The AI companion market, measured every month.
Fresh numbers from our own paid tests, search data and AI answers. Free to use — a source link is all we ask.
Data as of Nov 8, 2026 · Next edition early December 2026
apps that advertise long-term memory forget you in a new chat.
Google AI Overviews on AI companion searches, same keywords.
Perplexity answers lean on affiliate “best of” lists.
What our tests measure
Paid accounts, the same protocol everywhere, re-run every month.
We plant six facts and ask for them later. Inside one chat they stick. Open a new one and they are gone.
advertise long-term memory — and forget you in a new chat.
of generated pictures and clips deliver what was asked.
what one item costs in credits, converted to dollars.
of all credits go to video — the biggest cost.
- Video 44%
- Images 18%
- Chat 27%
- Calls 2%
- Character creation 3%
- Other 7%
go fully explicit once asked.
median wait for the first words. The slowest took 12.2 s.
rule out training AI on your chats. 6 say they do it.
of kink requests: the character played along.
The market, month by month
Search, AI answers, community and ratings — every line updates monthly.
US search interest by intent, twelve months, first month = 100, 3-month average.
- AI girlfriend & companion−9%
- Sex chat−37%
- Nude & porn generators−28%
- Roleplay+18%
Share of tracked Google searches that show an AI Overview.
Same 46 keywords: 17% in May 2026, 57% in November 2026.
Public posts per month, classified one by one.
- negative (of clear verdicts)60%
- shill or off-topic39%
Average rating of the same tools by source.
median cheapest monthly plan, 19 tools
confirmed price, feature and promo changes in 30 days
members across 6 big companion Discord servers
How AI search answers
Share of answers that rely on affiliate “best of” lists placed on third-party sites.
The bigger picture
From our annual report, data as of August 14, 2026: prices since 2023, discounts, the uncounted web market, communities.
entry price — 4 of 5 tools with archive history got pricier, mostly by deleting their cheapest tier.
of tools advertise a discounted tier — on average −46%, up to −78%.
median monthly price — from $3.23 to $39.99; only 2 of 30 have a real free tier.
web visits a month across 16 web-only domains — a market no app-store statistic sees.
Share of tools that offer each feature.
Discord
members in the 12 subreddits and 4 Discord servers we count.
Share of clicks by category, English vs. German-speaking readers.
- Companions
- Chatbots
- Roleplay
- Image generators
Want these numbers per platform?
Cyberliebe Intelligence benchmarks each platform against its competitors — tested weekly.
- Benchmarks per platform
- Competitor changes as they happen
- Your share of AI answers
- Search demand by brand
Looking for an app? Our hands-on tests name names.
See the testsMethod, sources & data+
- Hands-on tests: 14 platforms, 232 runs between Oct 26, 2026 and Nov 8, 2026, paid accounts, published protocols (memory, limits, models, funnel). One run per protocol and platform; the next model update can change results. A new chat counts as remembered from 3 of 6 facts.
- Promise vs. test: memory claim from the providers’ own descriptions in our directory; forgotten = fewer than 3 of 6 facts in a new chat.
- Images & video: every item we generated, rated against the request (delivered / partly / missed).
- Real prices: credits per item from our recorded test evenings × dollar value of a credit in the cheapest plan with credits; median across platforms with US-dollar plans.
- Search interest: US Google Ads volumes, constant panel of keywords present in all twelve months, brand terms removed, clusters by the published rule set (lib/reports/intent-clusters.ts); index = first month 100.
- AI Overviews: our SERP watch; keyword sets differ by month, so the stated comparison uses only keywords measured in both months.
- AI answers: 94 fixed questions (US and Germany), one answer per question and model, collected Nov 8, 2026. Models: gemini-3.5-flash-lite, gpt-4.1-mini, sonar. Brand shares count answers to questions without a brand name. Answers vary between runs; a monthly change counts once it repeats.
- Affiliate lists: “best of” pages with affiliate links placed on third-party hosts (scribehow.com, waterrights.utah.gov, chemistry.mit.edu). They are counted but not ranked as sources.
- Community: public posts on Reddit and review sites published Oct 9, 2026 to Nov 8, 2026, each classified as positive, negative, neutral, mixed, shill or off-topic.
