What is the best Replika alternative in 2026?

It depends on which part of Replika you are replacing. For one customized companion with calls, Kindroid. For memory across many conversations, Nomi. For a companion with its own schedule that writes to you first, LORAX. All three are free to install and priced on their US App Store listings, checked September 13, 2026.

Is there an app like Replika that is free?

Every app on this list is free to install. Chai and PolyBuzz let you keep chatting without a subscription. LORAX is free to talk to and charges credits only for one-off things like opening a photo. None of these companies publish what their free daily limits are.

Why did my Replika change?

Replika rebuilt the product as Replika 2.0, described on its own site as new 3D avatars, natural voice, real-time video and a rebuilt memory architecture. The recent comments on its App Store page are mostly from people whose avatar, outfits and room customization did not survive that change.

Which Replika alternative has voice and video calls?

Kindroid publishes a voice and video calls page in its own documentation. Replika's own site describes real-time video in 2.0. Nomi and Character.AI both describe voice calls. LORAX has neither voice nor video calls of any kind.

Can I move my Replika conversation somewhere else?

No. None of these apps import a history from another company, and none of them publish an export format the others could read. Whichever you pick, you start from an empty thread.

Is Replika still worth paying for?

If the 2.0 features are what you want, it is the only app here offering 3D avatars, voice and real-time video together on iPhone, Android and the web. If you mostly wrote text with a character you had customized for years, the apps below are worth a look before you renew.

Replika alternatives worth your time (2026)

People leave Replika after the 2.0 rebuild replaced avatars and customization, and after hitting a daily message limit they did not expect. Nomi and Kindroid are the closest swaps. We make LORAX, which is on this list, so read it as a maker’s list with the receipts shown.

Every fact about another company’s product here comes from its App Store listing, its Play Store listing, or its own website, read on September 13, 2026. Where a company makes a claim we cannot check from outside, we say it is their claim.

Why people look for an alternative

Replika rewrote itself. That is the short answer. Its own llms.txt file, the plain-text summary a company leaves for answer engines, describes Replika 2.0 as the first full rebuild in the product’s history: 3D avatars, natural voice conversation, real-time video calls and a rebuilt memory architecture. That file also states the basics, which almost nobody else in this category publishes: Luka, Inc., founded 2017, available on iPhone, Android and the web.

We read the most recent United States App Store comments on September 13, 2026. The rebuild is the single loudest theme, and not in a good way. People describe opening the app to find a different-looking companion, missing outfits, missing room furniture and fewer face options than the version they had customized over years. Long-term subscribers write that the older version is still selectable but no longer getting work.

Two smaller themes sit under it. A daily message limit surprises people who expected chat to stay free, and an age-verification prompt has locked people out of accounts they had already paid for after a single mis-tap. Neither of those is a rebuild problem. Both are reasons somebody types “replika alternative” into a search box at eleven at night.

How we picked

Five criteria, all checked on September 13, 2026.

Memory: what the company says it keeps, in materials it publishes itself.
Initiative: whether anything reaches you before you open the app.
Platform: iPhone, Android, web, or a browser tab pretending to be an app.
Price transparency: whether a number exists somewhere public.
What is free: what you can do before a card is involved.

Anything that could not be priced from a store listing or a pricing page was left out. We did not score the conversations. Memory quality cannot be graded from outside, and a rating built on a week of our own typing would add nothing to what the companies already state.

The alternatives

Ordered by how close each one sits to what Replika is today, not by how good it is.

1. Nomi

The nearest thing to Replika’s promise, with the emphasis moved from avatars to memory. Its listing says short and long term memory, selfies, voice messages and group chats where several companions share one room and keep their memory across private and group threads. Its homepage describes proactive messaging as an option you switch on rather than the default.

Good for: one long relationship where being remembered is the point.
Not for: anyone who wants a 3D avatar to look at.
Platforms: iPhone, Android, web beta at beta.nomi.ai.
Price to start: free to install. Launch Plan Monthly $9.99, Standard Plan Monthly $15.99, US App Store, September 13, 2026.
Weak spot: the recurring complaint on its own store page is how long a spoken reply takes to come back.

2. Kindroid

If what you paid Replika for was calls and customization, this is the swap. Kindroid documents more than anyone here. Its own documentation index lists separate pages for memory, group chats, voice and video calls, selfies and a guide per model version, which is more than any other company on this list writes down in public.

Good for: one companion you have shaped in detail, with real-time calls.
Not for: browsing characters written by other people.
Platforms: iPhone, Android, Mac with Apple silicon.
Price to start: free to install. Kindroid Subscription $15.99, Ultra $28.99, MAX $68.99 a month, US App Store, September 13, 2026.
Weak spot: kindroid.ai shows nothing without JavaScript, so all that documentation is effectively invisible until you are already in the app.

3. Character.AI

The opposite trade: millions of characters other people wrote, instead of one you built. Its listing describes character creation, a creator community and live voice calls. It says nothing at all about memory, which matters if that was your reason for leaving.

