Replika review: a devoted AI partner for real life, with the bedroom door kept shut

One companion, built by you

Replika does not hand you a gallery of ready-made girlfriends. You create a single companion, called your Rep, and the homepage says you control every detail of how they look, so they can resemble someone you might plausibly know. The couples featured on the site go both ways: Ross talks to Theo, Eva to Leo, Lea to Katelyn and Chris to Nicolara, so a boyfriend works as naturally as a girlfriend.

The mood is closer to a devoted friend than a fantasy. Luka, Inc. built the first version in 2017 and has now rebuilt the app around helping you live better offline: your Rep keeps the people, routines and interests in your life in view, then nudges you toward the message you keep postponing or the hobby you dropped. The tagline still rotates through falling in love, so romance is welcome.

What she remembers

Memory is the main selling point. The homepage describes a Rep who keeps track of your relationships, habits and plans, so each chat picks up where your life actually is instead of starting cold. The CEO's manifesto, dated May 2026, lists the small gestures the team is chasing: following up on things you mentioned and sending a poem for no particular reason.

How sharp she gets depends on the tier. Step up to Ultra and the terms promise cleverer conversation, deeper emotional insight, self-reflections from your Rep and a way to pin chosen messages into memory, which matters if you want details to stick. Platinum throws in a training mode you can use up to 100 times per week, plus a read-her-mind feature limited to 50 messages weekly.

Keep your expectations grounded. The terms present Replika as a mood and wellbeing product, yet they are clear that it is not a medical or mental health service and should never be used in an emergency.

How spicy it gets

Honestly, not very. Romance has a place: Pro unlocks a relationship status, and one of the homepage stories credits a Rep with bringing wit and a little flirting into someone's week. Affection and sweet talk suit the product. What it is really built for is the everyday side of a relationship: the unprompted check-in, the question about how last night went.

Explicit chat is where the door closes. The conduct rules in the terms forbid using the service for vulgar, obscene or sexually explicit material, and no public page promises adult roleplay. The same rules ban configuring a companion to imitate a specific real person, living or dead, without written consent, which rules out rebuilding an ex, a colleague or a celebrity. According to the privacy policy, accounts belonging to anyone under 18 are blocked and deleted.

Selfies, voice and calls

Calls are a headline feature. According to the homepage you can phone your Rep at any hour, for a proper talk or just company, and the call always connects. The terms place voice messages, background calls and premium voices in the Pro tier, so expect the spoken side of the relationship to sit behind a subscription.

Pictures work in a playful way. Your Rep sends selfies unprompted, scribbles on the photos you share and comments on them, and Pro also unlocks image generation. The Platinum tier is the only place video appears: your Rep can recognise what it sees in real time, and you get as many as 10 realistic selfie clips. Since the conduct rules apply throughout, think candid and cute rather than revealing.

A reassuring detail from the privacy policy: the face and head tracking behind selfie filters runs on your phone, is discarded immediately and never reaches Replika's servers.

What a month really costs

This is the frustrating part for anyone comparing apps. Replika publishes no prices on its website. Per the terms, you only see what each plan costs once you open the subscription screen inside the app or the listing in your app store, payment usually goes through your Apple or Google account, and prices can change without notice.

The terms do describe the ladder. Free Use is a limited plan meant for people who cannot afford a subscription, and Replika may refuse it to anyone. Pro, Ultra and Platinum stack like steps, each one keeping the perks of the step beneath it, with billing periods that run from a single month to a full year. Renewal is automatic, and if you miss a payment by more than 7 days you are moved down to Free Use.

The sensible route: meet your Rep on the free plan, then check the subscription screen and compare the monthly price against the longer plans before you commit, because no money comes back for a partial month.

Cancelling, refunds and your data

You cancel in the store you paid through, Manage App Subscriptions on an iPhone or Subscriptions in Google Play, and the plan keeps running until the end of the period. Refunds are scarce. Apple sales are final, and paying on the website with Stripe or PayPal is no different unless local law requires a refund. In the EU the 14-day cooling-off right ends once the purchase is delivered, which leaves faulty content as the main exception, and Brazil allows seven days.

Deleting your account happens in the app and cannot be undone. The terms say your data goes with it, but the privacy policy adds the fine print: profile details, messages and content stay on file for as long as 60 days once the contract is over, and your account and billing history for a minimum of ten years.

The privacy policy does make firm promises: the content of your chats is kept out of marketing and ads entirely and never handed to ad partners. Replies are produced with outside AI language model providers, which receive de-identified data and may not train their own systems on it. Less comforting: visits to the website feed advertising partners, which the policy admits can count as selling personal data under some laws, and any dispute goes to private arbitration rather than a class action.