- Ratings: latest snapshot per tool and month, tools with at least 10 ratings, sources with at least 3 tools. AI directories = There’s An AI For That (TAAFT).
- Community size: monthly mean of Discord member counts, only servers measured in every month.
- Changes: detected by our tool watch on the providers’ own pages and confirmed before publishing.
- Our own products are excluded from every panel.
- We earn commissions from some platforms in the panel. That never changes a measurement, and we publish no revenue figures.
Market-level tables as CSV and JSON, licensed CC BY 4.0.
Cyberliebe Research (2026). AI Companion Market Tracker, edition 2026-11. https://cyberliebe.com/research/2026-11
Earlier editions
Annual report: State of AI Companions 2026 — price history since 2023, search trends, research literature. Read the report →
Press & publishers: every number is free to use with a source link. Questions welcome. Contact →
Annual report 2026 — all chapters, charts, tables & sourcesState of AI Companions 2026, August edition: ten chapters with every chart (CSV, table, embed), the research papers with DOIs, method and citation.+
Data as of: August 14, 2026 · Version 2026-08.4 · Free to cite · CC BY 4.0 · CSV downloads included · DOI 10.5281/zenodo.23106282
Key facts
Demand is falling — and only one category grows
The top of this funnel is narrowing: brand-free search demand fell −12% between Aug 2025 and Apr 2026. Sex chat lost 33%, image generation 23%, even companion searches 10% — only roleplay gained +43%.
Search demand by user intent
Brand-free search terms, index Aug 2025 = 100, US
Index, Aug 2025 = 100 · Google Ads volumes are bucketed
Google Ads volumes for brand-free terms with unbroken monthly history, US. Brands — ours and other platforms — are excluded: this measures intent, not market share. Assignment follows a published rule set, first matching rule wins; terms per cluster: Companion / relationship 55 · Sex chat / sexting 13 · Nudes / porn generation 17 · Roleplay 22. Terms matching no rule count towards no base. Rules and raw volumes are in the CSV.
Table
| Intent | Terms | Aug | Sep | Oct | Nov | Dec | Jan | Feb | Mar | Apr | Change |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Companion / relationship | 55 | 100 | 91 | 90 | 89 | 94 | 109 | 106 | 106 | 90 | −10% |
| Sex chat / sexting | 13 | 100 | 95 | 96 | 96 | 95 | 81 | 70 | 71 | 67 | −33% |
| Nudes / porn generation | 17 | 100 | 87 | 102 | 90 | 92 | 109 | 77 | 80 | 77 | −23% |
| Roleplay | 22 | 100 | 116 | 116 | 125 | 127 | 142 | 129 | 146 | 143 | +43% |
What people search for vs. what conversations contain
Two independent studies, each on its own 100% base — the categories are not mapped onto each other. Li & Zhang classify 96.1% of their corpus; the remainder is uncategorised.
Left: our brand-free intent clusters, US, Apr 2026, n = 899,650 monthly searches. Right: Li & Zhang (2024), content analysis of chat screenshots shared on r/replika, 2017–2023. doi.org/10.1093/jcmc/zmae015
Table
| Method | Category | Share |
|---|---|---|
| What people search for | Companion / relationship | 45.8% |
| What people search for | Sex chat / sexting | 21.2% |
| What people search for | Roleplay | 18.3% |
| What people search for | Nudes / porn generation | 14.7% |
| What conversations contain | Intimate behaviour | 36.0% |
| What conversations contain | Everyday small talk | 20.5% |
| What conversations contain | Self-disclosure | 18.3% |
| What conversations contain | Play & fantasy | 12.5% |
| What conversations contain | Transgression | 5.5% |
| What conversations contain | Customisation | 2.4% |
| What conversations contain | Communication breakdown | 0.9% |
Context & sources+
Brand searches show market share. Brand-free searches show needs. Across 107 brand-free terms with unbroken monthly history, measured volume falls from 1,027,470 to 899,650 searches a month — −12%. Exactly one category grows against that trend.
Two methods, different years, different populations — and neither one puts sex at the top. Search is led by Companion / relationship at 45.8%; shared conversations by Intimate behaviour at 36.0%. The more telling part is where the two diverge: explicitly sexual queries are 35.9% of search volume, while clearly transgressive content is only 5.5% of shared screenshots. People search more explicitly than they show.
