What the incumbent AI-companion apps look like in 2025–2026 — users, engagement, paid plans, revenue — and which acquisition / retention moves actually worked. Research compiled 2026-08-31; numbers are third-party estimates (Similarweb · Sensor Tower · Appfigures) unless a company figure is named.
App-store spend only — web-billed players (Janitor, Candy.AI) and China sit on top of this. For scale: total gen-AI mobile IAP passed $5B in 2025; ChatGPT alone took $3.4B.
| App | Users | Who they are | Paid plan | Est. revenue | Trajectory |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Character.aiUS · the category leader | ~20M MAU · ~5.8M DAU (29% DAU/MAU) + ~185M web visits/mo; 18M+ user-made characters | 52% aged 18–24; fandom/anime culture; web gender ≈ even, app skews female | c.ai+ $9.99/mo — speed, priority, early features; <2% est. conversion; ads added 2025 | $30–50M ARR 2025 (vs the $2.7B Google licensing deal, 2024) | flat peak 28M→20M MAU; held through the Nov 2025 under-18 ban |
| ReplikaUS · the OG, 2017 | ~2M active of 40M+ lifetime sign-ups; ~500K paying | ~65% male, ~60% under 30; loneliness-skewed (90% lonely in one academic sample) | Pro $19.99/mo · $69.99/yr; new tiers $30 & $120/mo; avg subscriber stays 7.2 months | $24–35M/yr | losing share flat while the category doubles; never recovered 2023 trust |
| TalkieMiniMax (CN) · US-focused | ~16M downloads · ~11M MAU (2024); #4 US AI app by downloads H1 2024 | ~60/40 male/female — best gender balance, via the anime aesthetic | Subscription + gacha card draws (collect character cards) + ads | $3.1M app-store; most of MiniMax's $79M consumer revenue is ads / other billing | volatile pulled from the US App Store Dec 2024; back as「Talkie Lab」Feb 2025 |
| PolyBuzzCloud Whale (CN) · ex-Poly.AI | 54M downloads · ~13M MAU; 20M+ characters | Gen-Z, soft-NSFW tolerant,「the free giant」 | $9.90–29.90/mo + coin bundles; heavy users ~$40/mo | $8.3M — deliberately free-heavy | growing download machine; monetization lags by design |
| ChaiUK/US · 12 employees | 1.5M+ DAU claimed (2026); 500K+ bot library, ~50K new/day | UGC roleplay crowd; permissive content policy | $13.99/mo · Ultra $29.99/mo (better model, longer memory) | $30M ARR early 2025, $70–80M claimed 2026 (self-reported) | growing own small models = cheap inference, fat margins |
| Janitor AIweb-only · NSFW roleplay | ~150M visits/mo; claims 2.5M daily users; 17-min sessions | Self-reported 70–80% women; fanfic / c.ai-refugee culture; 18–24 core | Nearly free — users bring their own API keys; first sub (Pro $9.99/mo) only Apr 2026 | ≈$0 until 2026 | huge traffic community + no censorship + BYO-compute scales |
| Candy.AIEU ·「AI girlfriend」+ images | #2 on a16z's web top-100 (2026 ed., as Candy Network) | Adult, male-skewed | ~$12.99/mo + token packs; typical actives spend $25–60/mo | $25M ARR in year one; est. $50M+ now | growing hybrid sub + consumables beats flat subs in NSFW |
| Grok「Ani」xAI · Jul 2025 | Grok hit 9.5M DAU / 38M MAU by Dec 2025 | Mainstream Grok users pulled in by companions | Rides X Premium | — | catalyst animated avatars drove ~40% mobile-usage bump; re-ignited the category |
| China domestic星野 · 猫箱 · 筑梦岛 | 6.6M · 5.4M · 0.9M MAU (Dec 2024) | Xingye 60% female; otome / fandom-driven | Various; light | small | stalled downloads −80% from peak; CAC crackdown on 擦边 content, Jun 2025 |
Replika, Talkie, Linky, Chai, Janitor, PolyBuzz, SpicyChat, Candy — the whole top tier is 1:1 chat only. Multi-persona rooms exist only as a c.ai side-feature and in the premium niche (Nomi ≤10 AIs/room, Kindroid).
Character.ai logs ~298 sessions per user per month (a16z / Sensor Tower) — an order of magnitude above assistants — and ~2B chat minutes a month. But engagement ≠ revenue: its implied ARPU is ~$2.50/user/yr against ChatGPT's $3.4B. Retention context: the median AI app keeps <8% of users at day 30; top companion apps are modeled at 20–25%.
