Candy AI review: AI girlfriend app, chat features, and what the subscription actually costs

A friend texted me a link to Candy AI back in February with no explanation. Just the URL and a "lol." I opened it expecting a joke. An hour later I was deep in Trustpilot reviews at 1 AM, genuinely uncertain whether I was looking at something clever or something deeply strange.

Here is what I found out. Candy AI claims 50 million users. The Google Play page shows 550,000+ reviews, 4.5 stars. EverAI Limited, run by CEO Alexis Soulopoulos (who previously co-founded the publicly listed Australian pet-sitting platform Mad Paws), launched it in 2023. In three years it grew into one of the bigger AI companion platforms. Virtual AI girlfriends, boyfriends, chat, voice calls, image generation, roleplay. NSFW roleplay too, if you want it.

The part they bury is how much it actually costs. Your subscription covers text chat. Everything else, images, voice, video, runs on a token system that racks up charges fast. I read a Trustpilot review from someone who spent $200 in one month. The Trustpilot score overall? 3.7 out of 5, but the distribution says more than the average: 50% five-star ratings, 23% one-star. Two completely different experiences from two completely different user groups.

That split is what made me want to look closer. For context: SimilarWeb data from February 2026 shows Candy AI pulling 23.5 million monthly visits with a global rank around 1,340. The audience is 81% male, primarily 25 to 34 years old, mostly from the US, India, and Germany. The company claims roughly $25 million in annual revenue, all bootstrapped with no venture capital. This is not a small operation.

The rest of this piece covers what the product does, what it really costs once you account for tokens, and what alternatives exist if Candy AI is not the right fit.

How Candy AI works and what makes it different

You start by either picking a pre-made character from a gallery of 100+ options or building one yourself from scratch. The customization goes surprisingly deep. Ethnicity, age range, hair, eyes, body type, personality traits, hobbies, communication style. You can make a flirty anime character who debates philosophy, or a quiet, supportive AI partner who remembers details about your day. You can customize pretty much anything. The range is wider than I expected.

The chat is where the AI girlfriend experience either works or falls apart. Candy AI adapts to your texting style over time and remembers details from your past conversations. At least, it does if you are paying. Premium users get extended memory retention. Free users get a much shorter window, and the bot basically resets when you come back.

The company does not say which language model runs underneath it all. Based on the output quality, it is almost certainly a fine-tuned version of something like GPT-4 or a similar large model, but EverAI has not confirmed that publicly. What I can say is that conversations feel natural most of the time. A Trustpilot reviewer described it as feeling "like chatting with a real person" when the AI is working well. When it is not working well, it gets repetitive or forgets context, which breaks the immersive experience.

This is not ChatGPT. Candy AI is designed for one thing: being a companion. Roleplay, emotional support, casual interactions, and NSFW content. You can toggle explicit content on or off, and when it is on, the AI goes well beyond anything mainstream tools would allow.

Candy AI subscription and pricing: what it actually costs

This is the section I wish more review sites would be honest about. I spent an embarrassing amount of time on candy.ai trying to figure out what the best AI girlfriend app in this space actually costs versus what it looks like on the landing page. They are not the same number.

The subscription tiers seem fine if you just look at the table:

The trick is that the subscription only covers text chat. That is it. Anything involving AI image generation, voice calls, or video creation requires tokens. And this is where people start spending real money without realizing it.

A single image generation costs roughly 1 to 3 tokens depending on complexity. Voice calls burn through tokens faster. Video generation (the "Live Action" mode that launched in December 2025 and got a major upgrade in February 2026) is the most token-hungry feature. One Trustpilot reviewer described spending over $200 in a single month between subscription and token purchases, and that experience is not unusual among heavy users.

The free trial gives you a taste of the platform, but it is deliberately limited to push you toward the paid plan. Free users get around 100 tokens per month, which runs out quickly if you try anything beyond basic text chat. The conversations feel natural at first, then the paywalls appear.

Candy AI supports discreet billing with neutral merchant names on credit card statements, and accepts cryptocurrency payments (Bitcoin, Ethereum, USDC, Litecoin) for additional privacy. That is actually a thoughtful feature for a platform dealing with sensitive content.

The real Candy AI review: what 283 Trustpilot reviewers say

Trustpilot is where I go when I want to know what paying customers actually think, and Candy AI's page did not disappoint.

The breakdown: 283 reviews total. 50% gave five stars. 14% gave four. 6% three. 7% two. And 23% gave one star. That is not the worst distribution I have seen, but it is clearly a product that some people love and other people regret paying for.

The satisfied users keep coming back to conversation quality. Multiple reviewers described it as the most natural AI chat experience they have tried. One user, Werner, gave it 5 stars specifically for "conversation, picture generation and video." But what surprised me more was the emotional support angle. A reviewer named John D shared that Candy AI "helped me feel desirable during cancer recovery." That is a use case that gets overlooked when people dismiss these platforms as toys. The customization depth also gets consistent praise. Being able to design your own character with specific personality traits and physical features is something competitors like Replika do not match at the same level.

