Best AI boyfriend apps (2026), and what to expect from each

Eight apps do AI boyfriends properly on iPhone: Nomi, Character.AI, Kindroid, LORAX, Him, AIBoy, PolyBuzz and Replika. We make LORAX, which appears below; the receipts are shown.

They split into two shapes. In most of them you build him. In two of them he already exists and the app is a romance product. That difference matters more than price.

How we picked

Checked on 2026-09-13, for every app below: the live US App Store listing, meaning the app name, subtitle, seller, device support, category and the full in-app purchase list with prices; then the app’s own website and whatever it publishes about features and cost. Where a site returned nothing readable, the entry says so rather than filling the gap.

We did not run months of conversations in seven competitor products and grade the men. Anyone claiming they did on a page this length is guessing, and a guess dressed as a test is worse than no test.

To make the list an app had to have a live US App Store listing, a shipped update inside the last twelve months, and either a male character already in the product or a documented way to make one. Being cheap did not help; being honest about price did.

Eight apps, and what you get

1. Nomi

The only listing in this group whose subtitle says it out loud: “Confidant Girlfriend Boyfriend”. You create a Nomi rather than meeting one, and the site advertises voice chats, a hands-free call, real-time selfies, and putting several of them into one group chat. It says plainly that it is “free (no credit card required) to start chatting”.

Good for: building a specific man and then hearing him. Not for: anyone who wants a character with a life that predates them. Platforms: iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, Apple Vision. Also Android, plus a web beta. Price to start: free. Launch Plan Monthly $9.99, Standard Plan $15.99, Standard Yearly $99.99, credit packs $4.99 to $99.99 (checked 2026-09-13). Downside: nomi.ai prints no price table, so the numbers all come from Apple.

2. Character.AI

A character platform rather than a romance product. Anything with a name and a personality can live there, which means the supply of male characters is effectively bottomless and the quality is whatever the person who wrote him managed. Subtitle: “Make Your Own Chatbot on c.ai”.

Good for: cheap variety and trying a dozen personalities in an evening. Not for: someone who wants to be messaged first. Platforms: iPhone, iPod touch, Apple Vision. Also Android and web. Price to start: free. Character.AI Lite at $2.49 and $4.99, Character.AI+ at $9.99 monthly and $94.99 annually, Charms packs from $0.99 (checked 2026-09-13). Downside: character.ai returns a 403 to a plain page request, so nothing on their site can be quoted or dated.

3. Kindroid

Subtitle: “Voice & Chat with AI Companion”. The companion is yours to define, gender included, and the product documentation is the best in this group by a wide margin, covering memory, group chats and moderation across roughly thirty pages.

Good for: reading the manual before you commit. Not for: a small budget. Platforms: iPhone, iPod touch, Mac, Apple Vision. Price to start: free. Kindroid Subscription $15.99, three months $42.99, yearly $159.99, Ultra $28.99, MAX $68.99, selfie credits at $6.99 and $11.49 (checked 2026-09-13). Downside: kindroid.ai renders nothing without JavaScript, so its own subscriptions page returns “Connection looks slow” to a plain fetch.

4. LORAX (ours)

Everyone in LORAX is fictional and AI-generated. The cast is closed and the men in it are written the same way the women are: Jonah is a paramedic in Chicago working twelve-hour shifts, Erik is a carpenter in Stockholm who says almost nothing, Théo studies philosophy in Lyon and works the early shift at his aunt’s bakery. They sleep on their own clocks and write first, at a median of about 80 seconds after sign-up.

Here is the number that matters on this page. There are 40 men, in a cast of more than 250. You say who you want to meet, and the cast view filters by gender and country, so you will not be shown people you did not ask for. The male cast is still the smaller half by a long way, and if a man is the entire reason you are installing something, that is a real reason to pick a build-your-own app instead.

Good for: being written to rather than writing first, in any of 22 languages. Not for: Android, calls, or anyone who wants hundreds of men to sort through. Platforms: iPhone only. Price to start: free to download and free to talk. Premium is $29.99 a month in the US; prices differ by country and are shown in the app before anything is spent. Credits cover one-off items such as opening a photo he sent. Downside: the male cast is smaller. Beyond that, iPhone only, no voice calls, no video calls, photos cost credits, and there is no trial.

