Pricing in this category is not quite dishonest, but it is built to be misread. Here is the arithmetic, in pounds.
Two pricing models, and the difference matters
Everything here falls into one of two camps, and knowing which you are looking at tells you more than the number does.
Flat subscription. You pay once a month and generation is included. Nomi AI, Kindroid, Replika and Character.AI work this way. What you see is what you pay.
Subscription plus tokens. You pay a base fee for access, then images, voice messages and calls draw on a token balance you top up. SweetDream AI, Candy AI, Joi AI and FantasyGF work this way.
Neither is inherently wrong. Metering can genuinely be cheaper for light users. The problem is that the advertised price on a metered app is the price for barely using it, presented as though it were the price for using it.
The real numbers
| App | Advertised | Realistic monthly | Model |
|---|---|---|---|
| Character.AI | Free | £0, or £8 for c.ai+ | Flat |
| Nomi AI | $99.99/year | £7 annually, £13 monthly | Flat |
| Replika | $69.99/year | £5 annually, £16 monthly | Flat |
| Kindroid | $13.99/month | £11 web, £13 app store | Flat |
| Joi AI | $12.99/month | £10–£30 | Metered |
| SweetDream AI | $12.99/week | £12–£45 | Metered |
| FantasyGF | $12.99/month | £12–£35 | Metered |
| Candy AI | $47.88/year | £20–£47 | Metered |
| EVA AI | $14.99/month | £12–£25 | Metered |
Converted at approximately £0.79 to the dollar as at 26 October 2026. Checked the same day.
Look at Candy AI. The annual plan works out at roughly £4 a month, which is the cheapest number on this page and the one its marketing leads with. An active user generating images daily pays five times that.
How token metering actually works
SweetDream AI is the clearest example because it publishes its rates, which is to its credit — most metered apps do not.
Its plans include 400 tokens a week. Phone calls cost 3 tokens per minute. So a 20-minute call is 60 tokens, and your weekly allowance covers a little over two hours of calling if you spend tokens on nothing else. Images and video also draw on the same balance.
That is not a bad deal. But if you are having a half-hour call most evenings, you will exhaust 400 tokens well before the week is out, and the real cost of your month is the subscription plus however many top-ups that takes.
The thing to do before committing: use the app for one full billing period on the shortest plan available, and watch your token burn. Then multiply. The annual plan is only good value if your actual usage fits the included allowance.
The cost nobody mentions
Almost every app in this category bills in US dollars, including the one operated from London.
Two things follow. Your card issuer applies its own exchange rate, which will not be the mid-market rate. And many UK cards add a non-sterling transaction fee, typically around 3%.
On a $179 annual plan, that is roughly £5 on top of the £141 conversion. Not ruinous, but it is real, and it compounds if you are paying weekly rather than annually — twelve monthly charges attract the fee twelve times.
Cards from Monzo, Starling, Chase and Revolut generally do not charge non-sterling fees. Most high-street debit cards do. It is worth checking before you pick a billing frequency.
Where the genuine value is
If your budget is zero: Character.AI. It is the only app here with a free tier you can use seriously and indefinitely, which is why it scores 9.0 on value. Accept the content filter and the weak memory.
If you can spend about £7: Nomi AI’s annual plan. The best memory in the category, flat pricing, nothing metered. It is the best value paid option on this site and it is not close.
If you want voice and video calls: you are going to pay metered rates, because the only app with live video calling is a metered one. Budget £25 to £45 and treat the headline weekly price as a deposit.
If you want images above everything: Candy AI generates the best ones cheaply, provided you are disciplined. If you are not disciplined, it is among the most expensive things here.
Cancelling, refunds and getting your money back
Refund policies in this category range from clear to absent.
SweetDream AI publishes one: a refund where 10% or less of the token allowance has been used. That is unusually specific and worth knowing about. Most others publish nothing, or defer to whichever app store you bought through.
Where you bought through the App Store or Google Play, your refund route is the store, not the developer, and both have workable processes. Where you bought on the web, you are dealing with the company directly.
On UK consumer law: the Consumer Contracts Regulations 2013 give a 14-day cooling-off period for distance contracts, but there is a significant carve-out for digital content where you consented to immediate supply and acknowledged losing the cancellation right — which is exactly what the checkbox at checkout is doing. Separately, the Consumer Rights Act 2015 requires digital content to be of satisfactory quality, fit for purpose and as described, and that right does not disappear because you ticked a box.
Buying through an app store costs more but cancels more easily. Kindroid is about £2 a month cheaper on the web than through the App Store — roughly £24 a year — and the trade-off is that web cancellation depends on the company’s own process. For an app you are confident about, buy on the web. For a first subscription, the app store premium buys you a reliable exit.
A sensible way to approach the spend
- Start on Character.AI for free and find out whether you actually enjoy this.
- If you do, buy one month of whichever app suits — never an annual plan first.
- Watch a full billing cycle. On a metered app, track what you actually burn.
- Only then consider annual, and only on an app with a stated refund policy.
- Pay with a card that does not charge non-sterling fees, ideally a virtual one.
The most expensive outcome in this category is not the priciest app. It is a heavily discounted annual plan on an app you stop opening in week three.