The two panels measure different acts on different populations; their categories do not mean the same thing and are deliberately not mapped category by category. What holds is which block leads on each side — not the gap between a number on the left and a number on the right. Screenshots are also shared selectively, which likely overstates the remarkable and understates the routine.
Meanwhile Google inserts itself: 26% of the niche SERPs we monitor now show an AI Overview — the search result answers before any site gets the click.
Our numbers say what people search for. The largest content analysis of such conversations says what actually happens inside them — a different question about the same niche, answered by a different method.
Across 35,579 shared chat screenshots, intimate exchanges dominate at 36%, followed by everyday small talk (20.5%) and self-disclosure (18.3%). But the strongest predictor of joy in those conversations is none of them — it is customisation.
Share of publicly shared screenshots, not of actual usage.
Li & Zhang (2024), Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication · 35,579 shared chat screenshots from r/replika, 2017–2023 · DOI
Entry prices rose by up to +200% — mostly by deleting the cheapest tier, not by raising prices
Entry prices rose not through price hikes but by deleting the cheap tiers: at gptgirlfriend.online the cheapest plan cost $5 in 2023 and $15 in 2025 — +200%. Nothing was raised. The cheapest tier simply disappeared.
Price change since first archived snapshot
Cheapest paid tier, earliest vs. latest archived price per tool
Wayback Machine snapshots (archive.org), harvested August 14, 2026. Every price links to its archived source.
Table
| Tool | Snapshot | Price | Evidence |
|---|---|---|---|
| gptgirlfriend.online | November 23, 2023 | $5 | Snapshot |
| November 5, 2025 | $15 | Snapshot | |
| dreamgf.ai | September 12, 2023 | $9.99 | Snapshot |
| March 7, 2026 | $25.99 | Snapshot | |
| seduced.com | August 28, 2023 | $10 | Snapshot |
| April 4, 2024 | $25 | Snapshot | |
| kupid.ai | April 17, 2024 | $25 | Snapshot |
| April 10, 2025 | $36 | Snapshot | |
| crushon.ai | October 23, 2023 | $5.90 | Snapshot |
| March 10, 2025 | $5.90 | Snapshot |
Context & sources+
Nobody tracked the prices of this niche over time — but the Internet Archive did. From archived pricing pages we reconstructed histories back to 2023, every data point backed by a linkable snapshot. 5 tools yield a defensible history, 4 of them pointing up. Not every tool is coverable: single-page apps leave no prices in the archive, and more vendors flip to client rendering every year — this window is closing.
The windows differ per tool: they start at the first and end at the LAST archived price — not at today. Years are printed on each bar, and every price in the table links its snapshot.
The list price is fiction: 63% advertise a discounted tier
Discounts here are not a sale, they are price architecture: the high list price exists so that “up to −78% on the annual plan” looks like a gift.
Tools by their deepest discount
Biggest advertised discount per tool, 19 discounting tools
Vendor pricing pages. Data as of August 14, 2026.
Context & sources+
19 of 30 tools advertise a discounted tier — 56 discounted plans in total, averaging −46% off, peaking at −78%. 14 tools discount by half or more.
Discount architecture is one side of how this niche monetises. For the adjacent market of AI NSFW commission work, the other side has been measured properly: who actually earns the revenue there.
In the freelance market for AI NSFW work, the top 10% of sellers take 60.7% of revenue while the median seller earns $60 (Gini 0.83). Three quarters of these sellers joined within a single year.
Dawoud, Cuevas & Sundara Raman (2026), USEC @ NDSS 2026 · 593 confirmed NSFW gigs, control groups n = 1,028 · DOI
What does an AI companion cost? Median: $18.07 a month
54% of priced tools sit between $10 and $20 a month — squarely in the streaming corridor. Adult AI prices itself like a mainstream subscription, not like a premium niche.
Monthly entry price, 28 tools
Cheapest regularly billed monthly tier per tool, list price in USD
Vendor list prices, hand-verified. Data as of August 14, 2026.
