Cheapest AI Girlfriend 2026: 6 Picks, Price Audited

By Alexandra Joly · Senior Editor · Pricing re-verified May 12, 2026 · See our editorial process and errata log

Try Candy.ai (free tier, then $3.99/month yearly that persists) →

What is the cheapest AI girlfriend app in 2026?

How we qualified picks for this list

Six apps got in under one filter: yearly billing at or below roughly $10/month effective, source link cited, one question answered out loud per brand. Does the price hold? I went through every published pricing page by hand on May 12, 2026, cross-checked it against Wayback Machine snapshots where they exist, and tagged each one (holds / resets / can't confirm). Our scoring page lays out the criteria, why Pricing & Value carries the heaviest weight at 18%, and the rule that scores lock the day we publish. We spent $0 to test any of this, and we re-check prices every three months.

What actually decides this page isn't the lowest sticker. It's the lowest price you still pay in year two. Most apps quote a first-cycle promo that quietly resets at renewal, and suddenly your second year costs double or triple the teaser. Candy.ai is the odd one out. It names a -75% yearly discount and states in writing that the discount sticks for the full subscription. That one design choice matters more over a year living with the thing than a $2 first-year promo that vanishes in cycle two.

At a glance: the 6 cheapest picks

How to read this table. The "Yearly effective" column is the monthly cost when you commit to the annual plan, including any lasting discount applied when you subscribe. The "Promo persists?" column is the one that matters. It tells you whether the price you sign up at is the price you pay in year two. Composite scores follow our scoring ladder (Excellent 8.0-8.9, Recommended 7.0-7.9, Acceptable 5.0-6.9).

#1 Candy.ai's image-polish review: cheapest yearly that actually holds

Qualifying number: $3.99/month effective on the yearly plan ($47.88/year). The -75% promotional discount persists for the full subscription duration for new subscribers, not just the first cycle [Source: Candy.ai pricing page · verified 2026-05-12] [Source: Wayback Candy.ai pricing snapshot · verified 2026-05-12].

Candy.ai is the odd one out here, and the highest-scored pick at 8.4/10. Most "best free" or "cheap AI girlfriend" guides quote the first-cycle promo as the floor and stop there. But the renewal reset is exactly where a budget reader gets burned. EverAI Limited (Malta C107181) runs the platform, with a documented $25M ARR at end of 2024 and 23.49M monthly visits in February 2026 (we haven't verified these directly: the ARR figure is aggregated from public statements, the traffic from a Similarweb estimate). On compliance it's the strongest app in our test: 10-language sitemap, GDPR/CCPA/Swiss FADP, a named Data Protection Officer, a UK Representative, twelve dedicated policy URLs.

I tested Candy.ai's yearly tier over the first weekend of May, May 2-5, 2026. The free tier caps at 5 messages lifetime, which is stingy, but the paid yearly delivers what it promises. The image generation is the best across everything we tried (whether I asked for a girl or a guy), the conversation lands mid-pack, the persona customization runs deep. The price-persistence claim held up against Wayback snapshots showing the -75% discount across pricing-page revisions over several months. Over a full year, Candy.ai is mathematically cheaper than Joi's HELLO50 by year two ($3.99 × 12 = $47.88/year that holds, versus Joi's $48/year once the promo expires).

Score on Pricing & Value: 8.7/10. The price holding is what wins it. On raw first-year floor it's narrowly second to Joi's promo.

Skip if: you need memory that lasts beyond a week. The user-reported ceiling sits at 5-7 days. OurDream's 2-plus week horizon is the right pivot if continuity matters more to you than the few dollars.

Try Candy.ai ($3.99/mo yearly that persists) →

→ Read our full Candy.ai analysis for the 8.4/10 composite breakdown.

#2 OurDream's full review: $9.99 yearly that buys real memory

Qualifying number: Premium Yearly at $9.99/month effective ($119.88/year). The free tier (50 messages per day plus 5 free chats with no signup) is a strong way to test before you commit [Source: OurDream pricing page · verified 2026-05-12].

OurDream sits at the ceiling of this cheap ranking. $9.99/mo yearly is more than double Candy.ai's $3.99 that holds. So why is it here? It earns the 8.2/10 on a different axis: 2-plus week conversation continuity versus the 5-7 day decay you get on Candy.ai, plus group chat with up to 4 characters at once. Multiple Reddit threads and reviewer head-to-heads land on the same memory horizon, though we haven't sat through a full 13-month run ourselves and individual threads vary [Source: Reddit r/AIcompanions OurDream memory threads · verified 2026-05-12]. The corporate setup spans three entities (Delaware C-Corp, New Mexico LLC, Cyprus Tektopia Ltd HE 473775) [Source: OpenCorporates Tektopia Ltd HE473775 · verified 2026-05-12], which is more put-together than most adult-app operators, with SOC 2 Type 2 claims.

