Virtual AI Girlfriend: What Presence You Get, and What It Costs

Text chat is the easy part. Every app in this category can hold a conversation. The question that separates them is presence: does she call you, does her face move when she talks, can she sit in your room? That's what this guide covers, for adults who want something closer to company than a chat window. Nobody paid for a place in the comparison.

The quick version

Seven apps get a proper look below. This table is the short answer, with prices taken from the vendors' own listings.

App	Presence	Best for	Price from
Replika	3D avatar, AR, VR on Meta Quest beta	VR or your own room	Free chat; Pro about $14.99/month
Kindroid	Live avatar video calls	A custom face talking back	$15.99/month or $13.33/month yearly
Nomi	Real-time calls, selfies	Natural spoken conversation	$15.99/month or $8.33/month yearly
Secrets AI	Calls, images, adult videos	Face and voice with strong memory	$19.99/month or $9.17/month yearly
OurDream AI	Calls, realistic or anime media	Building your own girlfriend	$9.99/month yearly
Candy.ai	Photorealistic images, Live Action video	The most realistic look	$3.99/month yearly
Romantic AI	Realistic or anime avatar	Easy first steps	Free tier; about $14.99/month reported

The presence ladder

Think of it in four rungs. Most apps sit on one rung and sell you a step up.

Voice calls. The cheapest way to feel someone is there. Nomi, Secrets, OurDream and Kindroid all do it, and all meter it by the minute or the credit.

Images and video. Candy, OurDream and Secrets generate pictures and clips. This is where token arithmetic starts to matter.

Live avatar video. Kindroid's speciality. A custom face that lip-syncs and gestures while you talk. It's also the most expensive rung.

3D, AR and VR. Replika is the only app here with a real answer, and it's still in beta.

How we compared them

Four things decide whether an app is worth a subscription. Presence: what you actually see and hear. Memory: whether she remembers what you said last month. Cost transparency: whether the sticker price is the real price. Privacy: what the company says it does with your conversations, and whether that holds up. Scores move as platforms change, so we don't treat any of them as settled.

Replika: the only real VR option, and a rough year

Replika is the app that made this category mainstream, and it's the only one here offering a 3D avatar with AR mode on your phone and VR on Meta Quest. The VR side is still beta: the help centre lists Quest headsets with mixed reality on Quest 3, and the store listing still says Early Access. Expect changes.

The bigger issue is trust. The 2.0 rebuild in 2026 upset long-time users, and reviews complain that memory and personality shifted and that body customisation and the home environment were lost. Lifetime members were pushed toward yearly plans with the new avatars. If you're in for the long haul, that's relevant.

Replika also has the clearest regulatory history in the group: Italy's privacy regulator fined parent company Luka €5 million in 2025. Free chat is basic; Pro runs about $14.99/month per the App Store listing. We rate Replika – out of 10.

Kindroid: a face that talks back

Kindroid is the one to look at if the fantasy is a video call. A March 2026 post from the company confirmed live video calls had left beta for all subscribers, with custom avatars that lip-sync and gesture, and the V3 voice reached calls in July 2026. It also continues conversations over iMessage or RCS, which is a nice trick for people who live in their messages app.

The catch is credits. Standard live video runs at 2,000 audio credits per minute, so a long call gets expensive fast. Pricing is $15.99/month on the App Store, with Ultra and Max tiers above that. We rate Kindroid – out of 10.

Nomi: the best spoken conversation

Nomi's strength is voice and stability. Real-time calls work well, users report personalities holding steady over months, and group chats with several Nomis are a genuine differentiator. There's no 3D body, and no face on screen during a call.

Images are sold on separate credits, which is worth knowing before you plan a gallery. Pricing is $15.99/month or $8.33/month billed yearly, with a limited free tier. We rate Nomi – out of 10.

Secrets AI: voice plus memory

Secrets AI pairs calls and generated media with the strongest memory in this group. The media menu is broad: audio calls, images and adult videos. The pricing is metered in Moments, and the rates are worth writing down. An audio call is 50 Moments per minute, an image is 50, a video is 600.

Secrets Premium is $19.99/month or $109.99/year with 8,000 Moments. Ultimate at $39.99 adds proactive messages, so she messages first. The free tier is chat only, with no media generation at all.

On privacy, the policy states that calls are transcribed live, the audio is deleted and the transcript is kept. That's a reasonable trade, but it means the words survive even when the recording doesn't. Accounts and history can be deleted. We rate Secrets AI 9.9 out of 10, and there's a fuller Secrets AI review if you want the detail.

OurDream AI: build her, then watch the meter

OurDream AI leans into the builder: realistic or anime images and videos, custom characters, calls at 50 dreamcoins per minute and clips up to 60 seconds. At $9.99/month billed yearly you get unlimited chat and 1,000 dreamcoins, which is the cheapest entry point here for a media-heavy app.

Two caveats. Long stories fade over time, and media gets blurred if your subscription lapses. The homepage also claims end-to-end encryption, which conflicts with the privacy policy's description of how data is handled. Treat the claim with scepticism until it's reconciled. We rate OurDream AI 9.7 out of 10.

