How We Test AI Companion Apps
No five-minute demos. Every app gets weeks of daily use across free and paid tiers before it earns a score.
Every app we cover gets at least a week of daily use across both free and paid tiers. We don't score apps we haven't used ourselves. Here is exactly what we look at.
The five scores
- Conversation quality — coherence, tone, how human it feels over long chats.
- Memory — does it remember facts and context across sessions?
- Personality control — how much you can shape character, tone and backstory.
- Free tier — what you actually get without paying.
- Privacy — data collected, storage, deletion controls, policy clarity.
Each score is weighted, not averaged by vibes. Conversation and memory carry the most weight because they're what make an app feel like a companion rather than a chatbot.
What we don't do
We don't rank apps by who pays us, and we flag when a feature is paywalled. Scores can change as apps update — we re-test major releases.
Conflicts & disclosure
Some links may be affiliate links, which can earn us a commission at no extra cost to you. It never affects scores or placement. See the results in our 2026 ranking and all reviews.