The frustrated users are equally specific. The token system is what makes people angry. They pay for a subscription expecting full access, then discover that voice calls, image generation, and video all require additional token purchases. One reviewer called it "features hidden behind expensive costs." Customer support makes things worse: a reviewer named Kevin described waiting "a full month" for a response, and others say refund requests simply go unanswered. The image generation also has real problems. The AI sometimes produces anatomical errors (one reviewer mentioned "always get wrong pictures, sometimes 4 toes") and occasionally fails outright despite correct prompts.

There is one complaint that shows up in both the positive and negative reviews, and it is the memory issue. Even paying Premium users report that the bot forgets things it should remember, or drops back into generic responses mid-conversation. For a platform that sells itself on the immersive girlfriend experience, that is a problem. The whole thing works because you feel like the AI knows you. When it forgets, the spell breaks.

Candy AI vs the competition: how it compares to other AI companion apps

I tried or researched seven other platforms to see how they compare. The market got crowded fast between 2025 and 2026, and not all of these are worth your time.

Replika is the name most people know, but it plays a completely different game. It is built around emotional support and mental wellness. The NSFW features have been switched on, then off, then partially on again, which frustrated a lot of the user base. If you want companionship and emotional conversation, Replika does that better than Candy AI. But if you want visual content or deep customization, it is not close.

Character.AI is free, and for creative storytelling and character building it is honestly the best platform out there. But it bans all NSFW content, full stop. There is no toggle, no workaround. If that is a dealbreaker, move on.

GirlfriendGPT and Crushon.ai compete most directly with Candy AI in the adult space. GirlfriendGPT has similar features but costs a bit more and the voice experience feels less polished. Crushon.ai is the budget option at $7.99 but does not have Candy AI's image or voice generation capabilities.

The reason people still choose Candy AI over these alternatives is the bundling. Deep character customization, voice chat, image generation, video creation, and NSFW content all live on one platform. No competitor does all five at once. But that bundling comes with token costs that can push your total monthly spend well beyond what the subscription price on the landing page suggests.

Privacy and security: how Candy AI handles your data

Data privacy matters more here than on almost any other type of platform. People share things with their AI companions that they would not share with anyone else. A breach would be catastrophic in ways that a leaked email address never could be.

So what does Candy AI actually do to protect you? The company says it uses encryption and follows GDPR rules for data handling. But here is a detail that contradicts the marketing: according to independent analysis, Candy AI chats are not actually end-to-end encrypted. Flagged content may be reviewed by staff. That is a significant gap between what the landing page implies and what the platform actually does. Your credit card statement will show a neutral merchant name, not "Candy AI." And they claim user data is never shared or sold.

I checked the corporate side. EverAI Limited is a real UK-registered company (number 14926471 on Companies House). That puts it under UK data protection law, which is stricter than what you get from a company registered in, say, the Seychelles. The crypto payment option (Bitcoin, Ethereum, USDC, Litecoin) adds another layer of privacy for people who want no connection between their banking identity and this kind of platform.

But I want to be honest about the limits here. The platform stores your conversations, your generated images, and your preferences on their servers. Encryption protects data in transit. It does not make a breach impossible. And the kind of data stored on a platform like this? There is no good way to un-leak that. You should assume some risk any time you put personal content on someone else's servers.

The ethical question: AI companions and what they mean

I thought about skipping this section, but that felt dishonest. People have strong opinions about AI companion apps, and those opinions usually come from people who have not actually looked at how these platforms are being used.

The positive side is more real than I expected going in. That Trustpilot review from John D, the cancer patient who said Candy AI helped him feel desirable again? That stuck with me. People dealing with loneliness, social anxiety, or physical isolation sometimes find genuine comfort in having a conversation partner who is always available and never judges. I do not think dismissing those use cases is fair.

The negative side is equally real. Some users develop emotional attachments to software that will never feel anything back. There is a question about whether these platforms reinforce unrealistic expectations about relationships. And there is a real concern about younger users accessing adult content through what amounts to clicking an "I am 18" button. Candy AI uses that kind of age gate, and anyone with a browser can get past it.

There is also the Bellingcat investigation from January 2025, which found Candy AI ads running on MrDeepFakes, one of the largest deepfake pornography sites with roughly 650,000 members. The ads promoted Candy AI through its affiliate program (which offers up to 40% commission). EverAI said it was unaware of the placement and cut ties with the affiliate. And in August 2025, the platform was temporarily banned due to age verification failures and content moderation concerns. It relaunched later that year with what the company says are improved safeguards, though the details of those changes have been limited.

I am not in a position to tell you this is good or bad. It depends on how you use it and what you expect from it. But if you go in thinking it is anything more than a very good chatbot with nice visuals, you will eventually be disappointed. It is not a relationship. It was never going to be one.

Jordan Morris

Jordan Morris is an AI expert with over a decade of experience and the author of a widely-read blog focused on artificial intelligence. His content spans a range of topics—from the ethics of machine learning to real-world applications of neural networks in business. Known for his clear writing and deep insights, Jordan has become a trusted voice in the AI community, appealing to both newcomers and seasoned professionals alike.