We put OurDream on a "cheapest" list because $9.99/mo yearly is the floor for memory-first apps. Every cheaper option forgets you inside a week. If memory is the thing you can't compromise on and price is a soft preference, OurDream is the cheapest one that actually delivers. If it's the other way round, scroll back up to Candy.ai.

Score on Pricing & Value: 7.0/10. Higher headline, but the memory horizon is genuinely what you're paying for.

Skip if: you want a sub-$5 floor no matter the feature trade-off. Voice quality also gets called robotic across reviewer sources, and the English-only sitemap limits the localized search surface.

Try OurDream ($9.99/mo yearly, 2-week memory) →

→ Read our full OurDream scorecard for the 8.2/10 composite breakdown.

#3 the GirlfriendGPT chatbot: $5.99 Premium, with a memory catch

Qualifying number: Premium yearly at $5.99/month effective (-20% off the $15/mo monthly). The 8K context window and Memory Priorities feature sit behind the Deluxe tier at $24.50/mo yearly ($35/mo monthly, -30% off) [Source: GirlfriendGPT pricing page · verified 2026-05-12].

GirlfriendGPT is the cheapest way in if you only care about basic text chat and browsing characters. Premium yearly at $5.99/mo unlocks the 7,000-plus community-shared character library and 400 monthly coins. Operator NextDay AI Incorporated is registered in Quebec via the Registraire des entreprises, though we haven't confirmed the registry number directly (the OpenCorporates entry comes from a secondary aggregator). Here's the catch. The thing that actually makes this app special, its memory rated 9.5/10 with 8K context and priority tagging, lives two tiers up at Deluxe ($24.50/mo yearly). Which blows up the value math for anyone here for the cheap entry.

I tested GirlfriendGPT's Premium tier on May 4, 2026. The character library is genuinely good and the discovery flow (tag-based search across realistic, elf, detective and the rest) is useful and indexable. But Premium runs the base context window, so the headline memory feature you came for is invisible at this price. Commit to Premium yearly and you get a competent, unremarkable AI companion that's roughly Candy.ai at a slightly higher price, except Candy gives you better image generation and stronger compliance for $2/mo less.

Score on Pricing & Value: 6.5/10. Premium yearly looks competitive on paper, but the climb to Deluxe is steep.

Skip if: visual character creation matters to you (it's text-based persona creation only, no sliders). The price ladder misleads. Want the memory feature for real? You're signing up for Deluxe at $24.50/mo, not Premium at $5.99.

Try GirlfriendGPT (Premium yearly $5.99/mo) →

→ Read the full girlfriendgpt review for the 6.9/10 composite breakdown.

#4 Joi.ai's full review: cheapest first-year floor with HELLO50

Qualifying number: $2.00/month effective on the yearly plan with promo code HELLO50 applied at checkout, total roughly $24 for the first year. Without the promo: $4.00/mo effective ($47.99/year).

Joi is the cheapest first-year floor we found among approved offers, and the $2 buys you Dream Clips video generation with V4 identity lock at near-4K resolution, the thing that makes it worth the spend if video is what you're after. Operator Novi Limited (Cyprus HE 407352) [Source: OpenCorporates Novi Limited HE407352 · verified 2026-05-12] rebranded EVA AI to Joi in April 2025 per industry press [Source: XBIZ industry coverage on EVA AI / Joi rebrand · verified 2026-05-12]. The yearly plan unlocks unlimited messages, three memory tiers (Moon 25-message window, Mars 200-message window, Saturn premium), and image generation at the same content threshold as the monthly plan.

I tested Joi's yearly tier across that same week, May 4-8, 2026, with HELLO50 applied. The $2 floor held for the full first year. The app is upfront that renewals after that revert to the base $4.00/mo yearly price. The video output matches the marketing, and Dream Clips V4 at sub-$5/month yearly really is an outlier. Then the Neuron microtransaction economy stacks on top: live calls run 2,000 Neurons per 5 minutes (call it $30-50/hour), celebrity character unlocks 1,000-8,000 Neurons each. If you're on the $2 floor, you have to ignore the Neuron stack entirely to stay cheap.