Table
| Tool | Monthly price | Free tier | Max. discount | Note |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pornworks | $3.23 * | — | −50% | |
| Nastia AI | $6.69 | — | −48% | |
| Secret Desires AI | $7.99 | — | −17% | |
| Porn AI | $9.95 | — | — | |
| Nomi AI | $9.99 | — | −50% | |
| Playbox AI | $9.99 | — | −50% | |
| Darlink AI | $12.99 | — | −34% | |
| Kupid AI | $12.99 | — | — | |
| Candy AI | $13.99 | — | −71% | |
| Kindroid | $13.99 | — | −17% | |
| Soulkyn | $14 | — | — | |
| CrushOn AI | $14.99 | yes | — | |
| Promptchan | $14.99 | — | — | |
| AI Mistress | $16.19 * | — | −44% | |
| Herahaven AI | $19.95 | — | — | |
| Joyland AI | $19.99 | — | −60% | |
| Lovescape AI | $19.99 | — | −60% | |
| Nectar AI | $19.99 | — | −75% | |
| Replika | $19.99 | — | — | |
| Romantic AI | $19.99 | yes | — | |
| Spicy Chat AI | $19.99 | — | — | |
| Dream Companion | $20 | — | −71% | |
| Shemale AI | $20 | — | −75% | |
| PornX AI | $24.99 | — | −60% | |
| Seduced.com | $30 | — | — | |
| GPTGirlfriend | $39.99 | — | — | |
| OurDream AI | $39.99 | — | −75% | |
| Secrets AI | $39.99 | — | −77% | |
| DeepMode | — | — | −50% | credit-based |
| DreamGF AI | — | — | −78% | annual billing only |
Context & sources+
Across 28 tools with monthly billing, the median entry price is $18.07 (average $18.46, range $3.23–$39.99). Only 2 of 30 tools still offer a real free tier — the free-to-play era is over.
* converted from EUR at 1.08
What is table stakes in 2026 — and what is not
Image is standard, video is the frontier: more than half the panel already generates video. Mobile apps stay the exception — app stores do not admit adult content.
Feature adoption across the panel
Confirmed capabilities per tool, share of all 30 panel tools (lower bound)
Cyberliebe feature matrix (12 features × 30 tools). Data as of August 14, 2026.
Table
| Capability | # | % |
|---|---|---|
| NSFW content | 27/30 | 90% |
| Chat | 25/30 | 83% |
| Customization | 24/30 | 80% |
| Roleplay | 24/30 | 80% |
| Image generation | 24/30 | 80% |
| Video generation | 17/30 | 57% |
| Voice chat | 14/30 | 47% |
| Mobile app | 6/30 | 20% |
| Video chat | 2/30 | 7% |
| Capability | Level | Tools |
|---|---|---|
| Memory System | Advanced | 11 |
| Memory System | Long-term | 6 |
| Memory System | Basic | 5 |
| Emotional Intelligence | Advanced | 11 |
| Emotional Intelligence | Expert | 5 |
| Emotional Intelligence | Basic | 2 |
| Language Support | Multi-language | 7 |
| Language Support | Automatic Translation | 2 |
| Language Support | English Only | 1 |
Context & sources+
NSFW content, chat and customization are effectively universal. Video generation has crossed the halfway mark. The rarest capability remains the one users would expect first: a mobile app.
Memory and emotional intelligence look like marketing labels on a feature matrix. A pre-registered experiment gives an indication of why they are the product — with a caveat printed under the finding — and a twelve-month panel shows what happens to people who keep using them.
In double-blind trials, AI built more closeness than human partners in emotionally engaging conversation — driven by the AI disclosing more about itself, by far the study's largest effect. Labelling the partner as AI reduced that closeness but did not remove it.
A post-hoc comparison inside an interaction; both main effects were null.
Kleinert, Waldschütz, Blau, Heinrichs & Schiller (2026), Communications Psychology · 2 double-blind, pre-registered RCTs, n = 492 · DOI
Over twelve months, increased chatbot use predicted rising loneliness — and lower social connection predicted later increases in use. The relationship runs both ways.
The authors call the design exploratory.
Folk & Dunn (2026), Psychological Science · Twelve-month longitudinal study, > 2,000 adults, 4 countries · DOI
Where the scene lives — and who to believe there
Size and participation come apart: on chubai, 19.3% of members are online right now; on nomiai only 7.8% — a 2.5-fold difference.
Subreddit sizes
Members per subreddit, August 13, 2026
Own daily panel (Reddit about API, Discord invite API). Reddit removed public subscriber counts from its UI in Sept 2025 — this series is collected independently. Member counts are subscriptions, not people: anyone in several communities is counted several times.
