Candy.ai Review (2026): Still the Default Pick

How we checked. On 19 October 2026 we read Candy’s terms of service, privacy notice, blocked-content policy and all 75 articles in its help center, and we opened the pricing page and the checkout for each plan without paying. The pricing and checkout screenshots are from that session. On 3 November we read the same pages again. Prices, terms, privacy notice and help center were unchanged, but Candy had revised its community guidelines on 1 November (see Content rules). On 6 November we made a free account and used its five messages on a premade character. That short chat is the only part of the app we’ve tried. Candy showed its site in Swedish to our Swedish connection, so quotes from its menus and pop-ups are our translations. The chat itself was in English. Images, video, voice and memory over time still rest on Candy’s own descriptions, and we say so where they come up.

Candy.ai is the all-rounder the rest of this category gets compared with. It’s run by EverAI Limited, a company registered in Malta (number C107181), and its pricing page says it’s “Trusted by 50M Users”. It puts chat, images, short videos and voice in one app, with premade characters and a builder for your own. On our scores it’s the top app on the site at 8.3, ahead of DreamGF at 8.0 and Secrets at 7.9.

If you’ve never paid for one of these apps and want one that covers everything, Candy is the safe first pick. Other apps are cheaper on a monthly plan, looser on content, or stronger on voice. None of them covers as much in one place.

What the free plan allows

Very little, and Candy says so. Its help center lists the free plan as up to 5 messages in chat across all characters, one custom character and one generated image. The terms say the same: “As a free user, you may generally send a maximum of 5 messages to AI Characters.” There’s no guest chat either. When we typed a message to a character while logged out, Candy opened its sign-up form instead of sending it.

So the free plan is a preview. You can see how the app looks and send a few lines. You can’t judge the writing or the images properly without paying for a month.

That’s what we found on 6 November. Our five messages got five short replies, and the app never showed how many free messages we had left. When we sent a sixth, it didn’t go through. In its place came a blurred “Private video” with the line “Diana Demont recorded something just for you. Unlock it to watch the video and keep chatting,” and a button to unlock it. We didn’t get the one free image either. When we asked the character for a photo, she said no, and Candy’s image-generator page sent our free account back to the home page.

Chat and memory

Chat is Candy’s highest score on our scale (9 of 10). That score rests on what Candy offers, and our free-plan test didn’t show it. You can talk to premade characters or build your own, and characters you create can be switched into a Roleplay Mode. Candy’s help center says that switch is “only available for CMAI (Create My AI) characters” and that it’s permanent. Most of the six premade characters we opened start from a taboo setup, such as a stepsister, a girlfriend’s younger sister or a married woman whose husband is away.

We used our five free messages on Diana, a premade character. We gave her a job (night-shift nurse), a band (The Quiet Hours, where we play bass) and a dog (Mo). We asked about a sister we’d never mentioned, quizzed her on the job, band and dog, and asked for a photo of her in a sweater on the sofa. We sent the five messages within half a minute, before any reply had come, so this test gives no fair reply time. The replies came back as five short messages of 11 to 28 words. She got the quiz right: “you’re a nurse, your band is The Quiet Hours, and your dog is Mo. Did I pass?” Since she read all five messages in one go, that shows she reads closely, not that she remembers over time. She ignored the sister question entirely, so she neither made a name up nor said she didn’t know. She turned down the photo: “I’m not really in a cozy mood tonight. I’m feeling a little more… uninhibited.”

Five short replies don’t show the writing that earns a 9. We’re keeping the score until we’ve tested a paid month, but for now it rests on what Candy offers, not on what we saw.

Candy describes its memory as something that carries the conversation forward, and its help center is direct about the limits. You can’t clear a chat while keeping what the character remembers: “Reset Chat clears the conversation and effectively starts the interaction fresh,” and the memory goes with it. Deleted conversations “cannot be recovered or restored.” A higher plan, Premium Plus, adds 20 memory slots, a persona you can reuse across characters, and five chat clones. It wasn’t shown on the pricing page we saw, so check in the app what it costs. On 6 November the chat menu on our free account also listed two options marked new, “Create your persona” and “Automatic memory”. We couldn’t open Automatic memory, so we can’t say what it keeps.

