AI companion apps in 2026, by the numbers.

The AI companion category exited 2023 as an unregulated frontier. By 2026 it has a real-money market, real users, and, for the first time, real law. Industry trackers put the global AI companion market somewhere between $37B and $49B in size as of 2025-2026, with Grand View Research estimating roughly $36.8B in 2025 and Fortune Business Insights projecting $49.5B by 2026. Precedence Research separately projects the market compounding at roughly 33.8% annually through 2030. Estimates vary depending on how analysts define "companion", so we report the range rather than a single number.

On usage, a Common Sense Media study in 2025 found that 72% of U.S. teens had tried an AI companion at least once, with 52% using them regularly. That study covers teens and companion apps in general. The adult, paid apps this page is about are a narrower slice, so read it as a measure of how mainstream AI companions have become. It says little about the people who pay for them.

On the regulatory side, 2026 is the year the rules arrived. California's SB 243, signed October 2025 and effective January 1, 2026, was the first state law in the US to specifically regulate AI companion chatbots. It requires clear disclosure that the user is talking to an AI, a reminder every three hours for users the app knows are minors, crisis-resource protocols for self-harm content, and steps to keep sexually explicit images away from minors. Since August 2026 the EU AI Act also requires chatbots to disclose that they are AI. At the federal level, the bipartisan GUARD Act (introduced October 2025) would go further and keep minors off AI companions entirely. It is not law yet. In practice, these rules push the apps on this page toward clear AI disclosures and stronger protections for minors at sign-up.

Across the 25 apps with a monthly USD price, entry-tier monthly pricing spans a 4× range, from $5.95 at the cheapest (SpicyChat.ai) to $25.99/month at the most expensive (DreamBF.ai). The median tier sits at $12.99/month, and the mean is pulled above it to $13.83 by a small cluster of premium tiers ($20+).

Annual pricing is where the real discounts live. 9 of the 22 apps with an annual price in our data are priced at least 50% below their monthly rate on an effective basis. The most aggressive: Candy.ai at $3.99/month effective (70% off its $13.99 monthly), GoLove AI at a last listed $4.15/month on annual (well over 60% off its $12.99 monthly), and MyLovely AI at $6.00/month (70% off its $19.99 monthly). If you intend to keep using an app for more than four months, monthly billing is effectively a tax on optionality.

Lifetime pricing is the other unusual wrinkle. 3 apps in our data offer a one-time lifetime purchase: Kupid.ai (price not public), Xtease.AI at $399.60, aiAllure at €399 (Pro). Xtease's Ultra lifetime at $399.60 comes with 4,000 chips a month, and aiAllure sells a lifetime version of its Pro plan for €399. Kupid still offers lifetime billing, but the current price isn't public (it was listed at $777 earlier). Get-Harder's $99.99 lifetime, an exit-intent offer through May 2026, is no longer on its pricing page.

29 of the 31 apps we cover offer a free tier. That's now table stakes and no longer sets an app apart. Image generation is close to ubiquitous: 30 of 31 apps score 5 or higher on our image axis, and 16 score 8+. The interesting axes are the ones that still separate apps.

Voice is where the tiers split. 12 apps (39%) rate 7+ on voice. Many apps now list calls, but few include them outright. Muah.ai keeps real-time calls on its $99.99 ULTRA VIP tier. Xeve includes unlimited video calls on every plan, made from recorded clips of a real model that an AI picks and steers. OurDream, Swipey, Secrets AI, SweetDream, Secret Desires, Candy.ai (in beta) and DreamGF list calls on their regular paid plans and charge for them in coins, hearts, Moments or tokens, and Promptchan keeps calls on its top Pro tier, paid in gems. Nectar presents its voice and video calls as live, and Luvr lists a Call feature we couldn't confirm. Nearly all of this comes from the vendors' own pages. DarLink AI's voice comes from ElevenLabs, a third-party text-to-speech provider. DarLink has no in-house voice model.

Video is the newest front. 21 of the 31 apps (68%) list video of some kind among their features, whether generated clips, video messages, or in Nectar's case, video calls. Secrets AI, MyLovely AI, Xtease.AI, DarLink AI, and Lovescape are the clearest entrants for generated clips. A feature list doesn't show quality, and some entries come straight from vendor sales copy (Muah's "AI Video", for one), so check the output on a free tier before paying for video.

End-to-end encryption claims remain rare and unverified. OurDream AI markets E2E as a first-class feature, though its own privacy policy describes only encryption at rest and in transit and says your data trains its AI, and Secrets AI's homepage now claims it too. Neither has a published audit. Discreet billing, where the app avoids showing up as an adult merchant on your card statement, is common but not universal. Candy.ai bills as "EverAI" and Secrets AI as "S LABS INC.", and GoLove, Muah, Nectar, Swipey and DreamGF describe their billing as discreet or neutral. Naughty Chats and AIGirlfriends.ai put their own name on the charge, DarLink AI uses an explicit descriptor, and OurDream doesn't say what appears on your statement.

12 of the 31 apps we cover shipped in 2023 and 13 in 2024. The 2023 cohort averages 7.3 on overall rating and the 2024 cohort 7.2. The top-rated app, Candy.ai, launched in 2023. The 2024 apps lead on several newer features: video generation (Secrets AI, MyLovely AI, Lovescape), novel UX (Swipey.AI's swipe-based discovery, though Swipey has since pivoted toward a creator/fans platform model), and multi-LLM architectures (Joi AI).

One thing the chart can't show is that this list is curated and makes no attempt at a census. Apps that folded quickly, apps without a visible user base, and near-clones of apps already listed are left out. So the chart shows when the apps we cover launched. It can't tell you how many AI girlfriend and companion apps launched each year. Read it as the shape of the field worth considering, not as a measure of the size of the market.

Muah is no longer the only app we cover with a breach on HaveIBeenPwned. MyLovely AI was added on April 8, 2026: 106,271 accounts, with email addresses and Discord/X usernames, and reporting says user prompts and links to generated images were exposed. HIBP flags it as sensitive. Separately, 404 Media reported in November 2025 that misconfigured cloud storage at Secret Desires exposed nearly 2 million images and videos, including face-swap content made from photos of real women. The other 28 apps have no known public incidents as of November 2026, which is not the same as "are definitely secure." It's the same as "have not been publicly caught." That distinction matters for a category where the data in question is, almost by definition, data users would prefer not to be tied back to their real identity.

The privacy-score distribution above reflects how our rubric weights data-retention policy, breach history, signup friction, and corporate transparency. The category's norm is 6-7, and a confirmed incident drops a provider a clear band below that: MyLovely AI scores a 3, Muah and Secret Desires a 5. The apps that score 8+ are those with conservative data practices and clean public track records (Janitor, Nectar, GoLove). OurDream dropped to a 5 in November 2026, when its own privacy policy turned out to contradict its end-to-end encryption claim.

Most apps sit in the middle: 20 of 31 occupy the solid 7.0-7.9 band, 2 reach the strong 8.0-8.9 band, 9 rate below 7.0, and none clears 9.0. There's no long tail of 2s and 3s. That's a curation artifact. The list only covers apps worth considering, and plenty of weaker apps exist outside it.

Price is a weak guide to score. The 2 apps rated 8.0+ average $19.98 a month on their base plan, and the 23 rated below 8.0 average $13.29. With so few apps in the top group, that gap says little. Across these apps, the money goes to features and polish, while underlying chat quality barely moves with price. Our cheapest monthly pick (SpicyChat.ai, $5.95/mo) scores within a point of apps costing three times as much.