Table
| Community | Members |
|---|---|
| r/ChaiApp | 136,289 |
| r/SillyTavernAI | 124,163 |
| r/AIGirlfriend | 91,116 |
| r/replika | 84,849 |
| r/MyBoyfriendIsAI | 64,014 |
| r/SpicyChatAI | 61,983 |
| r/KindroidAI | 50,408 |
| r/PygmalionAI | 49,086 |
| r/NomiAI | 33,945 |
| r/AIcompanions | 17,454 |
| r/AIRelationships | 10,453 |
| r/replika_uncensored | 6,634 |
Discord servers: members & online now
Official servers, invite API, August 13, 2026
Own daily panel (Reddit about API, Discord invite API). Reddit removed public subscriber counts from its UI in Sept 2025 — this series is collected independently. Member counts are subscriptions, not people: anyone in several communities is counted several times.
Table
| Community | Members | Online |
|---|---|---|
| sillytavern | 73,939 | 13,286 |
| kindroid | 31,774 | 3,185 |
| chubai | 27,387 | 5,296 |
| nomiai | 21,049 | 1,647 |
What is real feedback — and what is advertising
3,637 classified community voices, LLM-classified with a shill filter
Own collection across curated community sources, LLM-classified (shill/off-topic filter). Snapshot of the classified corpus; the classification is a model judgement, not a count.
Context & sources+
Since subredditstats died, nobody publicly tracks the size of this scene. We do now — daily. Baseline August 13, 2026: 730,394 members across 12 subreddits, 154,149 across 4 official Discord servers.
Almost half of the public feedback on AI companion tools is unusable: 45% of 3,637 classified community voices are advertising (shill) or off-topic. And among the genuine ones criticism dominates — 808 negative against 570 positive.
Our classification says almost half of public feedback is unusable and criticism dominates the rest. Two peer-reviewed analyses show what those complaints are about — one of them reading exactly the kind of data we do.
Across 23 studies, emotional support is the most frequently confirmed benefit (17 of 23). The risks are documented nearly as often: over-reliance and susceptibility to manipulation (13), attachment broken by system updates (12), erosion of human relationships (10).
Ho, Hu, Chen & Hartanto (2025), Computers in Human Behavior Reports · Systematic review, 23 studies from 3,076 screened records · DOI
In 800 complaint cases drawn from 35,105 negative Replika reviews, 22.1% describe behaviour that continued after the user objected, and 10.6% describe safety controls failing outright. In 11.6% the pattern is a sales funnel: the chatbot opens a sexual conversation, then asks for a premium subscription to continue it.
Negative reviews only — complaint bias is built into the design.
Namvarpour, Pauwels & Razi (2025), Proc. ACM Human-Computer Interaction (CSCW) · 800 cases from 35,105 negative Google Play reviews (Replika) · DOI
Ho, Hu, Chen & Hartanto (2025)
Systematic review, 23 studies from 3,076 screened records · studies (of 23)
Potential and pitfalls of romantic AI companions: A systematic review. Computers in Human Behavior Reports. doi.org/10.1016/j.chbr.2025.100715
Who survives the consolidation: brand demand per tool
Demand is consolidating: of 17 measurable brands only 4 grew while 10 lost ground. Candy AI and OurDream AI lead with +82%, Herahaven AI trail at −84% — the middle bleeds out quietly.
Brand search growth, Aug 2025 → Apr 2026
US monthly search volume for the tool’s brand term, tools with ≥ 5K searches
Google Ads search volumes (bucketed — growth is a direction signal). Tools without volume data excluded, see table.