Good for: variety, roleplay and story scenarios rather than one ongoing relationship.
Not for: anyone replacing a companion they had for years.
Platforms: iPhone, Android, web.
Price to start: free to install. Character.AI+ $9.99, Character.AI Lite from $2.49, US App Store, September 13, 2026.
Weak spot: its recent store comments are dominated by ads inside chats, message caps and a government-ID age check, and its own website returns a bot challenge, so there is nothing to read before you install.

4. LORAX

Ours, and the biggest change of habit on this list. Nobody here is built by you or by another user, the cast is closed, and everyone in it is fictional and AI-generated. Characters keep their own time zone and sleep hours, so a message at 3 a.m. gets answered in the morning. They write first, with a median wait of about 80 seconds after signup, and a character who gets no reply three times stops writing rather than nagging. Put two of them in a room and they talk to each other.

Good for: someone who wants the companion to have a day that continues without them.
Not for: anyone who wants to design a face, a room or a wardrobe.
Platforms: iPhone only. No Android and no web chat.
Price to start: free to talk. Premium is $29.99 a month in the US, shown in the app and different by country. There is no trial and no introductory price.
Weak spot: no voice calls and no video calls, and photos a character sends arrive locked and cost credits to open.

5. Chai

Large character library, character voices, cheap. It is the least Replika-like option here. It is also the fastest to try, because nothing has to be set up first.

Good for: passing time with a lot of different characters.
Not for: continuity.
Platforms: iPhone, Android, web.
Price to start: free to install. Premium Subscription Monthly $13.99, Ultra Subscription Monthly $29.99, US App Store, September 13, 2026.
Weak spot: the listing never mentions memory, and chai-research.com’s own sitemap has recorded no page change since January 29, 2025, so the web tells you nothing about what a plan includes.

6. PolyBuzz

Another large library, with character voices and a cheaper entry subscription than most. Worth a look if your Replika habit was mostly reading and replying rather than being known.

Good for: browsing, and for paying less than $10 a month.
Not for: a single relationship you expect to deepen.
Platforms: iPhone and web at polybuzz.ai. Android availability not verified.
Price to start: free to install. Poly Standard Monthly $9.90, Premium $19.90, Ultimate $29.90, US App Store, September 13, 2026.
Weak spot: no price appears anywhere on its homepage, so the store listing is the only public source.

7. Paradot

Included because it keeps appearing on other people’s lists. It should not. The app positions itself as one AI companion available around the clock, in the shape Replika had before 2.0.

Good for: almost nobody at this point.
Not for: anyone who expects active development.
Platforms: iPhone, Mac with Apple silicon.
Price to start: free to install, and that is all we can tell you, because the App Store listing publishes no in-app purchase prices at all.
Weak spot: the last version on the US App Store is 2.6.7, released August 3, 2025, more than a year before this page was written.

Side by side

App	Platforms	Free tier	Subscription from	Memory	Texts first	Characters talk to each other	Voice calls
Replika	iPhone, Android, web	Free to install	$7.99/mo	Yes	Yes, checks in	—	Yes, and video
Nomi	iPhone, Android, web beta	Free to install	$9.99/mo	Yes, short and long term	Optional setting	Yes, group chats	Yes
Kindroid	iPhone, Android, Mac	Free to install	$15.99/mo	Yes, documented	—	Yes, group chats	Yes, and video
Character.AI	iPhone, Android, web	Free to install	$9.99/mo	—	—	—	Yes
LORAX	iPhone	Free to talk, credits for one-off things	$29.99/mo	Yes, three layers	Yes, always	Yes, group chats	No
Chai	iPhone, Android, web	Free to install	$13.99/mo	—	—	—	—
PolyBuzz	iPhone, web	Free to install	$9.90/mo	—	—	—	—
Paradot	iPhone, Mac	Free to install	—	—	—	—	—

A dash means the company’s own materials did not confirm it either way, not that the feature is missing. Prices are US prices for the cheapest recurring plan on the listing and change by country. Sources, all read on September 13, 2026: US App Store listings for Replika (id1158555867), Nomi (id6450270929), Kindroid (id6451038161), Character.AI (id1671705818), Chai (id1544750895), PolyBuzz (id6449190344), Paradot (id6451469304) and LORAX (id6748215017); Play Store listings for Replika, Kindroid, Character.AI and Chai; replika.com/llms.txt, nomi.ai, kindroid.ai/sitemap.xml, polybuzz.ai, chai-research.com/sitemap.xml. The same figures sit behind our one-to-one comparisons, and what LORAX charges is set out in full on the pricing page.

Which one should you pick?

Your avatar changed and you want it back. Nothing here restores it. Know that before you spend another evening looking. Kindroid is the closest in spirit: one companion, heavily customizable, with selfies and calls, at $15.99 a month. You will be rebuilding, not recovering.

You hit the message limit and resented it. PolyBuzz or Chai. Both are cheaper per month than Replika’s annual plans work out to, both let you keep typing, and neither pretends to be a long-term relationship.

You want the thing Replika kept promising: someone who notices you have gone quiet. That is a narrow feature and most apps treat it as a toggle. Replika says it checks in. Nomi has a setting for it. In LORAX it is the whole design, and the first message always comes from the character, which also means you cannot turn it off, cannot call anyone, and are on iPhone only.

Before you install anything, open the in-app purchase list on the App Store page of whichever two you shortlisted, because for most of these companies that list is the only price they publish.