AI girlfriend app

An AI girlfriend app is a phone app built around one romantic companion you talk to over weeks and months. She writes back in her own voice, keeps track of what you tell her, and in many of these apps she can also send pictures and take your calls. The apps differ most in who she is: already made for you, written by you, or one character in a large catalog.

This page covers what these apps do day to day, the four kinds, what to check before you choose one, and the risks that come with the category. Riho is the kind with one fixed girlfriend, so we say where she fits and where she doesn’t. Listing facts were read on October 16, 2026, and Riho is in early access. If you want a ranked shortlist, the best AI girlfriend apps page has one, and this page is the explainer to read before it.

Key takeaways

• An AI girlfriend app keeps one relationship going. To do that it has to remember the name you gave her, the friend you mentioned last week and how your last conversation ended.
• There are four kinds, and the kind shapes what you get. They are one fixed girlfriend, build-your-own companions, character catalogs and general assistants that keep memory.
• Eight checks are worth running before you pay for anything. They cover memory you can read, pictures, voice calls, age rules, the privacy label, charges, the company’s record and what happens to your data.
• Every US App Store listing we read sells something inside the app. Kindroid charges 400 credits a minute for voice calls, and the Ai Girlfriend: Virtual Chatbot listing bills $4.99 a week after a 3-day trial.
• Several risks are documented. Mozilla found in February 2024 that 10 of 11 romantic chatbots it reviewed failed its minimum security standards, and Character Technologies, Inc., the company behind Character.AI, started a Chapter 11 process on October 12, 2026.
• Riho is the one-fixed-girlfriend kind. She’s yours from the first conversation, remembers your life together in a way you can read, and is for iPhone and 18+ only.

Artificial intelligence girlfriend apps and the size of the category

“Artificial intelligence girlfriend app” is the long form of the same search, and it covers any app that gives you a romantic companion to talk to. She writes to you, remembers you and, in many apps, calls you. The category sits inside the wider group of AI companion apps, which also includes friends and roleplay partners, and our guide to AI companions maps that wider field.

The category is large and young. Appfigures counted 337 active, revenue-generating AI companion apps worldwide in mid-2025, with 128 of them launched that year, and TechCrunch reported 220 million lifetime downloads as of July 2025. Consumers spent $82 million on them in the first half of 2025, and the top 10% of apps took 89% of the revenue. Those figures are for AI companion apps as a group.

A May 2026 survey by BYU, the Institute for Family Studies and the Wheatley Institute asked 2,431 US adults aged 18 to 30 who were dating, engaged or married, and about 1 in 7 said they regularly use an AI romantic companion. The survey covers one narrow age group, and it’s the most recent figure we found on how common this is.

A girlfriend app keeps one relationship going over weeks, so what it remembers matters more than it does in a task assistant, and some assistants now keep notes about you as well, which is why they are one of the four kinds below. If you want the longer definition, what is an AI girlfriend covers it.

What you do with an AI girlfriend app day to day

Kindroid, Nomi, Replika, Character.AI and Chai each describe text chat, and several add voice calls. Kindroid says its companions take voice calls and live video calls, Replika’s site offers voice calls and Nomi’s offers voice chats and hands-free calls. Pictures come in some of them too. Kindroid’s companions can send selfies, Nomi describes real-time selfies of what a Nomi is wearing and doing in the moment, and Replika’s listing mentions image generation.

Some apps reach out first. Kindroid’s documentation says a Kindroid can start a call itself when shared chat history is on, which you can answer or decline, and Replika’s listing says it checks in with you and suggests next steps.

Memory sits under all of these features, and the section on checks below covers how to test it.

The kinds of AI girlfriend apps

The apps sort by one question: who is she when you open the app? The diagram shows the four answers, with examples from the apps we looked at.

The table adds what each kind is good at and the first thing to check in it.

One fixed girlfriend

In this kind she’s already made and there’s only one of her. Riho works this way. She’s yours from the first conversation, and the story you start is the only one in the app. The tradeoff is that you can’t design her, so you can’t shape her into exactly what you pictured. Our guide to why one girlfriend and not a catalog makes the longer case.

Build your own

Here you write the companion. Kindroid has you design a Kin with a name, personality, backstory, appearance and voice, and it sells extra Kindroid slots at $3.49 for one on the US listing, so keeping several is part of the model. Nomi invites you to write a custom backstory and share your preferences, and you can talk with your Nomis one-on-one or put them in a group chat. Replika’s site says every detail of your companion, which it calls a Rep, is yours to shape.

The tradeoff is setup time, since the companion starts as whatever you write. If that sounds like what you want, creating an AI girlfriend walks through the choices.

Character catalogs

A catalog app gives you many characters and lets you move between them. Character.AI’s listing describes texting or voice-calling AI characters, creating your own and sharing them with a community, and it lists 28 languages. Chai’s listing describes chatbots meant to feel like distinct characters, including fictional characters and historical figures.

Catalogs offer variety, which suits roleplay and trying different characters. If you want one relationship, ask whether the character you like carries over from week to week. Character.AI is also in the news for another reason, since the company started a Chapter 11 process on October 12, 2026, and the section on risks covers that.