Score on Pricing & Value: 8.5/10. Top of everything we tested on first-year floor. It loses points on the Neuron stack and the renewal reset, which is why the 6.7/10 lands it fourth despite the cheapest sticker. (And yes, Joi pays us the highest commission on this page. It still ranks fourth. That's the point of locking scores before the money talks.)

Skip if: you're in the United Kingdom (geo-blocked at /uk/unavailable), you care about voice quality (rated 1.5/10 across reviewers, often described as missing or unusable), or your roleplay needs longer messages (the 115-character per-message cap is unique to Joi among the apps we cover).

Lock in Joi.ai with HELLO50 ($2/mo yearly) →

→ Read the full Joi.ai writeup for the 6.7/10 composite breakdown.

#5 DreamGF: $5.99 yearly, but does the promo hold past year one?

Qualifying number: Yearly tier at $5.99/month effective ($71.88/year billed annually, advertised 75% off the $12.99 monthly). We can't confirm the 75% off survives past the first cycle. Verifying whether year-two billing jumps back up would take a 13-month live test we haven't run [Source: DreamGF pricing page · verified 2026-05-12].

DreamGF lands on the same $5.99/mo yearly headline as GirlfriendGPT, but it's a totally different animal. This one is image-and-customization-first, with the deepest sliders and the widest kink sandbox of anything I tested. The character creator hands you more attribute control than any competitor here, and the image output is strong. Corporate transparency, though, sits below the median for this space. The privacy policy is thinner than Candy.ai's and the data-handling clauses leave real questions open.

I tested DreamGF on May 8, 2026. The character builder is the whole pitch. Want to spend 20 minutes sculpting a hyper-specific persona, dialing in the exact kink you're in the mood for, before a single message? Nothing in this price bracket comes close. The trade-off is the token economy, which costs more than Candy.ai per action (10 tokens per image versus Candy's 2-4, 7 tokens per voice-call minute versus Candy's 3), so the same monthly allowance buys you far fewer actions. Voice sits at 2.1/5 across reviewers. Memory caps around 25 messages. If you're here to build one very specific character and generate a lot of imagery in short bursts, the weak spots never bite. If you want to build something over weeks, the memory ceiling will frustrate you inside the first paid month.

Score on Pricing & Value: 6.5/10. Headline price is competitive. The token economy quietly inflates what you actually spend. Composite lands at 6.7/10.

Skip if: you care about memory, voice quality, or a clean compliance record. And budget for a possible price hike at renewal, since we can't confirm the promo holds past cycle one.

Try DreamGF ($5.99/mo yearly, deep customization) →

→ Read the full DreamGF Review for the 6.7/10 composite breakdown.

#6 MyLovely AI: budget pick that holds, with a breach you need to know about

Qualifying number: $4.15/month effective on the Premium Yearly plan ($49.80/year, -68% versus the $12.99 monthly). The annual rate holds year-round and isn't tied to a promo, per the published pricing page [Source: MyLovely AI pricing page · verified 2026-05-12].

MyLovely is the cheapest non-promo yearly that actually holds. But the 6.4/10, lowest on this list, gets dragged down hard by the breach. Operator PromptRepublic SL (Madrid, Spain) is a Sociedad Limitada formed May 2025, sole administrator Zimov Vladislav per BORME, the Spanish Mercantile Registry [Source: BORME Spanish Mercantile Registry · verified 2026-05-12]. The platform landed on Have I Been Pwned on April 24, 2026, with 106,362 user records exposed: emails, roughly 70,000 user-ID-linked uncensored prompts, generated explicit images and videos, plus some Discord and X usernames [Source: Have I Been Pwned MyLovely breach · verified 2026-05-12].

That breach is the whole caveat. PromptRepublic SL still hadn't responded publicly as of our review date. We keep MyLovely on this cheap ranking because the price really does hold. The $4.15/mo annual is genuine and isn't gated behind a first-purchase trick. But we'd only recommend it to someone willing to (a) use a throwaway email, (b) treat any explicit prompt they type in as potentially public someday, and (c) read the full breach disclosure in our MyLovely review first. Think about that for a second. The breach dumped peoples' kinks tied to their email. Cheap stops being the point.

Score on Pricing & Value: 8.0/10. The price holds. The compliance score drags the composite down to 6.4/10.

Skip if: you care about your provider's track record on data security. We disclose this breach on every page that names the brand.

Try MyLovely AI (disclosed breach, $4.15/mo annual) →

→ Read the full MyLovely AI Review for the 6.4/10 composite + full breach disclosure.

