The price you see is not the price you pay

Candy AI’s plan card says €3.99. The amount that leaves your account is €47.88.

Both figures are true, and neither is a lie in the trading-standards sense. €3.99 is exactly one twelfth of €47.88, the small print says so, and the annual discount behind it is real — 71% off the month-to-month rate, which is a genuinely good deal for anyone who stays a year. The problem is not the discount. The problem is that a number which is not a price has been printed in the place where a price goes.

We read the plan cards of all nineteen platforms we rank and wrote down two figures for each: what the card shows, and what the checkout charges today. This is what that produced.

Four ways a price stops meaning what it says

They are not equally serious, and only one of them is arguably deceptive. Telling them apart is the whole skill.

1 · The monthly equivalent. A yearly total divided by twelve, shown in the size and position of a monthly price. Seven of the nineteen do this. It is arithmetically honest and visually misleading, and it is by far the most common.

2 · The weekly rate. A figure small enough to feel harmless, attached to a billing cycle nobody thinks in. One platform prices this way.

3 · The introductory rate. A real price, correctly labelled, that doubles on renewal. One platform, and it is the only mechanism here that costs you more the longer you stay.

4 · The rate with no total. A daily figure, and no screen anywhere that multiplies it out. Also one platform.

The monthly equivalent, platform by platform

Seven plan cards show a figure that is not what you will be charged. In every case the relationship is the same: the number on the card is the annual total divided by twelve, and the annual total is taken in one payment on day one.

Prices read on the platforms’ own plan screens between 14 and 21 August 2026, in the currency each one charged us. Geo-priced platforms served euros from a European connection. The month-to-month rate is the one advertised alongside, and the saving is that rate over twelve months compared with the annual total.

Candy AI is the widest gap in the category: the card shows a figure twelve times smaller than the charge, and the two sit on the same screen. It is also, on that same screen, one of the two best annual discounts we found. Both things are true at once, which is exactly why this is worth a page of its own.

The three other mechanisms, and why they are worse

The weekly rate. Kupid AI prices Pro at €12.99 per week and Ultra at €24.99. Held for a year, that is €675.48 and €1,299.48. The same platform sells annual plans at €179 and €299. The weekly rate is therefore 3.8 to 4.3 times the annual rate for the same tier — not a discount structure, a penalty for not committing, and one that is invisible unless you multiply by fifty-two yourself.

The introductory rate. Get Harder charges $19.99 for the first month and $39.99 after, $119.99 for the first year and $299.99 after. That is the only pricing on this page that gets worse with loyalty: staying a second year costs $180 more than the first. The figures are correctly labelled on the plan screen — this one is not hidden, it is simply easy to forget eleven months later, which may amount to the same thing.

The rate with no total. Swipey AI quotes daily rates only — €0.67, €0.53 and €0.27 per day — and the payment modal never showed a billed total at all. At the headline rate that is €20.10 a month and €244.55 a year, but we are computing that, not reading it. A price you have to calculate before you can compare it is doing something the other eighteen do not.

What the annual commitment actually buys

Here is the part a straightforwardly angry article would leave out: the discounts are real, and they are large. Across the fifteen platforms that publish both rates, the median annual saving is 51%. Four of them — Candy AI, Joi AI, FLIRTcam.AI and GoLove AI — take 70% or more off the month-to-month rate.

If you know you want twelve months of a product, paying for twelve months is the correct decision and the monthly equivalent is a reasonable way to compare offers.

The difficulty is the word know. Committing a year costs between €48 and €160 up front, and you are making that call after ten minutes with a free tier. On the platforms where the free tier is thinnest, you are making it with almost nothing: Get Harder documents a two-message limit before the paywall, and DarLink AI‘s free allowance ran out before our test protocol finished. What each free tier actually gives you is a separate guide, and it is the one to read before this decision rather than after.

That is the real asymmetry. Not that the annual plan is bad value — it usually is not — but that the platforms asking for the longest commitment are frequently the ones offering the least evidence beforehand.

How to read a plan card in thirty seconds

Look for a billing cycle next to the number. “/mo billed annually” and “/mo” are separated by two words and about a hundred euros.

Multiply anything that is not monthly. A weekly rate by fifty-two, a daily rate by three hundred and sixty-five. If the result surprises you, that is the information.

Read the renewal line, not the offer line. An introductory price tells you what this month costs. The renewal price tells you what the product costs.

Take the total to the checkout before you decide. The confirmation screen is the only place obliged to show what will actually be charged, and it is frequently the first place the real figure appears.

None of this requires trusting us. Every figure on this page came off a plan screen anyone can open, and the protocol we used to read them is published in full.

⚠ Some links on this page are affiliate links. If you click and subscribe, AI Companion Atlas may earn a commission — at no extra cost to you. Prices, features and terms change: always check them on the official site before you pay. Figures read between 14 and 21 August 2026.