Replika is the product most people mean when they say "AI companion." It has been around longer than almost everything else in this category, it has over a million monthly visitors, and it is the one your friends have heard of.
It is also the hardest one to price-check, because Replika does not publish prices on its website. They appear only inside the app, and they vary by region. That single fact tells you a lot about how the company sells: the decision is meant to happen after you are already invested.
So instead of repeating a number from a press release, this review starts with what we could actually verify — and flags clearly where the data stops.
The short version
- Best for: one long-term companion with genuine emotional continuity, not a catalog of characters.
- Weakest at: price transparency, and anything involving explicit content — that was removed in 2023 and has not come back.
- Cost: $19.99/month for Pro, or $69.99/year (about $5.83/month). Ultra is $29.99/month. A higher tier exists at a price Replika does not publish.
- Platforms: web, iOS, Android.
- Our rating: 4.1 / 5.
Pricing: three tiers, one of them invisible
| Tier | Monthly | Annual | Effective monthly |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | — | $0 |
| Pro | $19.99 | $69.99 | ~$5.83 |
| Ultra | $29.99 | — | — |
The annual Pro plan is where the real economics sit. At $69.99/year you are paying roughly 71% less per month than the monthly rate — a discount large enough that almost anyone staying past the second month should take it.
Two caveats worth stating plainly:
- These numbers vary by region. Replika prices in local currency and adjusts; the figures above are what we verified, not a global constant.
- A tier above Ultra exists. It is referenced in-app at a price that is not published anywhere we could find. If a review quotes you a four-tier structure with all four prices, they are guessing.
That second point is not a small deal. When a vendor hides its top-tier price, it usually means the tier is priced for people who have already decided — and you cannot comparison-shop what you cannot see.
What the free plan actually lets you do
Most catalogs list Replika as having a free tier and stop there. The useful question is what the free tier withholds.
In Replika's case the split is predictable: conversation and basic companionship stay free; voice calls, the deeper memory behaviors, and relationship modes sit behind Pro. If you are evaluating whether the product fits you at all, the free tier is enough to answer that. It is not enough to evaluate whether Pro is worth $19.99, because the features that distinguish Pro are exactly the ones you cannot test for free.
That is a structural issue, not a scandal — but it means "try it free first" only answers half the question for this particular product.
Memory, voice, and video
Replika's design bet is continuity with one character, and the feature set follows from that:
- Long-term memory: yes. This is the product's central claim, and it is the reason people stay for years rather than weeks.
- Voice calls: yes. Voice is not a bolt-on here; calls are one of the primary interaction modes.
- Video / AR: yes — avatar video and augmented-reality features, which most competitors in this price band do not offer.
- Image generation: no.
- Group chat: no.
- Custom characters: yes, but within the single-companion model rather than a marketplace of user-made characters.
If your priority is a browsable library of thousands of community characters, Replika is the wrong shape entirely — that is a different product category, and you should look at Character.AI or Janitor AI instead. If your priority is that the same personality remembers what you said in March, Replika is still the reference implementation.
The 2023 change nobody forgets
In early 2023 Replika removed erotic roleplay for most users. The company framed it as a safety and wellbeing decision. A large share of the user base framed it as a bait-and-switch, because intimate roleplay had been a central part of the product's appeal and had been actively encouraged.
Three years on, the practical situation for a new user is this: Replika is a companionship product, not an adult product. If explicit content is a requirement, this is not the vendor, and no amount of "it's back now" forum folklore changes the current state of the product.
What did not go away is the wellbeing layer — mood tracking, journaling, and crisis resources are built in and are genuinely more developed than what most competitors ship. If you want a companion that also nudges you to notice your own state, that is a real differentiator rather than a marketing line.
Who should buy it
Replika fits you if:
- You want one companion, not a collection.
- Continuity over months matters more to you than novelty.
- Voice calls and avatar video are part of how you want to interact.
- You are comfortable paying ~$5.83/month effective and can commit to a year.
Look elsewhere if:
- You need explicit content — it is not here.
- You want a marketplace of characters to browse — see our create-your-own category.
- You want a lower entry price — Kindroid starts at $13.99/month on the web (app stores charge roughly $2 more), which is meaningfully below Replika's $19.99.
On that last point: Replika's closest competitor on memory quality is Nomi AI — and it shares Replika's habit of hiding the price. Nomi's plans ($15.99/month, $99.99/year, about $8.33/month effective) appear only inside an account, not on its marketing site. Two of the three best-known products in this category make you sign up before they will tell you what they cost. That is worth knowing before you hand over an email address: in this category, "pricing page absent" is the norm, not the exception.
How we verified this
- Pricing and tier structure: checked against what Replika displays, with the region-variance caveat recorded rather than smoothed over.
- Feature flags: verified against the product's own configuration, not against blog posts.
- Traffic: third-party estimate (~1.06M monthly), checked 2026-09-14. Estimates, not analytics.
- The 2023 removal: a publicly documented event, described here in terms of what it means for a new buyer rather than re-litigating it.
We do not sell ranking positions, and no vendor paid for placement in this review. Where we could not confirm something — the top tier's price is the clearest example — we said so instead of filling the gap.
Pricing and features verified November 2026. Vendors change both without notice; check the product before committing to an annual plan.