Sorted by the monthly price on the sign, five products here run from $9.90 to $19.99: PolyBuzz, Character.AI, Kindroid, Nomi AI, Replika. Sorted by annual equivalent — the same plan divided by twelve — the order becomes Replika at $5.83 a month, Character.AI at $7.92, PolyBuzz at $8.25, Nomi at $8.33, Kindroid at $11.67. The dearest monthly plan is the cheapest annual one; the third cheapest monthly plan is the dearest commitment. All figures verified 2026-09-14.
The rules follow from that inversion. Paying month to month, take the cheapest plan whose capability row fits. Committing for a year, ignore the monthly column and ask one question: how many months of monthly billing does this year cover before it pays for itself? That break-even runs from three and a half months to ten here, and it decides whether committing is a saving or a bet.
Everything below is arithmetic on prices recorded here, dated 2026-09-14; numbers a vendor does not publish stay blank.
Two prices per product, and the annual column reorders everything
Five pairs, monthly then annual equivalent: PolyBuzz $9.90 and $8.25; Character.AI $9.99 and $7.92; Kindroid $13.99 and $11.67; Nomi $15.99 and $8.33; Replika $19.99 and $5.83.
Both columns span a factor of two with different endpoints: Replika moves last to first, PolyBuzz first to third, Kindroid third to last. Nomi holds fourth, Character.AI second, so three of five change position.
An annual price is not the monthly price with a discount attached. It is a separate number each vendor chose — how much it wants a year of commitment, how it prices against the store it sells through. The annual column ranks appetite for lock-in, not the cost of the software, and anyone who picks on monthly price then converts at renewal lands in a different ranking.
Four of the five sit between $5.83 and $8.33, a band of $2.50: the yearly decision is which product you will still open in month seven. The collected yearly prices are on the annual discount list.
Three billing models, and what each one meters
Every subscription answers two questions: what you pay for access, and what you pay for output.
Coins on top of a subscription. PolyBuzz prices Basic at $9.90 a month or $99 a year, an $8.25 monthly equivalent, with Premium at $19.90 and Ultimate at $29.90, coins on top starting at $2.49. Character.AI prices c.ai+ at $9.99 a month or $94.99 a year, a $7.92 monthly equivalent, running a Charms currency — its word for tokens — plus a daily swipe cap on the free tier.
Flat subscription. Nomi is $15.99 a month, $39.99 per three months or $99.99 a year, an $8.33 monthly equivalent, flat with no coins on top. Kindroid is $13.99 a month, $37.99 per three months or $139.99 a year, an $11.67 monthly equivalent, with no coin system and Ultra and MAX sold as add-ons.
Annual-first billing. Replika prices Pro at $19.99 a month or $69.99 a year, a $5.83 monthly equivalent, with Ultra at $29.99 a month and no three-month rung.
With a meter on top the headline is a floor; flat, it is the ceiling for the base tier. A coin-metered plan at $9.90 is not a $9.90 month if what you want consumes coins, which is why the flat, no-tokens shortlist differs from the cheapest-price list. Nor does either listing record what a coin buys, so a coin-metered month's total cannot be computed from outside.
The break-even month is the number annual plans hide
Twelve monthly payments at the sticker rate, against the annual price. PolyBuzz: $9.90 times twelve is $118.80, and the year costs $99, saving $19.80. Character.AI: $119.88 against $94.99, saving $24.89. Kindroid: $167.88 against $139.99, saving $27.89. Nomi: $191.88 against $99.99, saving $91.89. Replika: $239.88 against $69.99, saving $169.89.
Ranked by dollars saved, the order is Replika, Nomi, Kindroid, Character.AI, PolyBuzz — close to the inverse of the monthly ranking. The cheapest monthly plan carries the smallest annual saving, the dearest carries the largest. "Annual is cheaper" is true of all five and distinguishes none of them.
The break-even month does distinguish them: annual price divided by monthly price, where a committed year has cost the same as paying as you go.
- PolyBuzz: $99 against $9.90 breaks even at ten months.
- Character.AI: $94.99 against $9.99 breaks even just under nine and a half months.
- Kindroid: $139.99 against $13.99 breaks even at ten months.
- Nomi: $99.99 against $15.99 breaks even at six and a quarter months.
- Replika: $69.99 against $19.99 breaks even at three and a half months.
That is the shape of the trap. Three of the five only pay for themselves past the ninth or tenth month, so a year bought in January and abandoned in September cost more than nine monthly payments would have. Replika's year pays for itself in three and a half months and Nomi's in six and a quarter, so those two survive a change of mind the other three do not. The problem is not annual billing; it is that one word covers commitments of different risk, and discount size says nothing about which is which.