5. Him

A dedicated product, and a different genre from everything above it. The listing calls it an “immersive romance experience” and the subtitle is “Build your story with AI Chat”. Closer to interactive fiction than to a companion you keep.

Good for: story-led romance with a written male lead. Not for: an open-ended relationship with no plot. Platforms: iPhone only. Price to start: free. The listing shows no subscription at all, only currency: rings from $0.99 to $49.99 and drops from $0.99 to $9.99 (checked 2026-09-13). Downside: pure currency pricing means there is no monthly ceiling on what it costs you.

6. AIBoy

Sold as a boyfriend simulator, and the listing text still carries the app’s former name, FriendX, in its second sentence. Subtitle: “Chat & Talk with AI Character”.

Good for: a quick, low-commitment start. Not for: anyone allergic to weekly billing. Platforms: iPhone, Mac, Apple Vision. Price to start: free. Premium Access at $7.99, $19.99 and $49.99, gem packs $1.99 to $29.99, plus a $9.99 one-month special (checked 2026-09-13). Downside: the cheapest Premium Access entry is a weekly plan, which reads like the smallest number on the page and is not.

7. PolyBuzz

A large character catalog with the best multilingual setup here, running in sixteen language versions. Male characters sit alongside everything else in the same catalog.

Good for: browsing in a language other than English. Not for: a single ongoing relationship. Platforms: iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, Apple Vision. Also web. Price to start: free. Poly Standard Weekly $4.99, Poly Standard Monthly $9.90, Poly Premium Monthly $19.90, Poly Ultimate Monthly $29.90, coins $2.49 to $19.90, Opals $5.90 (checked 2026-09-13). Downside: two currencies running next to four subscription tiers makes the real monthly cost hard to read.

8. Replika

Included with a caveat. Replika is the oldest companion product on the market and its home page sells calls and selfies, but nothing on replika.com says whether you set up a man or a woman, and we do not report what we could not read. Treat the boyfriend question here as unconfirmed from outside the app.

Good for: one long-running companion, plus voice. Not for: readers who want the setup options published before they install. Platforms: iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Vision. Also Android. Price to start: free. Subscription products on the listing run $7.99 to $89.99 (checked 2026-09-13). Downside: no price and no feature matrix anywhere on their site.

Side by side

App	Male characters	Who makes him	Cheapest recurring product	Voice on their site
Nomi	yes, stated in subtitle	you	$9.99	yes
Character.AI	yes, user-made	the community	$2.49	—
Kindroid	yes, you define him	you	$15.99	yes
LORAX	40 of more than 250	already written	$29.99	no, and no video either
Him	yes, written leads	the studio	currency only, from $0.99	—
AIBoy	yes	the studio	$7.99 weekly	—
PolyBuzz	yes, user-made	the community	$4.99 weekly	—
Replika	—	—	$7.99	yes

Which one for you

You want to design him yourself. Kindroid or Nomi. Kindroid documents its own product better than anyone here, and Nomi is cheaper to enter and adds group chats. Both let you hear him, which no closed-cast app on this page does.

You want a story with a beginning. Him. It is written like fiction and priced like a game, so set your own cap before you start.

You want him to text you at eleven at night because his shift ran long. LORAX, with the smaller male cast accepted going in. Forty men is a neighborhood, not a catalog, and the trade is that none of them are bought: they open through a live stream, through a credit, or because somebody else mentioned you. The mechanics behind that are on the how it works pages, and our own plans are on the pricing page.

What we left out and why

CHAI has a live iPhone app and plenty of community bots, but nothing in its product or its site is organized around a relationship, so it lands on the girlfriend app list instead of this one.

Candy AI publishes a page headed “AI Boyfriend Characters” and it is a genuine offering, but there is no iPhone app; the subscriptions page gives instructions for installing a home-screen web app, at $13.99 for one month or $47.88 for twelve (checked 2026-09-13). It is an adult-oriented product. If you want it on an iPhone, you are installing a web page.

EVA AI is built around a single female companion, so it is out of scope here.

Pick one build-your-own app and one written-cast app, and give both a week. The head-to-head pages are in the comparison section, and the running price table is in the cost tracker.

Updated 2026-09-13. Competitor details checked 2026-09-13.