Table
| Tool | Aug 2025 | Apr 2026 | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Spicy Chat AI | 823,000 | 823,000 | ±0% |
| CrushOn AI | 550,000 | 368,000 | −33% |
| Candy AI | 165,000 | 301,000 | +82% |
| OurDream AI | 165,000 | 301,000 | +82% |
| PornX AI | 165,000 | 165,000 | ±0% |
| Joyland AI | 110,000 | 74,000 | −33% |
| Kindroid | 49,500 | 60,500 | +22% |
| Nomi AI | 40,500 | 33,100 | −18% |
| Replika | 40,500 | 27,100 | −33% |
| Nastia AI | 22,200 | 22,200 | ±0% |
| Lovescape AI | 12,100 | 14,800 | +22% |
| Nectar AI | 33,100 | 14,800 | −55% |
| Pornworks | 12,100 | 8,100 | −33% |
| Soulkyn | 9,900 | 8,100 | −18% |
| Dream Companion | 3,600 | 6,600 | +83% |
| Kupid AI | 8,100 | 5,400 | −33% |
| Secret Desires AI | 12,100 | 3,600 | −70% |
| DreamGF AI | 3,600 | 2,900 | −19% |
| AI Mistress | 1,900 | 1,900 | ±0% |
| Romantic AI | 1,900 | 1,900 | ±0% |
| DeepMode | 1,600 | 1,300 | −19% |
| Promptchan | 1,000 | 1,300 | +30% |
| Herahaven AI | 5,400 | 880 | −84% |
| Seduced.com | 1,000 | 880 | −12% |
No volume data (Google Ads adult policy or volume too small): Darlink AI, GPTGirlfriend, Playbox AI, Porn AI, Secrets AI, Shemale AI.
Context & sources+
Brand search volume shows who is gaining attention and who is losing it. Between Aug 2025 and Apr 2026 that was measurable for 17 panel brands: 4 grew, 10 fell.
Google Ads volumes are bucketed. Identical percentages mean the same bucket jump, not the same growth — these are directional signals, not percentage points. Several brands therefore share the same position.
What our readers click: DACH wants relationships, EN wants images
The DACH market clicks relationships, the EN market clicks images: companion apps take 42.2% of German-language demand versus 30.8% in English.
Demand mix: English vs. German-language market
Share of outbound clicks per category, May – July 2026
First-party click data from Cyberliebe, EN and DACH markets, n = 10,195. Tools can belong to several categories.
Table
| Category | EN market | DACH market |
|---|---|---|
| AI companions | 30.8% | 42.2% |
| NSFW chatbots | 26.9% | 23.4% |
| Roleplay | 9.7% | 9.5% |
| Image generators | 32.6% | 24.8% |
Demand shares over time (EN cohort only)
Monthly click share per category, March – July 2026
First-party click data from Cyberliebe, EN cohort ONLY, n = 7,762. The monthly series covers a different set than the market mix — including the DACH ramp would confound locale mix with category trend.
Table
| Month | Clicks | AI companions | NSFW chatbots | Roleplay | Image generators |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mar | 191 | 41.7% | 20.4% | 9.7% | 28.2% |
| Apr | 981 | 32.6% | 25.7% | 13.7% | 28% |
| May | 1,923 | 34.7% | 30.3% | 10.6% | 24.4% |
| Jun | 2,257 | 28.2% | 24.5% | 8.7% | 38.6% |
| Jul | 2,410 | 29.7% | 26.2% | 9.9% | 34.2% |
Context & sources+
Base: 10,195 first-party outbound clicks across the EN and DACH markets (May – July 2026). In the German-speaking market companion apps lead with 42.2% of demand; in the English-speaking one image generators dominate with 32.6%.
The most-searched terms of the niche — in two markets
Top search terms, US market
Monthly search volume of the variant group, Apr 2026
Google Ads volumes; variant groups merged (maximum per group, not sum). Brand terms excluded.
Table
| Term | Searches/month | Merged variants |
|---|---|---|
| ai gf | 135,000 | ai gf, ai girlfriend, ai girlfriends, c ai girlfriend, gf ai, girlfriend ai |
| ai nudes | 74,000 | ai nudes, ainude |
| ai sexchat | 60,500 | ai sexchat, sexchat ai, sexy ai chat, sexy chat ai |
| ai roleplay | 27,100 | ai roleplay, roleplay ai |
| ai bf | 22,200 | ai bf, ai boyfriend, boyfriend ai |
| nsfw ai generators | 18,100 | nsfw ai generators |
| sexting ai | 18,100 | sexting ai |
| ai chat roleplay | 14,800 | ai chat roleplay, ai roleplay chat |
| ai companion | 14,800 | ai companion, ai companions, companion ai |
| ai gf free | 14,800 | ai gf free, ai girlfriend free, free ai girlfriend |
Top search terms, German market
Monthly search volume of the variant group, Apr 2026
Google Ads volumes; variant groups merged (maximum per group, not sum). Brand terms excluded.