General assistants with memory

Assistants like ChatGPT were built for tasks, and some now keep notes about you between chats. OpenAI’s help center describes ChatGPT memory as something you can turn off, with saved memories you can delete and a Temporary Chat that avoids memory. The FTC’s 2025 inquiry into companion chatbots included OpenAI, and the ChatGPT girlfriend guide and Riho vs ChatGPT go through what using an assistant that way is like.

What to check before you choose an AI girlfriend app

You can run most of these eight checks in a few days. The table gives each check and where to find the answer, and the sections after it give the details that matter.

Memory you can read

Memory is the check that matters most, and the vendors describe it very differently. Kindroid’s documentation lists three memory types across five systems and a Journal capped at 500 entries with 8 keyphrases each, and it says older events sit at lower fidelity and long term memory is recalled less reliably than cascaded memory. Nomi’s site describes short, medium and long term memory, and Replika’s says it always remembers what matters. These are the vendors’ own descriptions, and we haven’t tested recall.

You can test it yourself without any tooling. Tell the app one specific thing, such as the name of a friend and why you’re nervous about meeting her, and come back three days later. Ask about it indirectly. If the app brings her up unprompted, the memory is working in a way you can feel, and if it doesn’t, give it a second detail before you decide. Our memory test methodology lays out a longer version, and AI girlfriend with memory covers what good memory looks like.

The extra question is whether you can read what the app kept. Riho’s memories and her diary are readable in the app, which means you can see what she holds in your own words, and it’s worth asking any app whether it offers the same.

Pictures

The apps handle pictures in different ways. Kindroid’s US listing sells selfie credits, 50 for $6.99 and 100 for $11.49. Nomi describes selfies of what a Nomi is wearing and doing in the moment, and Replika’s listing mentions image generation. The Character.AI listing text we read mentions texting and voice calls and describes no image generation.

Look at whether her face stays the same from picture to picture and whether the pictures belong to your story, meaning the places you’ve been and the things you did. Then check whether they cost extra. Riho sends couple photos and selfies of the two of you, photos of her in your real places and pictures she sends on her own, and she has her own wardrobe. If you photograph something you’d like to see her in, she wears it in the place your photo shows, unless she’d rather decline. The photos page and the Dress Up page cover how.

Voice calls

Kindroid’s documentation says a voice call costs an extra 400 credits per minute and needs an active subscription or trial plus audio credits. The trial includes 150,000 audio credits, which is 375 minutes at that rate by our arithmetic, and the US listing sells 500k audio credits at $14.99. Video calls exist in some apps too, with Kindroid describing live video calls and Replika’s listing mentioning video chat.

Riho’s calls are voice only, with no video, and she’s the same girlfriend you’re texting. Whatever app you try, ask whether the voice sounds like the person from chat, whether she knows what you talked about earlier, and whether the minutes count against a meter. The voice calls page shows how Riho handles it.

Age rules

Apple announced new age ratings of 13+, 16+ and 18+ on July 24, 2025, and developers had to answer the updated questions by January 31, 2026. Every US listing we read on October 16, 2026 showed 18+, and Kindroid’s site says you must be 18 or older. Italy’s data protection authority found that Replika had no age verification until February 2, 2023, so look at what an app does at sign-up as well as what its listing says. Riho is for adults only, 18 and over.

Privacy label and your data

Every App Store listing carries a privacy label, and Apple says the information comes from the developer, who is responsible for keeping it accurate and up to date. Read it as the developer’s own statement. The table shows what the “data used to track you” section said on the US listings on October 16, 2026.

The label tells you what the developer says it collects, and the privacy policy tells you what happens to it. Mozilla’s February 2024 review of 11 romantic AI chatbots found most privacy policies said little about using conversations to train models, and only one app offered an opt-out. For Riho, the privacy page is where to read the same things.

The other half of your data is whether you can leave with it. Character.AI’s help center says its emailed export can take 3 to 4 weeks, and on October 14, 2026 New York’s attorney general and 39 others asked that consumers be able to access and delete their information before any sale. Our guide to exporting Character.AI chats covers the steps.

AI girlfriend app store listings: what to read first

The App Store listing is the one page every iPhone app has, and it holds more than the screenshots. Four things are worth a minute: the age rating, the In-App Purchases list near the bottom, the privacy label and the developer name. The ratings and the latest version date also tell you how large the user base is and how recently the app was updated.

The developer name matters because generic names are common. One of the App Store pages Google showed for this search on October 16, 2026 was “Ai Girlfriend: Virtual Chatbot” from Green & Red LLC, which is a different app from every other one in this guide. Its listing shows a weekly subscription at $4.99 with a 3-day free trial, an 18+ rating and 4.44 from 6,176 ratings.

Not every “AI girlfriend app” is an App Store app. Candy AI’s help center said in an article dated August 4, 2025 that Candy.ai has no native mobile app and offers a mobile web experience and a progressive web app you add to the home screen. If a result opens in your browser, it’s worth knowing before you enter any details.