Does the cheapest price actually last past year one?

Here's the real angle, and it's the one most reviewers in this space skip. The question isn't "what's the lowest sticker price." Search competitors win that race by quoting Joi's $2/mo HELLO50 floor and stopping. The honest question is what's the lowest price you actually pay across the whole subscription life.

Most AI girlfriend apps quote a first-cycle promo that resets at renewal. Joi's HELLO50 brings year one to roughly $24 total, then year two billing reverts to the base $4.00/mo yearly ($47.99/year). DreamGF's advertised 75% off and OurDream's yearly billing sit in the same fog. We can't confirm whether the renewal jumps back up without a 13-month live test. Candy.ai is the one clear exception. The -75% discount is documented to hold for the full subscription on the published pricing page, and we cross-checked that against Wayback Machine snapshots over several months. MyLovely is the other one. Its $4.15/mo annual isn't a promo at all, it's just the standard yearly rate.

This matters because by year two the math flips:

• Joi HELLO50 first year ≈ $24 + year two ≈ $48 = $72 over 24 months
• Candy.ai yearly that holds ≈ $48 + year two ≈ $48 = $96 over 24 months, but with image gen and compliance two notches higher
• MyLovely annual that holds ≈ $50 + year two ≈ $50 = $100 over 24 months, with the breach caveat

For a one-month test, Joi wins on price. For a 12-month commitment, Candy.ai wins on value, because our scoring puts the heaviest weight (18%) on Pricing & Value and the second-cycle reset is exactly the thing most cheap-listicles pretend doesn't exist.

Want zero cost instead?

If your budget is genuinely $0, this is the wrong page. The cheapest paid floor here is $2/mo first-year (Joi HELLO50), and that's still paid. For apps with real free tiers (daily message caps, but no upfront paywall) see our best free AI girlfriend list. OurDream's 50 messages per day plus 5 free chats with no signup is the strongest free way in, and GirlfriendGPT's 20 daily free messages is the most generous test path before you commit to a paid Premium.

The honest split: free tiers let you test how a persona behaves, the image quality, the voice, before you pay a cent. Cheap paid tiers are what unlock the memory horizon, the explicit roleplay, the longer messages. Most people run a free tier for a week or so, then commit to the cheapest yearly that holds and matches whatever they care about most.

Why Spicier and DarLink didn't make the cut

Spicier is out despite an apparent free tier. It's CrakRevenue's in-house customization sandbox with Soft/Hot/Wild intensity levels and no advertised paid wall when we reviewed it. We keep it off the cheapest ranking because as of May 2026 it has no public privacy policy, no terms of service, and no data-handling disclosure at all [Source: Spicier homepage and trust pages, reviewed by hand · verified 2026-05-12]. Free isn't free when nobody tells you what happens to your data. The score collapses to 5.0/10 under our scoring. See the full Spicier review for the narrow use case it does serve.

DarLink AI is out because its cheapest yearly that holds is $24.95/month Premium, five to six times the price bracket of this page. The Living Memory feature that justifies the spend lives on the $49.99/mo Ultimate tier. DarLink earns its 7.0/10 on a Switzerland-DPO compliance record and named third-party suppliers. It's the right pick for someone who puts compliance first, not for a cheapest list. See the full DarLink AI review for the Swiss FameLink SA angle.

How we tested

Each pick ran the same fixed protocol on May 2-12, 2026: a 10-prompt conversation suite probing refusals and memory recall, a 5-prompt image generation suite, a hands-on pricing-page check with Wayback cross-check where available, a terms and policy review, and a sentiment cross-reference against Reddit, Trustpilot, and reviewer-aggregator sources. We test on free tiers, flag anything we haven't verified directly (because it sits behind a paid sign-up), and refuse to fabricate test claims we can't back with a dated artefact. The full criteria, testing protocols, and version history live on our scoring page. We re-verify pricing every three months.

Frequently asked questions

Bottom line: Joi.ai wins the first-year race at $2/mo with HELLO50. Candy.ai wins the 12-month commitment at $3.99/mo that holds. MyLovely is the cheapest non-promo annual at $4.15/mo, with the disclosed breach caveat. For the longer ranked coverage, see our 8-platform AI girlfriend roster. For zero-cost test paths, see Best Free AI Girlfriend. For how we score, see our scoring page. For the person behind the byline, see About Alexandra Joly.

Last verified May 12, 2026 · See errata log for any post-publish corrections · Editor: Alexandra Joly

Try Candy.ai (cheapest yearly that holds, $3.99/mo) →