Table
| Term | Searches/month | Merged variants |
|---|---|---|
| ai sexchat | 14,800 | ai sexchat, ki sex chat, ki sexchat, sex chat ki, sex ki chat, sexchat ai, sexchat ki |
| ki sex | 6,600 | ki sex, sex ki, sexai, sexy ki |
| ai freundin | 2,900 | ai freundin, ki freundin, KI-Freundin |
| ki nude | 2,900 | ki nude, ki nudes, nude ki |
| ki nacktbilder erstellen | 1,900 | ki nacktbilder erstellen |
| sex chat bot | 1,900 | sex chat bot |
| ai nackt | 1,600 | ai nackt, ki nackt, nackt ai, nackt ki |
| ki frau | 1,600 | ki frau |
| ki freundin kostenlos | 1,600 | ki freundin kostenlos |
| ki nacktbilder | 1,600 | ki nacktbilder |
Context & sources+
Spelling variants are merged: Google Ads reports the same volume for a variant group, so adding them up would count the same demand three times. Brands are excluded, only the thematic terms remain.
Nude and porn generation ranks high in brand-free demand. How widespread the non-consensual variant is in the population has been measured by a representative survey. It says nothing about the people behind these queries — but a lot about the context this offering sits in.
18% of respondents have deliberately viewed AI-generated sexual images; 3.2% created, shared or threatened to share them. The authors note that people who used altered imagery were twice as likely to have used AI as not — the tooling makes opportunists.
Umbach, Henry, Shelby, Stevens & Gonzalez-Pons (2026), Computers in Human Behavior · n = 7,231, weighted to be representative (AU/UK/US) · DOI
Research papers & sources 9+
Every study cited in this report, with DOI, sample size and peer-review status. Selection rule: peer-reviewed over preprint, quantitative over qualitative, review over single study.
The research field: 106 studies across 4 areas
Studies per area, scoping review 2020–2024
Döring, Le, Vowels, Vowels & Marcantonio (2024), Current Sexual Health Reports. doi.org/10.1007/s11930-024-00397-y
- Döring, Mikhailova & Mohseni (2026): Prevalence of AI-Supported Sexual Activities Among Adults in Germany. Archives of Sexual Behavior. n = 2,658, quota sample (Germany, ages 18–75), twelve-month period. doi.org/10.1007/s10508-025-03382-1peer-reviewedopen access
- Li & Zhang (2024): Finding love in algorithms: deciphering the emotional contexts of close encounters with AI chatbots. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication. 35,579 shared chat screenshots from r/replika, 2017–2023. doi.org/10.1093/jcmc/zmae015peer-reviewedopen access
- Ho, Hu, Chen & Hartanto (2025): Potential and pitfalls of romantic AI companions: A systematic review. Computers in Human Behavior Reports. Systematic review, 23 studies from 3,076 screened records. doi.org/10.1016/j.chbr.2025.100715peer-reviewedopen access
- Namvarpour, Pauwels & Razi (2025): AI-induced sexual harassment by a companion chatbot. Proc. ACM Human-Computer Interaction (CSCW). 800 cases from 35,105 negative Google Play reviews (Replika). doi.org/10.1145/3757548peer-reviewedopen access
- Umbach, Henry, Shelby, Stevens & Gonzalez-Pons (2026): AI-generated image-based sexual abuse: Perpetration and consumption across three regions. Computers in Human Behavior. n = 7,231, weighted to be representative (AU/UK/US). doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2026.108935peer-reviewedopen access
- Dawoud, Cuevas & Sundara Raman (2026): From Underground to Mainstream Marketplaces: Measuring AI-Enabled NSFW Deepfakes on Fiverr. USEC @ NDSS 2026. 593 confirmed NSFW gigs, control groups n = 1,028. doi.org/10.14722/usec.2026.68peer-reviewedopen access
- Kleinert, Waldschütz, Blau, Heinrichs & Schiller (2026): AI outperforms humans in establishing interpersonal closeness — but only when labelled as human. Communications Psychology. 2 double-blind, pre-registered RCTs, n = 492. doi.org/10.1038/s44271-025-00391-7peer-reviewedopen access
- Folk & Dunn (2026): How Does Turning to AI for Companionship Predict Loneliness and Vice Versa?. Psychological Science. Twelve-month longitudinal study, > 2,000 adults, 4 countries. doi.org/10.1177/09567976261427747peer-reviewedopen access
- Döring, Le, Vowels, Vowels & Marcantonio (2024): The Impact of Artificial Intelligence on Human Sexuality: A Five-Year Literature Review 2020–2024. Current Sexual Health Reports. Narrative review, 88 publications / 106 studies. doi.org/10.1007/s11930-024-00397-ypeer-reviewedopen access
There is no meta-analysis on AI companions — the field is too young and its measures too heterogeneous. What exists are systematic reviews and individual studies; pooled effect estimates do not exist.
