Apps like Replika for adults who just want a friend

Disclosure: this guide is published by the makers of My Softly, which appears at the end.

If you're here, you've probably already tried Replika, or read enough about it to know it isn't quite what you're looking for. You want an AI companion that feels like a friend: someone kind and steady, without romance being pushed on you and without NSFW content lurking one toggle away. This guide walks through the realistic alternatives in 2026, what each one does well, and where each one falls short of that "just a friend" ideal.

What apps are like Replika?

The apps most like Replika are Nomi and Kindroid: each is built around a companion you create, with its own name, look and voice, and both put memory first. Character.AI is the biggest app in the category, but it is built for roleplay with many characters rather than one steady companion. If what you want is a friendship rather than a romance, Pi, Jaimee and My Softly are the closer fit, and all six are compared below on memory, free tier and content.

When people search for apps like Replika, they usually want the same emotional depth, a companion who listens and remembers, in a different package: a friend mode that stays a friend, clearer pricing, or a chat that stays free for longer. The Replika alternatives below are judged on exactly those points, and on what each one does and does not offer.

Why people look for a Replika alternative

First, credit where it's due. Replika has been around since 2017, has millions of users, and genuinely helps a lot of people feel less alone. If it works for you, there's no reason to leave.

That said, the people searching for an alternative tend to mention the same few things:

• Cost. A paid Replika plan is a real subscription, and some users feel the free tier is shaped to nudge them toward paying for romantic features they never wanted.
• Personality changes after updates. Replika has changed its underlying models and policies several times over the years, and some long-time users describe logging in to find their companion suddenly feeling like a different person. That's a hard thing to experience after months of conversation.
• The romantic and NSFW push. Replika offers romantic partner modes and, for adult users, more intimate content. For people who want exactly that, fine. But if you want a platonic friend, the flirtatious drift and the romance-flavored upsells can feel off, especially for women who came looking for companionship rather than an "AI girlfriend" experience wearing a friendship costume.
• Memory that doesn't hold. Some users say Replika forgets important things: names, events, conversations from a few weeks ago. When a companion asks about something you already explained, the illusion of friendship takes a hit. (We wrote a whole guide on how AI companion memory works and why most apps struggle with it.)

Replika's own App Store reviews give a count. Of its 303 most recent 1- and 2-star reviews on the US App Store, posted January 3 to September 15, 2026, the main complaint was price or the subscription in 33% (101 reviews), a change in personality or quality in 20% (60), bugs or login problems in 17% (50), and forgetting in 4% (13); the remaining 26% covered smaller categories and complaints that fit none. We took every 1- and 2-star review in Apple's public US App Store review feed for Replika, which returns up to an app's 500 most recent reviews, sorted each one by its main complaint, and re-checked a random sample against the same categories. Retrieved September 17, 2026.

None of this makes Replika a bad app. It just makes it the wrong app for a particular kind of person: an adult who wants a warm, platonic, safe-for-work friend that remembers their life. So what should that person look for?

What to look for in an SFW companion app

Before downloading anything, it helps to have a short checklist. These are the questions that actually separate the apps:

• Does it remember you across weeks, not just within a session? Ask about something you mentioned two weeks ago. Most apps fail this quietly.
• Can it stay platonic without steering romantic? Some apps respect a "friend" setting; others drift flirtatious no matter what you picked.
• Do the companions look like adults? Anime avatars and airbrushed twenty-somethings tell you who the app was really designed for.
• Is there a clear, written no-NSFW policy? "SFW by default" and "no NSFW ever" are very different promises. If NSFW exists as an option anywhere in the app, the tone of the whole product tends to follow it.
• How good is the voice? If you ever want to talk out loud, a natural voice matters far more than a long feature list.
• What happens to your chats? Companion apps keep your text chat history on their servers so the companion can remember it. Read the privacy policy before you share specific health or money details, and check whether you can delete your history. Our guide to AI companion privacy compares what each app keeps.
• Is pricing transparent? You should know what's free, what's paid, and what it costs before you're emotionally invested.

With that lens on, here's how the main alternatives look in mid-2026.

