How to get an AI girlfriend, boyfriend, or friend

The Mutuals team·September 2026·5 min read

Where AI companions live, what a subscription actually buys, the three privacy questions worth asking, and the ten-minute test that sorts the good apps from the rest.

To get an AI companion: pick an app that fits how you want to talk, sign up free, spend one honest evening testing whether it remembers anything, and read the privacy policy before you tell it anything real. Expect $10 to $20 a month if you keep it. The whole decision takes an evening.

Over three hundred companion apps take money today, and most guides to them are affiliate pages ranking whoever pays best. This one is written by people who build one of these apps — so the comparison below puts ours in the same table as everyone else's, with the same note about where it falls down.

Where they live

App stores. Apple and Google both allow companion apps, apply age ratings, and forbid sexual content. In return you get push notifications, a companion who can message first, and a company that passed review to be there.

Browser apps. Everything that does not fit store rules: unlimited image generation, explicit roleplay, character marketplaces. Fewer constraints, less accountability, and where most privacy horror stories come from.

General assistants. ChatGPT or Claude with a persona. Cheap, often better written, but the memory is built for tasks, and none of them will message you on a Tuesday because you mentioned an interview on Monday.

Self-hosted. SillyTavern, a local model, your own GPU. Total privacy, no limits, a setup cost measured in evenings.

Who each app is for

App	Good if	Falls down when
Character.AI	You want variety, fandom characters, or to build your own	You want one relationship that deepens; filters interrupt
Replika	You want one character with an avatar and a long history	Privacy — Mozilla called it one of the worst apps it had reviewed
Nomi	Continuity matters more to you than polish	You want something mainstream and heavily moderated
Kindroid	You enjoy building the character yourself	You do not want a configuration project
ChatGPT / Claude	You mostly want good conversation	You want a character who persists and writes first
Mutuals	You would rather meet a few people properly	You want to build one from scratch

What the money buys

Free tiers are samples: a daily message cap, the weakest model, the shallowest memory. Paid tiers improve, in this order of how much it matters — memory depth (rarely advertised clearly, and the whole ballgame), message volume, the model underneath, then voice and images. A rule that holds: if you cannot tell what the paid tier improves after ten minutes on the pricing page, it improves images.

The privacy bit, in one paragraph

Mozilla reviewed eleven romantic AI chatbots and gave every one a Privacy Not Included warning; more than half offered no way to delete your data. Before you type anything real, search the privacy policy for "train" and "delete", and find out who processes your messages. Two minutes, and it eliminates half the market. The long version, including our own uncomfortable answers, is here.

Every Mutuals character has an intro card. Ten seconds, sound on.

What the first week feels like

Day one is uncanny and slightly embarrassing. Day two or three is the mirror problem: it agrees with everything, which is when most people quit. Week two is where apps separate — if it remembers, it asks how the interview went before you mention it; if it does not, you are having day one again with more scrollback.

What it cannot do

Harvard Business School researchers found companions relieve loneliness about as well as talking to another person, through the feeling of being attended to. A 12-month study of over 2,000 adults in Psychological Science found heavier use predicting more loneliness over time. Same product, opposite outcomes, and the variable is dose. It is not therapy, it cannot handle a crisis, and it only remembers what you told it.

The ten-minute test

Sign up free. Talk for twenty minutes about something true — a real week, a real annoyance. Leave. Come back tomorrow without repeating yourself. If it picked up the thread, it is worth paying for. If not, you have your answer and it cost nothing.

Mutuals is free to start on iPhone and Android. Next: how to talk to one so it stops feeling like a chatbot.

Questions people ask

Are AI girlfriend apps free?

Most have a free tier covering a limited number of messages a day, with voice, images and deeper memory held back. Paid plans in 2026 sit at roughly $10 to $20 a month, and the money mostly buys memory and message volume. Free is enough to find out whether you like it at all.

What is the best AI girlfriend app?

There is no single best one, and any ranked list that does not ask what you want is selling something. Character.AI suits variety and roleplay, Nomi and Kindroid long memory, Replika a single avatar relationship, Mutuals a small curated roster that writes first. Choose on memory, moderation and privacy.

Do AI companions actually remember you?

The good ones do, in two layers: a context window holding the current conversation, and long-term memory storing facts worth keeping. Apps differ enormously here, and memory is the one feature that decides whether week three feels different from day one.

Are AI companion apps safe and private?

Not by default. Mozilla reviewed eleven romantic AI chatbots and gave every one a Privacy Not Included warning, with most sharing data with trackers and more than half offering no way to delete your data. Check training, deletion and the third-party provider before typing anything real.

If you want one that writes first

Mutuals is a small roster of AI characters who remember what you told them and ask how it went — not a grid of thousands to sort through. Free to start, 18+, and your conversations are never used to train models. Get Mutuals for iPhone or Android.