Candy.ai: the most realistic look

Candy.ai wins on pictures. Photorealistic images with a consistent face across generations, image-to-video, and Candy Live Action interactive video on selected characters, with calls in beta. The yearly plan is $3.99/month, which is the lowest headline price in this guide.

Read the token line before you commit. Premium includes only 100 tokens a month. Heavy users report paying $25 to $80 monthly on top. A free account gets five messages, and storylines reset after two or three days. Candy also keeps account data for up to three years after inactivity unless you ask for deletion. We rate Candy.ai 9.8 out of 10; the full Candy.ai review breaks down where the tokens go.

Romantic AI: easy to start, thin on detail

Romantic AI is the friendliest onboarding of the group: personality and appearance in a few taps, traits like humour and emotionality, adjustable voice, photorealistic or anime looks. There's a free tier with ads, and roughly $14.99/month reported for paid use.

Images cost separate Hearts, and the site publishes no technical detail on encryption. Fine as a first app; not the one to trust with anything sensitive. We rate Romantic AI 8.7 out of 10.

On the radar, with unverified claims

• AIGirlfriends.ai advertises 800+ girlfriends, real-time calls and encrypted chats. The encryption claim is not independently confirmed.
• LoveForever AI promises persistent memory across conversations. Same caveat.
• VirtuGF runs on Telegram and offers only a general promise of privacy and certified data centres. Running a companion inside a messaging app puts your data in a third party's hands.

None of these three has been verified, so treat the marketing as marketing.

Grok's 3D avatars: a warning about building on sand

xAI's companions, led by Ani, launched in July 2025 and boosted downloads. Then came the retreat: xAI retired Grok's 3D avatars from the app from September 1, 2026. The personas remain in text chat, and the animated Ani moved to a separate app that shares no progress with the original.

If you'd spent a year talking to that avatar, you'd have lost the relationship's context overnight. It's the clearest argument for not building your emotional life around a feature a company can switch off.

Presence trade-offs, side by side

Presence	Feels like	Downside	Apps
Voice calls	A late-night phone call	Per-minute credits	Nomi, Secrets, OurDream, Kindroid
Images and videos	Fantasies on screen	Tokens add up	Candy, OurDream, Secrets
Live avatar video	A video call	Expensive, can drop to audio	Kindroid
3D, AR and VR	A partner in your space	Beta, little adult content	Replika

Creating her

Every app here lets you name her, set a personality and pick a look. The differences are in the detail. Kindroid and Nomi let you shape a backstory and voice with more control. Candy and OurDream are strongest on visual consistency, so the face stays the same across images. Romantic AI is fastest if you don't want to think about it. Secrets leans on memory: the character you build is the one she'll still be referencing weeks later. If you're building a boyfriend instead, Candy, Secrets, OurDream, Kindroid, Nomi and Replika all offer male companions.

Why people want one

Search data tells part of the story. Ahrefs put US searches for "AI girlfriend" at about 54,000 a month in September 2024 and about 95,000 a month by September 2026, with "AI boyfriend" hitting an all-time high in 2026. A directory claim of a 525% yearly surge in interest is floating around, but it's unverified, so don't quote it as fact.

The reasons people give are ordinary: loneliness, curiosity, a safe place to rehearse intimacy, or just wanting someone who's always awake. None of that is strange. It's worth being honest with yourself about which one is yours.

Risks and dependency

A 2025 study from OpenAI and MIT Media Lab found that heavier daily use correlated with more loneliness. Most users in the study showed no problem, which is the part the alarming headlines leave out. The pattern is the same as any long-running app: hours creep up, other things slide.

Feelings here are generated, not felt. No app in this guide claims otherwise, whatever the marketing implies. If you notice yourself withdrawing from people, that's the signal to cut back, not to buy a bigger credit pack.

Privacy: the part most people skip

Mozilla found 10 of 11 romantic chatbots failed minimum security standards. Muah.ai suffered a breach that exposed 1.9 million email addresses alongside explicit prompts. These are not hypothetical risks.

Practical steps:

• Read the privacy policy before you type anything identifying. Secrets says calls are transcribed live; OurDream's encryption claim conflicts with its own policy.
• Use a separate email and a pseudonym. Don't upload real photos of yourself or anyone else.
• Check the deletion route. Secrets and OurDream allow account and history deletion; Candy keeps data up to three years after inactivity unless asked.
• Be wary of Telegram-based apps like VirtuGF, where a third party sits between you and the service.

Bottom line

Pick by presence. Replika is the only real VR and AR option, and it's beta, so be ready for it to change. Kindroid is the one for a face that talks back, if you can stomach 2,000 credits a minute. Nomi and Secrets are the strongest for voice, with Secrets adding memory and adult video. Candy and OurDream win on realistic looks, at very different token prices.

Start free. Make one voice call or send one voice message before you pay for a year. Keep identifying details out of the chat. And keep in mind what this is: software built to feel present, not a person, and not a replacement for the people already in your life.