How much does an AI companion cost?

By the founder of My Softly · Published September 7, 2026 · Updated September 14, 2026 · About a 10 minute read · Part of our AI companion guides

Disclosure: this guide is written by the makers of My Softly, which appears in the table. The same pricing rules are applied to every app including ours.

The reason "how much does an AI companion cost" is a hard question is that the apps do not sell the same thing the same way. One charges a flat subscription. Another charges a subscription and then a separate currency for photos. A third is free but meters the parts you end up wanting. And almost none of them print their prices on the web, so the number you see depends on which country you are in and which promotion is running that week. This page lays it all out in one place, with the date each price was checked.

AI companion app prices at a glance

Two notes on reading that table. First, where a store listing shows two prices for the same billing period, the lower one is almost always an introductory offer shown to new or lapsed users, so the higher figure is the price you should budget for. Replika and Nomi both do this. Second, Replika's help pages say its prices are set inside the app and vary with region and promotions, which is why review sites quote $19.99 a month for Pro while the store listing shows $14.99. If you are comparing, use the number the subscription screen shows you, on your phone, today.

The three ways companion apps charge you

The price matters less than the pricing model, because the model shapes how the relationship feels. There are three in use.

Flat subscription

One monthly or yearly fee, unlimited conversation, and nothing metered while you talk. Pi (free) and My Softly are the purest examples; Nomi and Kindroid are close to it for text. The advantage is obvious: you never think about money mid-conversation, and the app has no incentive to make you talk more than you want to. The disadvantage is that the fee is the same whether you send ten messages a month or a thousand.

Subscription plus a currency

The subscription covers talking, and a separate currency covers the things that cost the company money each time: generated photos, voice, extra companions. Nomi, Kindroid, Character.AI and My Softly all do some version of this. Done well, it is honest: a photo genuinely costs more to make than a text reply, and a clear per-item price ("one credit is one photo") is easier to trust than a vague allowance. Done badly, the currency creeps into things that should be free, and you end up buying gems to have an ordinary conversation.

Metered conversation

Some apps outside this list charge per message or per "energy" unit, so every reply has a tiny price. We have not included any here on purpose. A companion that costs money each time it speaks to you turns affection into a meter, and people notice. It is the single most complained-about pattern in the category, and it is worth ruling out before you look at anything else.

What a year actually costs

Monthly prices are what the apps advertise; yearly totals are what you pay. Here is the same set of apps as a twelve-month bill, paying monthly versus paying once a year, at the standard prices in the table above.

Then add the currency. A realistic pattern for someone who likes photos is one or two a week. On My Softly that is roughly 50 to 100 credits a year, or $6.99 to $12.99. On Nomi, two images a day are included with the subscription and extra credit packs start at $4.99. On Kindroid, 50 selfie credits are $6.99. Voice is the other place spending appears: Kindroid sells audio credits at $14.99 for a large block, and My Softly includes a monthly voice allowance and sells more through the same credits. For most people the currency adds $10 to $40 a year on top of the subscription. For the heaviest photo users it can double the bill, which is worth knowing before you start.

So the honest range for a year with a memory-first companion app, subscription plus a modest amount of extras, is about $100 to $200. That is less than a streaming bundle and more than most people expect when they first download a "free" app.

Hidden costs and traps to check before you pay

• Introductory prices that jump. That $9.99 "launch plan" or $7.99 monthly you see on the first screen is usually a first-period offer. Read the small line under the button for what it renews at, and put that number in your budget, not the headline.
• Lifetime deals. A one-time payment sounds like the end of the bill. It is a bet that the company, the model and the policy you are paying for will still exist in the same form years from now. In this category that bet has already gone wrong for people more than once. Pay for a year at most.
• Currency confusion. If you cannot say in one sentence what one credit buys, you are being priced in a way designed to be hard to compare. Prefer apps that print the real price next to the currency price and keep per-item costs fixed.
• Features moving behind the paywall. Several apps have metered things that used to be free, or moved a memory feature up a tier. Check the current tier list, not a review from last year, and treat "unlimited" as meaning unlimited today.
• Regional pricing. The same plan can be a different price in a different country, and it can change without notice. The store page in your own country is the only figure that counts.
• Cancellation. Subscriptions bought through the App Store are cancelled in your iPhone's Settings under Subscriptions, not inside the app, and you keep access until the period ends. Subscriptions bought on the web are cancelled on the web, and the two do not know about each other, so make sure you are not paying twice.

