AI Companion Apps in 2026: What You Pay, What They Read, Whether She Is Anyone
Every AI companion app is wonderful in week one. The onboarding is smooth, she remembers your name, the first pictures arrive. The differences show up in week three: the subscription renews, the filter you did not notice kicks in, you read the privacy policy for the first time, and you realise the companion you have been building is nobody in particular.
This is a comparison of AI companion apps on the things that matter after week one. It covers what you actually pay, what each filter allows, who can read the conversation, and the question companion apps are designed not to raise: whether she is anyone at all. We build a character chat that is not a companion app, so the last section is biased and says so. Prices and policies are from each app's public pages and 2026 reviews as of September 2026; several official pricing pages were not reachable, so treat figures as approximate.
What You Actually Pay
| App | Free tier | Paid, per month | What paying unlocks |
|---|---|---|---|
| Replika | Unlimited text, no romance | Pro about $20, Ultra about $30, annual cheaper | Romantic partner mode, voice, better model and memory |
| Candy AI | Trial | About $14, down to about $4 on an annual plan, plus image tokens | Unlimited messages, a monthly token allowance for images and video |
| Talkie AI | Ads every few minutes, limited quota | About $10 | No ads, more quota, faster |
| PolyBuzz | Ad modal every few messages | About $10, $20 and $30 tiers | Less filtering by tier, unblurred images, longer memory |
| Character.AI | Unlimited with ads and queues | About $10 | Priority, faster models, longer memory |
| CrushOn AI | 50 messages a day with ads | From a few dollars to an unlimited tier around $50 | Message caps by tier, images |
Two things to notice. Companion apps are subscriptions almost without exception, and the headline price is rarely what people spend: Candy's real cost is the token top-ups for images, PolyBuzz's is the tier you need for the filter you want. Budget on the tier that gives you what you came for, not the entry price.
What the Filter Allows
"Companion" covers everything from strictly wholesome to fully adult, and the app store is usually the deciding factor.
- Replika removed explicit roleplay in February 2023 and never brought it back for new accounts. Romance and affection, yes; explicit, no. Its maker was also fined five million euros by Italy's data protection authority in 2025 over legal basis and age checks.
- Talkie allows romance and sanitises or blocks explicit content mid-reply; the filter tightened through 2025 and 2026, and the app has been pulled from and restored to both app stores at various points.
- PolyBuzz tiers the filter by subscription: heavily filtered and blurred on free, soft romance on the basic tier, explicit text and most nudity on the premium tiers, with some categories blurred regardless.
- Candy AI allows adult content on subscription with edge-case filters.
- Character.AI does not allow adult content at all and removed open-ended chat for under-18s in late 2025.
- CrushOn is the exception: adult on by default on paid tiers, web-only precisely so it does not have to answer to an app store.
The pattern is simple. If it ships as an iOS or Android app, the store sets the ceiling. We went through what "no filter" can honestly mean in AI chat with no filter.
Who Can Read the Conversation
All of them. Not one companion app in the table encrypts conversations so the operator cannot read them. Every privacy policy in the category allows review for safety, abuse and legal reasons; CrushOn additionally uses chats for training by default with an opt-out; Talkie's data flows across several jurisdictions according to independent researchers.
This is not a scandal, it is the architecture of moderation: a company that moderates conversations is a company that reads them. But a companion app is where people write the most personal things they will ever type into a computer, and it is worth deciding on week one, not week three, whether "readable by staff on request" is acceptable to you.
Whether She Is Anyone
Here is the question companion apps are built to avoid. The companion is an original: sliders, tags, a name you chose. She is consistent because nothing about her comes from anywhere, and that is also why week-three conversations go flat. She has no canon to draw on, no wants of her own beyond wanting you, no world to stand in. Every scene starts from "what would you like to do?"
The alternative is a character - someone from a series, with a voice you can hear, motives you already know and a world with rooms in it. Character.AI and the uncensored platforms offer characters by name, but as user-made cards in front of a shared model, so most of them are the name and a mood. Our AI character chat guide explains what a card needs to hold to actually be her, with a three-message test.
For a lot of people the answer to "companion or character" is honestly "companion", and the apps above serve that well. If you keep getting bored in week three, though, it is probably the other one.
Where We Fit
We are the team behind goongen.ai, so treat this section as the pitch.
We are not building a companion app. Our Roleplay chat is a character chat: you pick one of 1,400+ anime characters from our catalog and a story, and she plays it in her own voice. The same character can be your quiet evening, your rival or your quest companion, and stays herself in all of them. A girlfriend story is one of the six you can pick, not the product.
It is in build and not open yet. The AI roleplay page shows what it will look like and collects interest.
What it does differently from the table above:
- She is someone. Every character runs on a card built from canon: dialogue voice, speech habits, what she avoids, motives, fears, flaws, three stories set in her series.
- She sends photos of herself, drawn from her reply by the model trained on her, inside the chat. Not a lookalike.
- No subscription. 1 credit per reply; photos cost 5 credits per delivered image, refunded if they fail, packs from $0.99, crypto only.
- Nobody can read it. Everything you write is locked so only your password opens it; we never see the password, because the login checks it without it leaving your device. There is nothing readable to review or train on. No ads, nothing mined - credits pay for GPU time.
- No app store, no filter beyond two hard lines: nothing involving minors, no non-consensual material involving real people.
The honest tradeoffs: not shipped; anime characters only at first, realistic and custom characters later; no voice; crypto only; and no recovery if you lose your password and the backup file.
Closing
Compare AI companion apps on week three, not week one: the real monthly cost at the tier you need, what the store lets the filter allow, who can read what you wrote, and whether the companion is anyone. Most of the category fails the last one by design.
If you want a companion, the table is honest about the trade. If you want a character, the AI roleplay page is where ours lives, and the anime demo shows you the same characters today - 5 free images per account, no card.