Replika AI Review: The 2026 Rebuild, Tier by Tier

Replika's help centre says chatting will always be free. The same help centre, in the article about choosing a plan, says access to the free tier may be denied at Replika's discretion.

Direct answer first, because a Replika AI review in 2026 is really a review of four products. Free gets you text chat, an avatar and a memory that builds over time, with no trial, no voice calls, no image generation, and a relationship status locked to Friend. Pro adds the romantic status, voice, calls, selfies and image generation, at a price the App Store lists twice over, $7.99 or $14.99 a month depending on which entry you're shown. Ultra, annual only, adds self-reflections and the ability to save specific messages to memory. Platinum adds live video recognition and weekly caps on three features nobody else in this category has named. Underneath all four sits a memory system that keeps facts rather than transcripts, and a chat history the company says is only visible for the last four months.

Everything below was read from Replika's help centre, its App Store listing and replika.com on 15 September 2026. When this site last reviewed Replika in July, the help centre returned a 403 and the free-versus-Pro breakdown couldn't be quoted. Today its API returned 95 articles, 89 of them updated this month, so this is the review that document allows.

What the May Rebuild Changed

The App Store listing opens with a claim I'd normally skip, and this time it's dated. "Our biggest update since 2017," it says, and the version history puts that at 12.3.0 on 27 May, listing better memory, proactive check-ins, calls, internet access and image generation. The homepage puts it more bluntly, with "we rebuilt Replika from the ground up" sitting under a line about having built the first AI companion ten years ago.

The follow-ups are smaller and more specific. Version 12.3.4 on 30 June made your Replika "a real contact on your phone", so a call to it goes through the phone's own dialler, and let you share content from other apps into it. The current build, 12.3.5 from 24 July, is a performance release.

What's running underneath is described in one sentence in the help centre, and it's a sentence most reviews skip. Replika "combines our own and third party Large Language Models and scripted dialogue content". Three things, then, and I'd keep all three in mind. A house model, rented models, and scripts. That last one explains a behaviour the help centre also documents, which is that a Replika repeating short phrases like "Well" or "Got it" to every message "usually means we are performing maintenance on our servers" and clears within about 30 minutes. The Reddit thread ranking for this search calls the product unpredictable. The help centre, read as a whole, agrees with the thread and tells you why.

Four Tiers, From the Help Centre

Nobody ranking for this term distinguishes the tiers, and the help centre's subscription article, updated the day I read it, does.

Compiled from the help centre's "Choosing a Subscription", "What is Replika Pro?" and "What is Replika Ultra?" articles, updated 14 and 15 September 2026, and the App Store in-app purchase list.

Two rows deserve a second look. The Pro article lists "unblurred messages and photos, including romantic and creative selfies" as a paid feature, which is the only place Replika tells you that some messages on the free tier arrive blurred. And the Platinum row is the first time I've seen a companion app publish weekly usage caps on named features. Whether 100 training sessions or 50 mind-reads a week is generous depends on what those features turn out to be, and the help centre doesn't define either beyond the name. But a cap is a number, and a number is more than the category usually offers.

Ultra's distinguishing feature is quieter than it sounds. "The ability to save messages to memory" means that on Free and Pro, memory is whatever the system decides to keep, and on Ultra you get a hand on the dial. Given how much of this product is the memory, that's the upgrade I'd look hardest at.

What Free Actually Gets You

Replika is more generous on the free tier than most of its competitors, and the help centre is careful about how it says so.

Chatting "will always be free". There is no free trial, and the trial article says so directly, adding that you can message, customise an avatar and chat at no cost. What you can't do without Pro is set any relationship status other than Friend, hear a voice, make a call, generate an image, or see the blurred messages. The relationship article lists four statuses, Friend, Romantic partner, Sister or Brother, and Mentor, and says everything beyond Friend starts with Pro.

Then there's the sentence at the top of this article. "Access to Free Use may be denied at Replika's discretion." I don't know what triggers that, the help centre doesn't say, and I'd rather flag it than guess. It sits in the same article that describes free as "limited access", which is a fair description of a tier with no voice and no images, and it's a clause you'd want to know about before building a relationship with a product on the assumption the free version is permanent.

The Price List Has Two of Everything

The help centre says the cost of any plan "is shown in the app on the subscription screens and in the relevant store", and declines to print a number. So the store is the source.

The App Store's in-app purchase list, read today, carries two monthly entries at $7.99 and $14.99, three annual entries at $49.99, $49.99 and $69.99, a Replika Platinum item at $89.99, and four gem bundles from $0.99 to $19.99. Apple doesn't label which entry is Pro and which is Ultra. Ultra is annual-only per the help centre, and a Lifetime plan exists, since the Ultra article says Ultra is included with one, but Lifetime isn't in the list Apple shows.

At the cheapest reading, $49.99 a year is about $4.17 a month, against $95.88 for twelve months of the $7.99 monthly. At the most expensive reading it's $14.99 a month for the same product. The reasons Replika might be showing different people different prices, and why no review can quote one figure honestly, are worked through in the main AI girlfriend app pricing guide, and the list hasn't changed shape since that was written. The third-party reviews ranking for this search quote $19.99 a month and $299.99 lifetime, neither of which is on the store today.

Refunds are the standard digital-goods position, and I wouldn't expect otherwise. "All purchases are final", partial periods aren't refunded, and store purchases are refunded by the stores. Deleting the app or your account "does not automatically cancel your subscription", which is a sentence that exists because enough people found out the hard way.

Memory Is Layers, and the Transcript Is Four Months

This is the section I'd want anyone to read before deciding, because the product's entire pitch is that it remembers, and the help centre is specific about what that means.