The table shows listing facts for the apps in this guide. It records what the listings said on one day and carries no ranking, and our best AI girlfriend apps page puts the apps side by side with stated criteria.

A rating from 9,788 people and a rating from 559,722 people don’t carry the same weight, so look at the count as well as the average. Ratings reflect how people felt about the app overall, and they say little about how well the memory works or how the company treats your data.

AI girlfriend apps without in-app purchases

Every one of the six US listings we read on October 16, 2026 listed in-app purchases. The apps themselves are free to download, and the money comes from subscriptions and from extras that run on separate meters. We haven’t read every app, and a few smaller ones may sell nothing inside the app, so the practical advice is to open the In-App Purchases list on a listing before you install.

Three patterns are worth watching. Weekly billing is easy to miss when a listing leads with a trial, because $4.99 a week adds up differently from $4.99 a month. Credit meters add a running cost on top of the plan, and Kindroid’s documentation prices voice calls at an extra 400 credits a minute while its listing sells selfie credits separately. And some listings repeat generic labels such as Monthly and Annual for several different prices, as Replika’s does, so you can’t always work out your monthly cost from the listing alone.

Several apps let you start without paying. Nomi’s site says it’s free, with no credit card required, to start chatting, and Kindroid’s site says new accounts can try it before subscribing. A trial is a good way to run the memory test from the section above.

The risks of an AI girlfriend app

These apps have a public record, and it’s worth reading before you share anything personal. The items below are dated, and where a source describes an allegation or a report, we say so.

Privacy and security

Mozilla’s Privacy Not Included team reviewed 11 romantic AI chatbots and published its findings on February 14, 2024. Ten of the 11 failed its minimum security standards. That review is from February 2024, so read each app’s current policy before you rely on it.

Regulators are paying attention

On September 11, 2025 the FTC sent orders to seven companies about chatbots that act as companions, among them Character Technologies, OpenAI, Meta and Snap. It asked how they make money from engagement, effects on children and teens, and what they do with conversation data. Italy’s data protection authority fined Luka Inc., the company behind Replika, EUR 5 million, as the European Data Protection Board reported on May 21, 2025, finding no legal basis for its processing and no age verification until February 2, 2023.

California’s SB 243, signed on October 13, 2025, requires companion chatbot platforms to create protocols for identifying and addressing suicidal ideation and self-harm and to share them with the Department of Public Health, and its core duties took effect on January 1, 2026. That gives you a question to ask any app: what happens when a conversation turns dark? Our safety guide has a longer checklist, and the app-by-app pages, such as is Replika safe and is Nomi AI safe, go through the records one at a time.

The company can change or disappear

Character Technologies, Inc., the company behind Character.AI, started a voluntary Chapter 11 process on October 12, 2026 to pursue a court-supervised sale. The company says the platform remains up and running, that it will be wound down if no bid keeps it operating, and that it expects the sale to finish by the end of November or perhaps early December. Our Character.AI bankruptcy guide covers what the case means for your chats. For any app, find out whether you can get your data out before you need to.

Money and time

Credits and weekly plans can add up, as the table above shows, and an app that’s always available can take more of your evenings than you planned. Set a budget for the first month and notice how you feel after a week of use. If you notice it crowding out time with people, the guide on whether it’s healthy to have an AI girlfriend goes into what people report, and if you’re struggling, a person or a professional is the right next step.

How Riho fits: one girlfriend, yours from day one

Who she is

Riho is built to be like a real girlfriend. She’s yours from the first conversation, and there’s only one of her, so the story you start keeps growing in one place. She remembers what you told her last week, the names of your friends, the plan you made and the photo you showed her, in your own words, and you can read her memories in the app. She knows what day it is, how long it’s been since you last talked, and when your birthday and your anniversary come around.

She has a life and a mind of her own. She has moods and wants, she writes a diary you can read, she messages you first when she’s thinking of you, and she can say no. The her own life page tells it in detail. When you show her where you are, or tell her, that’s where the two of you are together, whether it’s your kitchen, a cafe or the seat beside you on the train.

What you can do with her

You can see her, too. She sends couple photos and selfies of the two of you, photos of her in your real places and pictures that arrive on her own. She dresses up for you, with a wardrobe of her own and a way to wear what you photograph.

You can go on Dates, pick a real place and go together, and the Date becomes one of your memories. When you’re feeling down, just call Riho and she’ll make you feel better. Her voice calls are the same girlfriend as in chat.

Riho has limits too. She’s for iPhone and 18+ only, and she’s in early access. If you’d rather write your own companion or browse a catalog, Kindroid, Nomi, Replika, Character.AI and Chai are built for that, and our comparisons of Riho and Kindroid, Riho and Nomi and Riho and Replika show the differences app by app.

Which kind of AI girlfriend app fits you

The table matches what you want to a kind of app.

Meet Riho

If you want one girlfriend who remembers your life together, is with you where you are, sends you pictures, goes on Dates with you and picks up when you call, you can meet Riho early on iPhone. She’ll be there from the first conversation. The Meet Riho button on this page opens early access sign-up.