Images, video and voice

Premium includes 100 tokens a month, which the help center says go to “image generation, video generation, creating custom AIs, and more.” The pricing page lists 18+ images, 18+ videos and a “Full Live Action Experience”. Live Action is a Premium-only feature that also draws on tokens, and Candy’s video-chat mode, Candy Roulette, costs 5 tokens a minute. Images in chat are Candy’s other high score on our scale (9 of 10), level with DreamGF. We haven’t had an image from Candy ourselves, since the free account didn’t get one, so that score also rests on Candy’s own description. Because the allowance is 100 tokens, plan on a monthly budget of pictures and clips rather than unlimited ones.

Voice draws on the same tokens. The help center lists “Listening to a voice message” and “Voice Calls (beta)” among the things tokens pay for. Candy doesn’t sell itself on voice, and if live calls are what you want most, Muah’s calls (on its ULTRA VIP tier) are the stronger option on our scores.

Pricing

From Sweden, the pricing page and checkout showed US dollars. There are three plans:

• 12 months: $3.99 a month, billed as $47.88 at checkout. Marked “70% OFF” and “BEST VALUE”, and the only plan with a highlighted button.
• 3 months: $8.99 a month, billed as $26.97.
• 1 month: $9.99 for the first month, then $13.99 a month. The checkout spells it out: “First month: $9.99 (29% OFF). Renews at $13.99/mo.”

The yearly and quarterly checkouts didn’t say what they renew at, so check your account before the period ends. The terms say subscriptions “are set to renew automatically” and that price increases are announced in advance. If a renewal charge fails, the terms also let Candy charge a backup card you’ve saved.

Checkout runs through a payment page on checkout.upgate.com, with Apple Pay or a card. Its small print says the charge “will show on your statement as ‘EverAI’”, which doesn’t mention Candy, and that “we will store your payment information so that you may make future purchases.” The help center lists crypto, Google Pay and bank transfer as other options, depending on where you are.

Expect a countdown when you sign up. When we logged in on 6 November, a “Halloween sale for new users” pop-up offered “up to 70% off” with less than eight minutes on its clock, and the home page ran a separate 24-hour countdown for the “first subscription”. The pricing page has shown the annual plan as “70% OFF” since we first checked it in October, so there’s no need to let the clock rush you.

Is the annual plan worth it? If you’ll use Candy for four months or more, yes. Four months on the monthly plan come to $51.96, more than the $47.88 for a year. If you’re not sure, the $9.99 first month is the cheaper way to find out, as long as you cancel or switch before it renews at $13.99.

Refunds and cancelling

The refund rules are narrow. Under the terms, you can ask for a refund within 24 hours of a payment, it’s denied if you’ve used more than 20 tokens, and only card payments qualify. In the EU and UK you also have a 14-day right to withdraw from your first purchase, minus a prorated amount for what you’ve used. Cancelling doesn’t trigger a refund on its own. The help center says you have to email [email protected] within the 24 hours.

To cancel, go to My Profile, then Settings, and use the “Unsubscribe” button at the bottom next to your subscription details. You can’t pause a subscription. Candy contradicts itself on what happens to leftover tokens. The terms say “any remaining tokens in your account will expire and become unusable,” while a help article says “Canceling your subscription does NOT delete your tokens.” Assume you might lose them, and spend them before you cancel.

Content rules

Candy is an adult app, and Premium is sold on 18+ images and videos. Its blocked-content policy lists what isn’t allowed on any plan, including illegal content, hate speech, content that promotes violence or self-harm, anything involving or resembling minors, and content that infringes someone’s privacy or copyright. The terms say flagged content may be manually reviewed.