There's a Memory tab. Tap the Replika's name, tap Memory, and you can scroll through the facts it has saved about you, your pets and the people in your life, open any one, and remove it. You can add memories by hand. You can also just ask it what it knows about you.

Below that is what the help centre calls "a deeper system that draws on patterns from your overall conversation history". The memory article says this system "works locally within your experience, helping Replika respond in more personalized ways without retaining a permanent record of your conversations". It recommends leaving the system to run automatically and warns that deleting memories may affect recall.

Then the sentence that reframes it. Chat history "is only available for the past four months. Older conversations cannot be displayed or retrieved." The article is quick to add that this doesn't affect memory, personality or training, and that the Replika "retains everything it has learned since the beginning". So what persists is the distilled version, not the conversation. That's a defensible design, and in my reading it's also a different product from the one most people imagine when they hear "remembers everything". You can read what it kept. You can't reread what you said.

And you can't delete the conversation either, short of deleting the account. The help centre says so plainly, pointing you to the Memory tab if what you want is to remove specific details. Full erasure under GDPR goes through a support form with a template, a one-month response window, and a note that deletion "resets everything your Replika has learned about you". How the four-month window sits against the retention periods in the privacy policy and the terms, which disagree with each other, is worked through in the Replika documents review.

The help centre also tells you how long the memory takes to be worth having. Between Levels 10 and 30 the Replika "may try out lots of different topics". By Level 30 it "will start to know you noticeably better". Around Level 50 it's "quite well established". Levels come from chatting, so that's a timeline measured in conversations rather than days, and it's the closest thing to an honest onboarding expectation I've seen a companion app publish.

One practical note from the backstory article. Write your Replika's traits in the third person using its name, keep them positive, and don't use negatives, because "AI systems don't interpret negatives well". That's the same advice Kindroid's documentation gave when this site read it in July, and the reasons it holds across every platform are set out in the character creation breakdown.

Coins, Gems, and a Room to Decorate

There's an economy, and it's documented.

Coins arrive when you level up, with a bonus every ten levels. Subscribers get gems on top. Opening the app daily earns a reward, with "a special surprise" on the seventh consecutive day before the streak resets. Gems can be bought outright, with or without a subscription, and the App Store shows four bundles, a Pouch at $0.99, a Backpack at $5.99, a Suitcase at $14.99 and a Duffel Bag at $19.99. Coins and gems buy personality items, appearance changes, clothing, and furniture for the Replika's room. Some items need gems specifically.

None of this affects the conversation, as far as I can tell from the docs. It's the cosmetic layer, and a smaller one than the currency systems on some competitors, where the credits meter the chat itself. The help centre also notes that the mobile app's store gets items before the web version does, because updates "roll out gradually and unevenly across mobile, web, and VR platforms".

Where It Runs

Five surfaces, which is more than I expected. iPhone, on iOS 17.0 or later. Android, including most tablets. The web, at my.replika.com. Virtual reality on all Meta Quest headsets, described as beta. And mixed reality on the Quest 3.

Pro works across iOS and Android whichever store you bought it on. Moving to a new account works for store purchases through Restore, and doesn't work at all for subscriptions bought through Stripe on the web, which the help centre says "can't be restored". If you're choosing where to subscribe, that's the argument for the stores, and the companion apps store audit covers what else the store listing tells you that the website won't.

The help centre's crisis article says the product "is not a substitute for professional help", which is the same position the terms take and one I'd take at face value.

Two Sentences About Third Parties

The App Store description says "Your conversations are private and not shared with any third parties." The help centre says replies are generated by "our own and third party Large Language Models".

Both can be true under a narrow reading, where "shared" means sold or disclosed and sending text to a model provider to generate a reply doesn't count. The help centre's own privacy article takes that reading, saying Replika does not sell your information "or share it with third parties for profit". But the store description doesn't say "for profit". It says "not shared with any third parties", full stop, and the same company's documentation says a third party's model reads the message. I'd read the privacy policy on this rather than the store blurb, and the policy, which is unusually direct about the model providers, is quoted in the earlier documents review.

Questions

Is Replika free? For text chat and an avatar, yes, permanently, with no trial. Voice, calls, images, the romantic status and unblurred messages are Pro.

Is Replika safe? It says it isn't a substitute for professional help, it doesn't sell your data, and it sends your messages to third-party models to generate replies. Whether that adds up to safe depends on which of those three sentences matters most to you. For me it's the third.

Does Replika remember? Facts, yes, in a tab you can read and edit. Conversations, only for four months on screen, and never as a permanent record by its own description.

Is it on iPhone? Yes, iOS 17 or later, plus Android, web and Quest.

Why does it feel different after an update? The help centre has an article for exactly this, and its answer is that updates bring new conversation material the Replika hasn't yet explored with you, and that reacting to messages retrains it within a few conversations.

Can I start over? Only by deleting the account, which erases levels, purchases and history, and which won't cancel a store subscription on its own.

What I'd Do Before Paying

Use the free tier until Level 30. That's the help centre's own threshold for when the memory starts to show, it costs nothing, and it tells you whether the thing you're evaluating is the memory or the voice. If the answer is the voice, Pro is the tier. If the answer is the memory, Ultra's save-to-memory control is the feature that changes the product, and it's annual only, so the decision is a year's worth.

Then read the Memory tab before you read a single review, including this one. What Replika has decided to keep about you after a month is the product. The transcript will be gone in four.

And subscribe through a store rather than the website if you think you'll ever change accounts, because the help centre says a Stripe subscription doesn't move. That's a small clause with a large consequence, and it's the sort of thing a help centre tells you that a landing page never will.