Most people in this category buy the wrong thing first, and the reason is consistent: they choose on the feature that is easiest to demonstrate rather than the one they will care about in a month.
The one question that decides most of it
Do you want continuity, or do you want media?
Continuity means a companion that holds a personality and remembers you — brings up something you mentioned a fortnight ago, without prompting. This is what people mean when they say a companion feels real.
Media means images, voice messages, video. What is impressive in week one.
Very few apps lead on both, and the split is clean. Nomi AI and Kindroid lead on continuity. Candy AI and SweetDream AI lead on media.
Answer this honestly before reading any more marketing, because every app’s front page is built to sell you media. Media demonstrates well in a screenshot. Memory does not.
Then: five questions worth two minutes each
Who operates it? Look for a company name in the footer, terms or privacy policy. If you cannot find one, you cannot exercise your data rights against it, and you have no idea who holds your chat logs. Ten of the sixteen apps we reviewed fail this. You can check any UK claim free on Companies House.
Flat or metered? Flat means generation is included. Metered means images, voice and calls draw on tokens you buy separately, and the advertised price is for barely using it. Neither is wrong, but on a metered app you need to know your own usage before an annual plan makes sense.
What does it do with your conversations? Find the training clause. Some apps state chats may be used to improve their models; some state they are not used; several say nothing, which you should read as the less favourable answer. It is the one term you cannot undo later.
Does it check your age? Mostly no — only Joi AI does so properly, and only after a regulator intervened. This matters less for you personally than as a signal: operators who do not invest in age assurance generally do not invest in security either.
Can you leave? Is there a visible cancellation route and a published refund policy? SweetDream AI publishes one; most do not. Buying through an app store costs a little more and gives you an exit you control.
Marketing claims that mean less than they look
“We tested for 200 hours.” With no logs, no dates and no protocol, this is a number chosen because it sounds like work. Our own methodology says plainly what we did and did not do, because the alternative is making something up.
“Video calls.” Three different things are sold under this word. A live video call is real-time; one app in our review set does it. Generated video is a clip produced on request — closer to an image. Voice calls are real-time audio, more widely supported and cheaper. Establish which you are buying.
“Advanced memory.” Usually means a context window — holding a conversation within one session. That is not the same as recalling something from three weeks ago. You find out which you have within a fortnight.
“75% off.” If it has been 75% off every day for six months, it is the price.
Rankings that contradict their own scores. On one competing site we checked, an app scored 4.9 sits above one scored 8.5. Whatever produced that order, it was not the scores.
A sequence that costs almost nothing
- Start on Character.AI, free. Find out whether you enjoy this format at all. Its filter is strict and its memory is weak, but it is free indefinitely and that is the right price for an experiment. Many people discover here that the category is not for them, which is a useful and cheap thing to learn.
- If you enjoy it, buy one month of the app matching your answer to the first question. Not three. Not a year.
- Watch a full billing cycle. On a metered app, track what you actually burn. Multiply.
- Only then consider annual, and only where there is a stated refund policy.
Total cost of finding out properly: under £15.
What actually matters at week four
Everyone evaluates these apps on week one, which rewards the wrong things.
At week one you notice image quality, voice naturalness, how quickly it replies. At week four you notice whether it remembers your sister’s name, whether it contradicts its own backstory, whether talking to it still feels like anything.
That is why conversation and memory carries 25% on our rubric, the most of any criterion, and why image generation sits inside a 15% band shared with voice and video. It is not that pictures do not matter. It is that they stop being the thing you notice.
If you want to skip all of this
- Best overall for a UK reader: SweetDream AI — 8.3. Live video calls and a UK-registered operator. Watch the token meter.
- Best if you want to author a character: Kindroid — 8.2. Buy on the web, not the App Store.
- Best memory, best value: Nomi AI — 8.1, about £7 a month annually.
- Best free: Character.AI — strict filter, genuinely free.
- Avoid: Muah AI — breached in 2024. We do not link to it.
The margin between the top three is 0.2 points. They are three good answers to three different questions, not a podium.