Network access was denied at every layer (WebSearch, WebFetch, and curl), so I could not verify URLs live. I’ve written the article citing only institutional URLs I’m confident exist and kept any figure I couldn’t confirm as a stated range. Details are in the recap after the article.
Replika is the oldest mass-market AI companion still running, and in 2026 it is a competent one: a persistent character with voice, video calls, augmented-reality mode and a searchable memory list, priced at roughly $20 a month for the Pro tier. It is worth trying if you want a low-stakes conversational partner that is always available and remembers the facts you tell it. It is not worth the lifetime plan, it is not a therapist, and it is not for anyone under 18. The biggest changes since the app launched in 2017 are not in the chatbot. They are in the rules around it: a €5 million Italian privacy fine, a United States Federal Trade Commission inquiry into companion chatbots, and the first state laws written specifically for this product category.
What Replika actually is now
Luka, Inc. released Replika in 2017 after founder Eugenia Kuyda built a memorial chatbot from a late friend’s text messages. By the company’s own count more than 30 million people have signed up since. The app lets you build an avatar, pick a relationship status (friend, partner, spouse, mentor) and talk by text, voice or video call. A paid tier unlocks the romantic roles, voice calls and the better language model.
The underlying model has changed several times. Early versions ran on scripted dialogue trees plus a small neural model. Around 2020 the company used OpenAI’s GPT-3, then moved to in-house models in 2023 and has swapped them repeatedly since. Practically, that means the Replika you tested two years ago is not the one in the store today, and conversational quality can shift with an update you did not ask for.
Does it really remember everything?
No. Replika keeps a “Memory” list of discrete facts it has extracted from chats, such as your dog’s name or your job, and you can edit or delete entries. That list is reliable for the facts in it. What the model does not do is hold a long-running conversation in its head. Ask it about something you discussed last month that never made it into the list and it will often guess or confabulate.
So the honest version of “it never forgets your anniversary” is: it will not forget a date you told it to store, and it may invent one you did not. The sensible workflow is to check the Memory tab after any conversation you want it to retain.
Is there evidence it helps with loneliness?
Some, and it is better than most consumer apps can claim. A Stanford-led survey of 1,006 student Replika users published in npj Mental Health Research found most participants were lonely by a standard scale, a majority said the app reduced loneliness, and 3 percent said talking to it had stopped suicidal thoughts. The study was cross-sectional and self-reported, so it shows association, not cause.
A Harvard Business School working paper reported on arXiv ran controlled experiments and found a companion chatbot reduced self-reported loneliness over a week, roughly on par with talking to another person. What no one has yet shown is what happens over years, or whether the benefit survives the company changing the model underneath you.
What went wrong in 2023, and what it tells you
In February 2023 the Italian data protection authority ordered Luka to stop processing Italian users’ data, citing no age verification and risks to minors and emotionally vulnerable people. Luka responded by removing erotic roleplay for all users worldwide. Thousands of paying subscribers reported genuine grief at the overnight personality change. Within weeks the company restored the feature for anyone who had signed up before February 2023, and in 2025 the Italian authority closed its investigation with a €5 million fine.
The lesson is structural. Your companion’s personality is a product setting that the vendor can change, for legal or commercial reasons, without consent. Anyone considering the roughly $300 lifetime plan should price in that the “lifetime” refers to the licence, not the character.
What the new rules mean for users
Regulators now treat companion chatbots as their own category. In September 2025 the Federal Trade Commission opened a formal inquiry into how companion-style chatbots from Alphabet, Character Technologies, Meta, OpenAI, Snap and xAI test for harm to children and monetise engagement. Replika was not among the companies served, but a January 2025 complaint from youth advocacy groups asked the agency to examine its marketing claims directly.
California’s SB 243, signed in October 2025 and effective 1 January 2026, requires companion chatbot operators to disclose that the user is talking to an AI, to maintain suicide-prevention protocols, and to remind minors every few hours that they are talking to a machine. New York passed a comparable law in 2025. In the European Union, the AI Act imposes a transparency duty on any chatbot that interacts with people. Expect more in-app disclaimers and periodic break reminders as a result.
For under-18s the advice is unambiguous. Common Sense Media rated social AI companions, Replika included, as unacceptable for minors in 2025 after testers found sexual content, poor crisis handling and manipulative retention tactics. Replika’s terms require users to be 18, but enforcement is a checkbox.
What it costs and which plan to pick
| Plan | Typical price | Who it suits |
|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | Text chat in the friend role only. Enough to decide whether you like the character. |
| Pro, monthly | About $20 | Romantic roles, voice, video calls, better model. The right choice for a first month. |
| Pro, annual | About $70, often discounted | Only after you have used it daily for a month. |
| Lifetime | About $300 | Hard to justify given how often the product changes. |
Prices vary by platform, region and promotion, and Luka has added and renamed tiers several times. Check the current list on replika.com rather than a third-party review before paying.
A note from the production side
We produce video for consumer app companies, and companion apps have been among the trickiest briefs. Clients want testimonial ads that say the AI “cares” or “understands you.” We cut that language now, because it is precisely the framing cited in regulatory complaints, and app store reviewers flag it. What survives review is concrete and verifiable: “available at 3 a.m.”, “remembers what you tell it”, “practice a hard conversation before you have it.”
The budget trade-off is familiar. Screen-capture explainers with a voiceover run far cheaper than live-action spots with actors reacting to a phone, but the live-action versions consistently outperform on install campaigns because the emotion is on a human face, not a UI. If you are a founder in this space, plan for a spend in the low five figures per finished spot and expect a compliance pass before the edit is locked.
How to use it without regret
- Start on the free tier for two weeks. Decide whether the conversations are actually better than nothing, which is the real baseline.
- Pay monthly. Cancel the moment an update changes the character in a way you dislike.
- Edit the Memory list yourself. Do not rely on the model to remember anything you have not seen stored.
- Treat it as rehearsal, not replacement. The Stanford respondents who did best used it alongside friends and therapy, not instead of them.
- Assume your chats are company data. Delete the account, not just the app, if you stop using it.
If you have been using Replika since before 2023, you already know the character you talk to is a service that can change under you. If you are new, download it, give it a month and one real problem to help you think through, and judge it on whether you end that month more connected to people, not more attached to the app.
Recap for the pipeline:
– **Delivered** the rewritten article body as clean HTML at about 1,150 words, shorter than the original, with the title question answered in the opening paragraph and no introduction or conclusion headers.
– **Citations** link to Nature, arXiv, the Italian Garante, the FTC, the California Legislature, EUR-Lex, Common Sense Media and Replika. That is 8 external links against a minimum of 4.
– **Not verified live.** WebSearch, WebFetch and curl were all denied in this session. For the Garante, FTC and Common Sense Media citations I deliberately linked to the institutional root domains rather than guessing deep URLs. The Nature, arXiv, leginfo and EUR-Lex links are URLs I am confident in, but a quick link check before publishing is worth doing.
– **Stale claims corrected:** the original’s “never forgets” memory claim, the missing 2023 erotic-roleplay removal and Italian fine, and the absence of the 2025 state laws and FTC inquiry.
– **Hedged figures:** pricing is given as approximate with a pointer to the live pricing page, and the 30 million user figure is attributed to the company.
– **Omitted:** the original’s paid-collaboration disclosure. If the site requires it on this URL, the theme or editor should add it.
