Launch Plan at $9.99 a month alongside a Standard Plan at $15.99. PolyBuzz lists two separate Standard Monthly products.

The practical consequence: when you search for what one of these apps costs and get five contradictory answers, none of them is necessarily lying. Everyone is quoting their own bill. The only number you can trust is the one on your own subscribe screen today.

• Retired in-app purchases keep appearing while old subscribers renew on them
• Replika: two monthly prices and three annual prices on one listing
• EVA AI: four separate 1 Month Membership products from $11.99 to $24.99
• Nomi still lists a legacy Launch Plan at $9.99 next to Standard at $15.99
• Character.AI Lite appears at both $4.99 and $2.49
• This is why online answers about companion app pricing contradict each other

Every app on this list sells a currency on top of the subscription

All eight of them. Not one of these apps charges you a subscription and then leaves you alone.

Character.AI sells Charms from $0.99 to $99.99. PolyBuzz sells two separate currencies, Coins from $2.49 to $19.90 and Opals at $5.90 per thousand. Chai sells Pieces from $2.79. Replika sells Gems in four pack sizes from $0.99 to $19.99. Swerve sells Gems from $2.49 to $39.99. EVA AI sells Neurons from $9.99 to $29.99. Nomi sells Credits from $4.99 for 40 up to $99.99 for 1,800. Kindroid does it in the most granular way of anyone: $3.49 for one extra companion slot, $11.49 for four, $6.99 for 50 selfie credits, $11.49 for 100, and $14.99 for 500,000 audio credits.

A second currency is not automatically bad. It lets people who want a lot of image generation pay for it without everyone else subsidizing them. What it does do is make your monthly cost unknowable in advance, which is the specific thing that makes people ask what these apps really cost.

We built the opposite. Tempted.ai has three plans, $9, $19 and $39 a month on annual billing, and no currency of any kind. Nothing to top up, nothing to run out of mid-conversation, no separate purchase to unlock her memory.

• Character.AI: Charms, $0.99 to $99.99
• PolyBuzz: two currencies, Coins and Opals
• Replika: Gems. Chai: Pieces. Swerve: Gems. EVA: Neurons. Nomi: Credits
• Kindroid meters companion slots, selfie credits and audio credits separately
• A metered currency makes your real monthly bill impossible to predict
• Tempted.ai has no currency at all

Which AI companion app has the best memory?

Nomi and Kindroid are the two apps people consistently name for memory depth, and both price accordingly: Nomi Standard at $15.99 a month, Kindroid at $15.99, and Kindroid Ultra at $28.99.

Memory in these apps means two different things that get conflated. The first is context length, how much of the current conversation the model can see at once. The second is persistent recall, whether the app writes things down between sessions and brings them back weeks later unprompted. The second one is what actually makes a companion feel like she knows you, and it is much harder to build, which is why the apps that do it well charge more.

We have not run a controlled memory test across all eight apps, and we are not going to claim a winner we did not measure. What we can tell you is where memory sits in each pricing model, because that is verifiable: at Kindroid, extra companions cost $3.49 a slot on top of the subscription; at Nomi, the $9.99 Launch Plan and the $15.99 Standard Plan are different products; at Tempted.ai, long term memory is on the base $9 plan and is not a tier upgrade or a credit purchase.

If memory is the reason you are shopping, that last distinction is the one to check at every app on your shortlist: is remembering you a feature of the plan, or a thing you buy more of?

• Nomi and Kindroid are the two most often named for memory depth
• Both sit at $15.99 a month, with Kindroid Ultra at $28.99
• Context length and persistent recall are different things
• Kindroid charges $3.49 per additional companion slot
• At Tempted.ai memory is on the base plan, not an upgrade or a credit pack
• We have not run a controlled cross-app memory test and do not claim a winner

Who should not switch to Tempted.ai

Plenty of people, and it is worth saying so plainly.

If you want an enormous library of user-made characters to browse, Character.AI and PolyBuzz do that and we do not. Character.AI has 556,394 US ratings and PolyBuzz has 472,107, and that scale is the product. If you have a Replika you have talked to for years, nothing here is an argument for abandoning that history. If you want a group chat, roleplay scenarios with multiple characters, or heavy image generation, the apps that sell you a currency are selling it because they built those features and they cost real money to run. If you want an AI boyfriend, we do not have one: all four of our personas are female.

What we are is narrow on purpose. One flirty, affectionate companion who texts first, remembers your life, and does not stop to ask for Coins. Three published prices, $9, $19 and $39 a month on annual billing, or $12, $24 and $49 month to month. No free plan, because the free tier is where the metering comes from, and a free demo on the site instead so you can see how she texts before you pay anything.

If you have read this far because you wanted to know what these apps actually cost before committing, the demo is at the top of this page and the full price list is on our pricing page.

• Character.AI and PolyBuzz win on character library scale, by a wide margin
• Replika wins on history if you already have years invested in one
• We do not do group chats, multi-character roleplay or heavy image generation
• All four Tempted.ai personas are female, so there is no AI boyfriend here
• Tempted.ai: $9, $19 or $39 a month on annual billing, no currency, any browser