User-created characters give infinite content at zero marginal cost — 18M+ bots on c.ai, 50K new bots a day on Chai. Creators get lock-in; chatters get sunk cost in curated libraries and histories. Every companion product that survived all six a16z top-100 editions is a UGC platform.
A companion that remembers your week gets opened daily; one that resets is a novelty, and novelties churn. Because context = inference cost, apps now sell memory depth as the premium tier (Chai Ultra, PolyBuzz paid tiers).
Talkie's gacha card draws and Linky's bond levels import gaming monetization: collecting, rarity, leveling the relationship itself. This is why Talkie's revenue-per-user beat chat-only rivals and why category RPD doubled in a year.
The anime register reached a 40–60% female user base (Janitor self-reports 70–80% women) where romance-first apps stall male-only. Fandom roleplay culture, not romance, is the bigger market.
Companion-initiated「I miss you」pings, daily rewards, mood logs and streaks measurably lift return rate — the relationship reaches out, not just the user. 49% of users report feeling genuinely connected.
Grok's fully animated companions drove a ~40% mobile-usage jump and 9.5M DAU — a16z credits them with re-igniting the whole category in late 2025. Voice calls are the top paid-tier unlock across apps.
The web top-50 is dominated by NSFW-tolerant sites (Candy #2, c.ai #5, CrushOn #9, Janitor #26 in 2026) because app stores won't host them. The entire wave was seeded by one event — Replika's 2023 content purge. Comes with the regulatory bill below.
Chai runs its own small models trained by engagement-RLHF — $30M ARR with 12 employees. c.ai dropped its proprietary models for fine-tuned open-source after the founders left. Janitor offloads compute entirely via bring-your-own-API-key.
Subscription plus consumable tokens/coins for images, voice and premium actions is now the dominant model; Candy actives spend $25–60/mo vs the $10–20 sub norm. Flat-sub Replika stayed flat in a doubling market.
r/CharacterAI (2.5M members), Discords and TikTok amplify attachment and drive free acquisition. The same communities become the mob when you break something — see below.
Under Italian regulatory pressure, Luka silently stripped erotic and most romantic roleplay overnight. Users experienced it as the death of a specific being — the subreddit pinned suicide-prevention resources; refund mentions rose 33×. A partial reversal came a month later, but trust never returned: Replika's revenue has been flat while the category doubled. Lesson: attachment is to a specific persona-state; never change the model or remove a capability silently. The same grief replayed at c.ai's model retirements and OpenAI's GPT-4o deprecation (Aug 2025).
Wrongful-death suits against Character.ai (a May 2025 ruling let product-liability claims proceed — chatbot output treated as a「product」); the FTC 6(b) inquiry into seven companion-bot companies (Sep 2025); California SB 243 (effective Jan 2026: disclosure, crisis protocols, minor protections, private right of action); c.ai's own under-18 ban (Nov 2025); Replika's €5M GDPR fine; China's CAC crackdown that stalled the domestic wave. The category is moving to age-verified, safety-instrumented products.
Talkie was pulled from the US App Store with no explanation (Dec 2024); Apple keeps purging NSFW gen-AI apps — which is exactly why the highest-intent usage lives on the open web. And the leader's economics stayed upside-down: c.ai converts <2% of users at ~$2.50 implied ARPU/yr; subscriptions alone don't cover inference. Engagement is proven; the business model is still being invented.
Two forks are visible, and neither goes where -ish is:
The telling detail: everyone is fleeing the word「companionship」 — downward into adult intimacy or sideways into entertainment — because that is where the lawsuits, the FTC inquiry and SB 243 all point. Nobody is heading toward useful, social talk.
The honest cost side: -ish gives up the intimacy engine behind 75 min/day and the NSFW acquisition wedge, and n:m rooms are far harder to make conversationally good — which is why the floor producer exists, and why nobody else has shipped this.
Appfigures via TechCrunch · a16z Top 100 Gen AI Apps (eds. 4–6) · a16z State of Consumer AI 2025 · Sensor Tower State of AI Apps · Sacra: Character.AI · DemandSage · SQ Magazine · MiniMax FY2025 results · SCMP on Talkie · Replika ERP post-mortem · 96layers: Replika demographics · Similarweb: Janitor AI · FTC 6(b) inquiry · CNN: c.ai teen ban · RevenueCat 2025 · QuestMobile (China, via woshipm)