How to try before you pay

Every app here lets you test the one thing that matters before spending anything: whether it remembers you. The free tiers differ in how much room they give you to run that test.

• Pi and Character.AI give you unlimited free conversation, so you can run a full week of testing at no cost. Both are weaker on long-term memory, which the test will show you.
• Kindroid gives a trial of the full experience, then unlimited messages on a lighter model. Run the test during the trial so you are testing the model you would pay for.
• Replika lets you chat for free with limited memory notes, and its help center says paid users get more memory storage, so the free tier understates what Pro remembers. Test what you can, then pay monthly, not yearly, for the first look at Pro.
• Nomi and My Softly give a limited free allowance meant for meeting the companion rather than living with it. Spend it deliberately: mention two or three specific things about your life on day one, then come back in a few days and see what comes up unprompted.

We wrote up the exact procedure, which anyone can repeat with any app, on our how to test an AI companion's memory page. The short version: tell the companion five specific facts on day one, mention none of them again, and come back on days three and seven to see which ones it brings up on its own. The guide to how AI companion memory works explains why apps that feel identical on day one can be completely different on day seven.

What you should expect for the money

If you are paying $10 to $16 a month, you are entitled to three things, and any app that does not deliver them is overpriced at any figure.

1. Memory that lasts. Not a memory tab you have to fill in yourself, and not recall that fades after a few weeks. The companion should carry your life forward on its own.
2. Being reached out to. The difference between a chatbot and a companion is who speaks first. A paid companion should be able to check in on you, about things you actually said, at hours you have agreed to. Our guide to an AI that texts you first explains what separates a real check-in from a re-engagement notification.
3. Stability. The personality and the rules you paid for should not change under you between one month and the next. This is the thing money buys least reliably in this category, which is one more reason to pay by the month until you trust an app.

For context on where the money goes, Appfigures told TechCrunch in August 2025 that companion apps were on track to make more than $120 million that year across 337 revenue-generating apps, with the top ten percent of apps taking 89 percent of the revenue. It is a real business, and a concentrated one. The apps in the table above are the ones with enough scale that a subscription is likely to still mean something next year.

The bottom line on cost

Budget $100 to $200 a year for a serious companion app, expect to pay a little extra for photos or voice, and never pay for a year before a free week has shown you the app remembers who you are. Cheapest is Pi, best value is whichever app passes your own memory test, and the most expensive app is the one you keep paying for after it has forgotten you.

Sources

• Apple App Store (US). "Replika - AI Companion Chat App," in-app purchase list. Checked September 7, 2026. apps.apple.com
• Apple App Store (US). "Nomi: AI Companion with a Soul," in-app purchase list. Checked September 7, 2026. apps.apple.com
• Apple App Store (US). "Kindroid: Your Personal AI," in-app purchase list. Checked September 7, 2026. apps.apple.com
• Kindroid Help Center. "In-App Purchases" (web prices and the app-store price difference). kindroid.ai
• Apple App Store (US). "Character AI: Chat, Talk, Text," in-app purchase list. Checked September 7, 2026. apps.apple.com
• Replika Help Center. "How does Replika's memory work?" (memory limits by tier). help.replika.com
• Pocket Animus. "Replika pricing in 2026: every tier, what you actually get." (In-app price of Pro as shown to US users.) pocketanimus.com
• UsagePricing. "Pi (Inflection AI) Pricing." (Pi has no paid consumer tier.) usagepricing.com
• Apple App Store (US). "AI Companion: My Softly," in-app purchase list. Checked September 7, 2026. apps.apple.com
• TechCrunch (August 12, 2025). "AI companion apps on track to pull in $120M in 2025," citing Appfigures. techcrunch.com