The three-month rungs read better as short commitments than as discounts: Nomi's quarter is $39.99, or $13.33 a month, saving $7.98 against three monthly payments; Kindroid's is $37.99, or $12.66 a month, saving $3.98. Both test a season without a year's exposure, and neither saving justifies building a decision on it.
Where you buy changes the price
A listing's price is the web price; the web is not always where payment happens.
Kindroid: $13.99 a month on the web, app stores charging about $2 more — about $24 across a year on the monthly plan, and an annual plan bought in a store freezes that store's number for twelve months before you learn it.
Replika does not list prices on its website at all; they show only in-app and vary by region, and a higher tier exists at an unpublished price. Nomi's plans appear only inside an account, which is why its listing carries the figures with that caveat. Character.AI's cheaper lite tier exists at a price that varies by region.
Four of five cannot be priced from outside with certainty. Budget from the web figure, expect the store figure, and read the in-app number before committing to a year, because a year freezes a regional difference in place. The direction of prices is legible from listings, which is what the pricing trends page tracks; your own number often is not.
"Flat, no coins" is worth more than the headline price
Two entries say so in their price notes: Nomi is flat with no coins on top, Kindroid has no coin system. Both say the subscription is the whole bill, which is a different claim from being cheap.
What it prevents: on a coin-metered plan a heavy month costs more than a light one, so the price you compare against a flat plan is your worst month, not your average — unknowable in advance, since neither PolyBuzz's $2.49 coin floor nor Character.AI's Charms carry a rate.
Flat plans permit arithmetic a meter does not. Nomi's subscription covers up to ten companions, so $99.99 a year is the only per-companion figure among these five: a year for one account, not one character. Replika's $69.99 buys a single companion, which is the design rather than a fault, but the two annual prices are not measuring the same thing.
The sentence has a limit: no coins is not no upsell. Kindroid's flat base has Ultra and MAX beside it, Replika has Ultra at $29.99 a month, PolyBuzz has Premium and Ultimate above Basic. Flat guarantees the base tier does not bill by usage, not that it is the tier you want.
Free tiers are a metering decision, not a price
Free is the norm, not an edge: 145 of the 154 SFW entries here record a free tier, and 110 of those 154 record memory. So "has a free tier" filters almost nothing, and the question is what free meters.
- Model quality. PolyBuzz records unlimited free text chat with free users parked on an older model. Kindroid records unlimited messages on the Lite model, two Kindroids, no video calls.
- Feature access. Nomi's free tier is a demo by design: one companion, no voice.
- Attention and currency. Character.AI's free chat is unlimited but carries ads, a daily swipe cap and Charms.
- Nothing descriptive. Replika records a free tier without stating its terms, so the accurate reading is that one exists, not that it is sufficient.
Each free tier previews its billing model rather than sampling the product: PolyBuzz and Kindroid meter model quality, Character.AI meters attention and currency — which makes its paid tier a removal product — Nomi meters features, and Replika meters something unstated, the one case where free tells a buyer nothing they can plan around.
Decision checklist
- Lowest monthly outlay. PolyBuzz at $9.90 a month, coins from $2.49 on top — a floor, not a ceiling.
- Lowest annual outlay. Replika at $69.99 a year, $5.83 a month equivalent, the deepest discount against its own rate.
- A year that survives a change of mind. Replika, break-even three and a half months, or Nomi at six and a quarter; the other three need nine to ten.
- Two or three months, then stop. Nomi's $39.99 quarter at $13.33 a month, or Kindroid's $37.99 at $12.66.
- A bill that is the whole bill. Nomi, flat, up to ten companions for $99.99 a year; Kindroid has no coins but sells Ultra and MAX separately.
- Heavy, unpredictable usage. A flat plan: a coin-metered total is not knowable from the listing.
- The widest capability row. Character.AI and Kindroid: memory, voice, calls, images, custom characters and group chat on web, iOS and Android.
- Local execution. Kindroid, one of 11 locally runnable entries here; the subscription remains.
- Buying in an app store. About $2 a month above web pricing on Kindroid; read the in-app figure before a year freezes it.
Disclosure: the team that runs this directory also builds SoulChat, an AI companion product competing in this category. It is not part of this comparison, not a paid placement, and the ranking above is unaffected by it.
How this was checked. Prices, billing periods, free-tier terms, platform coverage and privacy notes were read from the five listings, all verified 2026-09-14. Conversions, twelve-month totals, savings and break-even months are arithmetic on those figures. Where a vendor publishes nothing — Replika's higher tier, Character.AI's regional lite tier, coin rates — the figure stays blank. No product here was tested first-hand.