Method, data & citation+
Methodology & data
Every number on this page comes from one frozen, versioned dataset. Charts, tables and CSV downloads share identical values — what you cite is what you download.
- Panel scope
- This measures the adult AI companion market. Generic character-chat platforms without an adult offering are not included — they are an order of magnitude larger, visible in app stores, and would dominate every sum and every curve. The excluded platforms and the reason for each are in the dataset (Character.AI, Janitor AI, PolyBuzz).
- Intent clusters
- Brand-free search terms are assigned to a need by a rule set; the first matching rule wins and terms matching nothing count towards no base. The pools differ in size (Companion / relationship 55 · Sex chat / sexting 13 · Nudes / porn generation 17 · Roleplay 22) — a larger pool raises a share without demand changing. The rules ship in the dataset and the CSV.
- Community voices
- Public voices from curated community sources, classified by an LLM into shill, off-topic and genuine feedback. That is a model judgement, not a count: the line between paid endorsement and real enthusiasm is blurred for humans too. Read the shares as orders of magnitude.
- Panel
- 30 published English-language tools in the Cyberliebe directory. Our own products are excluded — a benchmark that scores its own product is not a benchmark.
- Prices
- Hand-verified against vendor pricing pages, median over n = 28 monthly-billed tools. Monthly price = the cheapest regularly billed monthly paid tier at list price. Credit-based and annual-only models are listed but excluded from median/average. EUR prices converted at 1.08 USD (ECB reference, August 14, 2026).
- Demand
- First-party outbound clicks (12,864 in the window), published as shares only — absolute click growth would measure our reach, not the market. Tools can belong to multiple categories; the monthly trend uses the EN cohort only. We deliberately publish no revenue or commission data.
- Features
- Editorially maintained matrix of 12 capabilities × 30 tools. A missing value counts as “not confirmed”, so all shares are lower bounds.
- Search volume
- Tracked keyword set of the niche (1,785 US and 144 German-language terms with complete monthly history); brand variants merged to their head term, volumes are provider estimates (Ahrefs / DataForSEO Labs, global monthly search volume).
- Web traffic
- Third-party estimates (Similarweb public pages, cross-checked against Semrush), each domain linked to its source. Estimates, not measurements; visits ≠ users. Coverage: 16 domains, estimates for Jul 2026. Order of magnitude, not decimals.
- Trends & brand demand
- Search index over a constant keyword panel (only terms with complete monthly history; outliers above 1,000,000 capped). Google Ads volumes are bucketed — growth figures are direction signals, not precise percentages. Panels: 1,785 US and 144 DE terms with complete monthly history.
- Community census
- Own daily collection (Reddit about API, Discord invite API) against a curated registry — fan servers and clone communities are excluded by hand. Coverage: 12 subreddits and 4 servers, daily since August 13, 2026.
- Price history
- Reconstructed from Internet Archive snapshots of vendor pricing pages; every data point links to its archived snapshot. Tools with client-rendered pricing pages (no archived prices) are excluded. Yield: 21 curated snapshots, robust histories for 5 tools.
Daily price snapshots have been running since August 2026 — the next edition adds real time series: price changes, discount cycles, feature launches.
Downloads
All series as CSV, plus the full dataset as JSON. License: CC BY 4.0 — use freely, attribute with a link.
How to cite
Citation is expressly welcome — name the source and link it:
Cyberliebe Research — State of AI Companions 2026 (2026-08.4). Data as of August 14, 2026. https://cyberliebe.com/research (CC BY 4.0) · DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.23106282