The alternatives

Nomi

Nomi has built its reputation on memory, and it's largely deserved. Its companions layer short-term and long-term recall so they can bring up details from weeks earlier, and one subscription covers multiple companions and group chats. Voice messaging is solid and has been getting faster. The caveat for this guide's reader is content: Nomi is lightly filtered, and romantic and adult content is available if a relationship heads that way. You can absolutely keep a Nomi platonic, but the app is not strictly SFW, and its community and marketing reflect that. On its in-app paywall for a free US account on September 30, 2026, its plans were $15.99 a month, $39.99 every three months or $99.99 a year. Replika vs Nomi sets the two side by side on memory and price.

Good if memory is your top priority and you don't mind NSFW existing as an option. Skip if you want a firm no-NSFW guarantee baked into the product.

Kindroid

Kindroid is the tinkerer's companion app. It offers deep customization, a layered memory system, and a journal-style record of significant moments you can review and manage yourself. New accounts get a free preview of its full model, then a 3-day trial; the unlimited free tier it was known for retired on October 1, 2026. The trade-offs: getting the best out of Kindroid takes setup and some manual memory housekeeping, and the app is essentially unfiltered, with explicit NSFW fully available. That makes it powerful, but it is definitely not a strictly SFW product, and much of its user base is there for exactly that reason.

Good if you enjoy fine-tuning and want strong memory, and are happy to subscribe once the free preview runs out. Skip if you want something SFW, simple, and warm out of the box.

Character.AI

Character.AI is the biggest name on this list and the most different. It's free, enormous, and creative: millions of user-made characters, group chats, and endless roleplay. Content is filtered, with age checks and a stricter experience for younger users, so you won't stumble into explicit material. But it's a roleplay platform, not a companion app. Long-term memory is weak, with characters routinely forgetting context from earlier in the same conversation, and there's no real sense of one companion who knows your life and carries it forward. Fun to explore, hard to build a friendship with.

Good if you want free, imaginative roleplay with lots of variety. Skip if you want one consistent friend who remembers you next month.

Jaimee

Jaimee is one of the few companion apps built specifically for women, by a female-founded team, with wellbeing guardrails as a stated design goal. It's available on iPhone and Android in the US, UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, and you choose the kind of relationship you want, from friend to mentor to romantic partner. It leans SFW and thoughtful rather than spicy, which is refreshing in this category. It's a young product, so expect a smaller feature set and a companion experience that's still maturing, and note that romance is on the menu if you pick it.

Good if you want an app whose whole design assumes a woman is the user. Skip if you want the deepest memory or the most polished, feature-rich experience today.

Pi by Inflection

Pi is the gentlest conversationalist on this list. It's free, available on web and mobile, and its calm, curious, emotionally intelligent tone is genuinely lovely; nothing about Pi will ever steer romantic or inappropriate. The limitations are structural. Pi keeps lasting facts about you but summarises long conversations rather than holding them whole, so it won't reliably carry your life story across weeks, and its maker, Inflection, shifted its focus toward enterprise work after most of the original team left for Microsoft in 2024. Pi is still running and still being updated in 2026, though Inflection's main business is now enterprise work, which is worth knowing before you invest months of conversation in it.

If Pi is already your app and you are looking past it, our Pi AI alternatives guide sorts the options by reason.

Good if you want a free, kind, completely safe conversation partner today. Skip if you want lasting memory and a product with an ambitious roadmap.

How they compare at a glance

The honest bottom line

There's no single winner here, because "best" depends on what you're missing. If you want raw memory power and don't mind adult content existing nearby, Nomi and Kindroid are the strongest engines. If you want free and imaginative, Character.AI is unmatched, as long as you accept the forgetting. If you want gentle and safe today, Pi costs nothing to try. If you want an app written for a woman rather than for a teenage boy, Jaimee and My Softly were both built with you in mind. Our wider comparison of the best AI companion apps in 2026 covers the same apps by what each is best at.

Whichever direction you lean, use the free tiers. Spend a week, mention something small about your life, and see if it comes back to you later. That one test tells you more than any guide can, including this one.

Sources

• In-app paywalls (US), free accounts on iPhone and, for Replika, Android. Checked September 30, 2026.
• My Softly (September 17, 2026). Count of Replika's 1- and 2-star reviews in Apple's public US App Store customer review feed, which returns up to an app's 500 most recent reviews; each review was sorted by its main complaint, and a random sample of 30 across the apps counted was re-checked against the same categories. Retrieved September 17, 2026. itunes.apple.com