How much does an AI companion really cost? Credits, tokens and the second price list

The advertised price is almost never the price. Nearly every platform in this category runs two price lists: a subscription that unlocks access, and an internal currency — Moments, DreamCoins, Gems, Coins, Neurons, XOT, tokens — that every premium action spends. The subscription is the number on the card. The currency is where the money goes.

This guide sets out how that second layer works, what individual actions actually cost in each platform’s own units, and how to convert a monthly allowance into the number of images or videos it really buys. Every figure below was read from a live account or a published price page and is dated. Where we could not establish a cost, we say so rather than estimating.

Three pricing models, and how to tell them apart in ten seconds

Subscription only. One fee, everything included up to stated limits. The most honest structure and by far the rarest, because generated media is expensive to serve.

Subscription plus credits. The dominant model. Your payment unlocks the product and grants a monthly allowance of internal currency; images, video, voice and calls draw it down. This is where the surprises live.

Credits as you go. Packs bought and consumed without a recurring plan. Structurally more honest, but the real cost depends entirely on your usage, so it is the hardest to forecast.

The ten-second test: open the pricing page and look for a currency name. If the plan advertises an allowance of anything — coins, gems, tokens, Moments — the subscription price is telling you half the story, and the interesting number is what a single action removes from that allowance.

One platform charges nothing per action

Kindroid is the only service in our rankings with no credit currency at all. No coins, no gems, no tokens, no Moments, no Neurons, no DreamCoins. Nothing is charged per generation; a subscription unlocks features and the only metered resource is audio. Selfies have caps rather than prices, messages are unlimited, and there is no top-up store.

It also publishes its web and app-store prices side by side and points out that the app stores cost roughly 14% more because of processing fees — $13.99 a month on the web against $15.99 in the stores, $139.99 a year against $159.99. We have not seen another platform in this category volunteer that its app-store customers are paying a markup.

We note this because it makes everything below unnecessary for exactly one product. Everywhere else, what you pay is not what it costs until you have modelled the second currency.

The same mechanism under nine different names

The vocabulary changes; the structure does not. What matters about any of these currencies is three things: how many you get per cycle, what one action removes, and whether the unused remainder survives to next month.

That third question is the one most easily missed. Secrets.ai‘s official guide states that subscription-grant Moments reset at renewal and do not roll over, while separately purchased Moments persist. Candy AI‘s terms say unused subscription tokens expire when the billing period ends. On FLIRTcam.AI, when Premium ends any remaining tokens expire without carryover or refund. An allowance you did not spend is not saved; on these three it is simply gone.

DarLink AI shows what happens when the vocabulary itself is unclear: the plan page counts coins, the media prices are quoted in tokens, and the platform’s own token page says tokens are also consumed by interacting with characters — even though the same plans sell a separate message quota. We could not determine whether a chat message costs a message, a token, or both.

What one action actually costs

These are the per-action prices we were able to establish, in each platform’s own units. They are not comparable across rows — 50 Moments and 50 XOT are different amounts of money — but within a row they tell you exactly how fast an allowance drains.

NT means we could not establish the cost, not that the action is free. Figures were read from live accounts or published price pages between 7 and 19 August 2026, in each platform’s own currency, and are never converted between currencies. Terms change regularly — always check the price shown beside the action in your own account before you confirm it.

Turn the allowance into a number of videos

This is the calculation the advertised price hides, and it takes one division. Secrets.ai‘s Premium plan grants 8,000 Moments a month. One Advanced video at 720p and five seconds costs 1,200. That single clip is 15% of the monthly allowance. Six of them would spend 7,200 and leave 800, assuming nothing else touched the balance.

Run the same arithmetic on DarLink AI‘s entry plan and 100 coins at the published rates buys at most 50 images or 5 videos a month. On OurDream AI, a 1,000-DreamCoin Premium allowance covers ten standard five-second clips before anything else — and adding audio costs 20 DreamCoins for every second of it.

Text is the cheap part almost everywhere. Video is the expensive part everywhere, without exception. If your intended use is conversation, the entry subscription is usually the honest price. If it involves generated video, the subscription is a deposit.

The moment the allowance runs out

Dreamz.ai produced the clearest illustration of why this matters. After the chat allowance had run out, we used the visible video control. The action debited 150 coins and took the balance from 150 to zero — with no cost summary and no confirmation step before the debit. The clip arrived in about a minute and was perfectly reasonable. The problem is that a single optional action consumed the entire remaining balance without ever showing its price.

The opposite posture exists too. Secrets.ai displays image resolution prices and the video estimate before the Generate action, and Xotic AI publishes a public page listing the cost of every action, updated and readable without an account. Cost visibility before the click is the single most useful thing a platform in this category can offer, and it is not correlated with price.

What a top-up actually costs in money

Once the grant is gone, the internal currency acquires a cash price — and this is the only place where the second price list becomes directly comparable to the first.

Prices are reproduced in the currency each platform published them in and are never converted — Xotic AI documents its packs in dollars while pricing subscriptions in euros, and the two are not comparable without a conversion we will not make for you. Unit costs are arithmetic from the published pack figures. Checked August 2026; pack sizes and prices change.

Note what the ladder does: the more you buy at once, the cheaper each action becomes. That is ordinary volume pricing, and it also means the effective cost of an image on the same platform can vary by more than 35% depending on which pack you happened to buy.

Five costs that sit outside the advertised price

Top-ups. The real cost centre, and never part of the headline figure. Model your consumption before you subscribe, not after.

Expiry. Unused subscription allowance is forfeited at renewal on several platforms, and forfeited entirely when a subscription ends on others. Buying a big plan you do not consume is not saving.

The annual commitment. Every attractive monthly-equivalent figure in this category assumes twelve months paid upfront. Our rankings list the actual billed totals beside the advertised rate for exactly this reason.

Stackable add-ons. Enhanced memory, better models and higher tiers are frequently priced separately from the plan that appeared to include everything.

Refunds, or their absence. This is the cost people discover last. Xotic AI‘s terms contain a section headed “NO REFUND POLICY” — all subscription fees and token purchases final. Kindroid states that all sales are final with refunds at its discretion. Candy AI and FLIRTcam.AI both set a 24-hour request window that is denied once more than 20 tokens have been used. OurDream AI‘s guidance says products more than 25% consumed are normally not refundable. EU and UK withdrawal rights exist alongside these policies and are frequently proportional rather than full.

One clause deserves separate attention. Joi AI‘s documents state that in a chargeback dispute it may submit evidence that includes private chats. On an adult platform, escalating a payment dispute to your bank may therefore put the content of your conversations in front of other people. Cancel properly rather than reversing a charge.

The method, in four steps

1. Find the grant. How much internal currency does your intended plan include per cycle, and does it reset or roll over?

2. Price your actual use. Not your aspirational use — how many images, clips or call minutes in a typical week. Be honest, then add a third.

3. Convert it using the per-action table. Multiply, and compare the total against the grant.

4. If you exceed it, add the top-up. That sum, not the plan card, is your monthly cost.

The free tier is the right instrument for step two, because it shows you how fast a balance moves before any money is committed. Our guide to free AI girlfriend apps sets out what each one allows.

What an AI companion costs — FAQ

⚠ Prices, credit systems, allowances and refund terms change regularly, and several of the figures here are interface observations rather than contractual commitments. Everything in this guide was checked between 7 and 19 August 2026, in the currency each platform published, with no conversion applied — always confirm the current price shown beside the action in your own account before you confirm it. These services are intended for adults, and AI companions are synthetic systems, not people or professional support.