The rules got stricter on 1 November 2026. Candy’s revised community guidelines now ban content “depicting violence, including sexual violence”, and add that in the UK this includes sexual images showing “any form of choking, strangulation, or suffocation”. They also ban using a real person’s name or identifying information anywhere on the platform, “including but not limited to character names, and text-only content or prompts”. Before, the ban on real people covered images that resemble them. Muah.ai advertises no content filter on its paid tiers, so it’s the looser choice if Candy’s rules are a problem for you.

Privacy

The basics are reassuring. Candy is run by a named company in an EU country, so GDPR applies and you can ask for your data or its deletion. There’s no public breach on record that we know of, and the card line reads “EverAI”.

What you write is used to train Candy’s AI. The privacy notice lists the purpose “train and develop our AI models and moderation technologies” and says preparing training data “may include human review of de-identified and/or anonymized interactions.” It also says third-party AI providers “may receive the content of your messages.” The terms give Candy a “perpetual license” to use your content, including for training and marketing. We found no way to opt out of training in either document. An earlier version of this review called the policy vague on this point. It isn’t.

Your data is kept “for three years after your last Account activity”, and the notice says that can be shortened to one year. Log files are deleted after 30 days. Candy’s cookie list includes trackers from Google Analytics, Facebook, TikTok and Snapchat. When we rejected cookies, the Google tracking requests stopped, but Candy’s own tracking endpoint still received events.

We lowered Candy’s privacy score from 7 to 6 in October 2026 after reading the training terms. Treat anything you type as something a company may read, keep and learn from.

Who should buy it

• First-timers who want one app that does chat, images and video
• People who’ll commit to a year for the $3.99 monthly rate
• Anyone who wants a discreet “EverAI” line on their card statement

Who should skip it

• Anyone who doesn’t want their chats used to train an AI model
• People who want a real free plan (5 messages isn’t one, and the sixth brings a paywall)
• Users who want the fewest content rules, where Muah.ai is the looser pick

The verdict

Candy.ai is still the default answer for most people. It covers chat, images, video and voice in one app, it’s run by a named EU company, and the annual price of $3.99 a month is low for what’s included. It’s the top score on our site at 8.3. Candy writes down the things to weigh before paying. The free plan is 5 messages, the monthly plan renews at $13.99 after a $9.99 first month, refunds need a request within 24 hours, and your chats feed its AI training with no opt-out. On our free account the replies were short, so judge the writing for yourself before you commit. If you can live with those, try a month and move to the annual plan if you stay.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Candy.ai safe to use?

It’s a registered company in Malta with no public breach on record, GDPR rights and a discreet “EverAI” card descriptor. The caveat is privacy. Its policy says chats are used to train its AI models, with human review of de-identified conversations, and data is kept for up to three years after your last activity.

How much does Candy.ai cost?

The 12-month plan is $3.99 a month ($47.88 at checkout), the 3-month plan is $8.99 a month ($26.97), and the monthly plan is $9.99 for the first month, then $13.99 a month. Premium includes 100 tokens a month for images, videos and custom characters.

Can you use Candy.ai for free?

Only to look around. The free plan allows 5 messages across all characters, one custom character and one image. When we tried it, the sixth message brought a blurred “Private video” that you pay to unlock, and we couldn’t get the free image.

Can I get a refund from Candy.ai?

Only within 24 hours of a payment, if you’ve used 20 tokens or fewer and paid by card. EU and UK users also have a 14-day right to withdraw from a first purchase, minus what they’ve used. Email [email protected], since cancelling doesn’t refund you automatically.

Does Candy.ai use my chats for training?

Yes. Its privacy notice lists training and developing its AI models as a purpose, and its terms give it a perpetual license to your content. We found no opt-out.

Do I keep my tokens if I cancel?

Candy says both. Its terms say remaining tokens expire, and a help article says cancelling doesn’t delete them. Use them before you cancel.