State of AI Companions 2026

The numbers at a glance

Every fact is a complete, sourced sentence — copy it straight into your article.

Demand is falling — and only one category grows

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.

Entry prices rose +200% — without a single price increase

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% run permanent discounts

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.

What does an AI companion cost? Median: $18.07 a month

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

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.

The market no statistic sees

Every cited market number for AI companions comes from app stores. Adult content is banned there — so almost everything that defines this market is missing: only 5 of 30 panel tools exist in any store at all. What the scene moves on the open web we estimated across 16 domains.

Where the scene lives — and who to believe there

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.

Who survives the consolidation: brand demand per tool

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

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

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.

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 ({outOfScope}).

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 ({poolSizes}) — 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 (1,200+ terms); brand variants merged to their head term, volumes are provider estimates (Ahrefs / DataForSEO Labs, globales monatliches Suchvolumen).

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.

Cited research

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.

1. Döring, Mikhailova & Mohseni (2026): Prevalence of AI-Supported Sexual Activities Among Adults in Germany. Archives of Sexual Behavior. n = 2.658, Quotenstichprobe (DE, 18–75), 12-Monats-Zeitraum. doi.org/10.1007/s10508-025-03382-1peer-reviewedopen access
2. Li & Zhang (2024): Finding love in algorithms: deciphering the emotional contexts of close encounters with AI chatbots. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication. 35.579 geteilte Chat-Screenshots aus r/replika, 2017–2023. doi.org/10.1093/jcmc/zmae015peer-reviewedopen access
3. Ho, Hu, Chen & Hartanto (2025): Potential and pitfalls of romantic AI companions: A systematic review. Computers in Human Behavior Reports. Systematic Review, 23 Studien aus 3.076 gesichteten Records. doi.org/10.1016/j.chbr.2025.100715peer-reviewedopen access
4. Namvarpour, Pauwels & Razi (2025): AI-induced sexual harassment by a companion chatbot. Proc. ACM Human-Computer Interaction (CSCW). 800 Fälle aus 35.105 negativen Google-Play-Reviews (Replika). doi.org/10.1145/3757548peer-reviewedopen access
5. 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, gewichtet repräsentativ (AU/UK/US). doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2026.108935peer-reviewedopen access
6. Dawoud, Cuevas & Sundara Raman (2026): From Underground to Mainstream Marketplaces: Measuring AI-Enabled NSFW Deepfakes on Fiverr. USEC @ NDSS 2026. 593 bestätigte NSFW-Gigs, Kontrollgruppen n = 1.028. doi.org/10.14722/usec.2026.68peer-reviewedopen access
7. Kleinert, Waldschütz, Blau, Heinrichs & Schiller (2026): AI outperforms humans in establishing interpersonal closeness — but only when labelled as human. Communications Psychology. 2 doppelblinde, präregistrierte RCTs, n = 492. doi.org/10.1038/s44271-025-00391-7peer-reviewedopen access
8. Folk & Dunn (2026): How Does Turning to AI for Companionship Predict Loneliness and Vice Versa?. Psychological Science. 12-Monats-Längsschnitt, > 2.000 Erwachsene, 4 Länder. doi.org/10.1177/09567976261427747peer-reviewedopen access
9. 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. Narratives Review, 88 Publikationen / 106 Studien. 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.

How to cite

Citation is expressly welcome — name the source and link it: