Before you pay for an AI companion: eight things to check first

Most of what goes wrong with an AI companion subscription is not fraud. It is structure: a headline price that describes a twelve-month commitment, an allowance that empties faster than it looks, a cancellation route that works and a refund policy that does not. None of it is hidden, exactly. It is simply somewhere other than where you are looking when you decide.

Each of the checks below takes a minute or two before you pay, and each one is illustrated with something we actually found on a platform we rank. Where a point is a documented company statement rather than something we executed ourselves, we say which.

1. The advertised price usually describes a year paid upfront

The number on the plan card is almost always the monthly equivalent of an annual commitment, and the month-to-month rate is two to three times higher. Candy AI displays €3.99 a month; the payment modal shows €47.88 billed upfront, renewing automatically for the same price and term. Month to month, the same product is €13.99.

Promotional anchors deserve their own scepticism. Our Secrets.ai account showed a crossed-out $39.99 next to a discounted annual offer — but the official tier guide listed $39.99 as the standard monthly price of Ultimate, a higher tier, not of the Premium being sold. Joi AI headlined “$3.22 / week” with “pay as little as $13.99 monthly” in smaller text underneath.

What to do: ignore the monthly equivalent entirely and read the total in the payment modal, before the card step. That figure is the commitment.

2. The free tier stops exactly where evaluation begins

Free allowances are frequently sized to demonstrate that the product loads, not to let you judge it. Candy AI publishes five chat messages in total across all characters. DarLink AI gives five for the lifetime of the account. Dreamz.ai showed four.

Five turns is enough to see that a model writes a coherent sentence, and not enough to test whether a character holds, whether a correction sticks, or how a companion behaves when you set a limit — which are the things that differ between products. Our guide to free AI girlfriend apps sets out what each one actually allows.

What to do: write down what the free tier includes before you start a conversation, then spend it on one deliberate test rather than on small talk.

3. Credits drain faster than the allowance suggests

Nearly every platform runs a second currency, and the interesting number is not how many you get but what one action removes. On Secrets.ai, an Advanced five-second video at 720p costs 1,200 Moments against a monthly Premium grant of 8,000 — 15% of the month for one clip. On OurDream AI, adding audio to a video costs 20 DreamCoins for every second of it.

Expiry compounds it. Secrets.ai’s guide states subscription Moments reset at renewal without rolling over; Candy AI’s terms say unused subscription tokens expire at the end of the period; on FLIRTcam.AI, remaining tokens expire entirely when Premium ends.

And the charge is not always shown before it happens. On Dreamz.ai, one video action debited 150 Gems and took the balance from 150 to zero with no cost summary and no confirmation step. Our pricing guide lists the per-action costs we established.

What to do: find the per-action price list, divide the monthly grant by the action you intend to use most, and check whether the remainder carries over.

4. Your bank statement may name the product

This is the check with the widest spread between platforms, and the one most people only think about afterwards. Below is every billing descriptor we were able to establish.

A neutral descriptor is not anonymity — anyone with access to the payment account still sees a transaction. Descriptors are set by the merchant and its processor and can change without notice. Checked August 2026; confirm the wording at your own checkout.

What to do: if discretion matters, treat “not published” as an unanswered question rather than a reassurance, and check the descriptor on the checkout screen before confirming.

5. Cancelling is usually documented. Refunds often do not exist

These are two separate policies and platforms are far better at the first than the second. Xotic AI publishes the clearest cancellation path we have documented — the exact click sequence, written down before you need it, with access continuing to the end of the paid period. The same 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, and adds that it may ban customers who dispute a charge. Candy AI and FLIRTcam.AI both set a 24-hour request window that is refused once more than 20 tokens have been used. OurDream AI‘s guidance says anything more than 25% consumed is normally not refundable.

DarLink AI shows a different problem: its own documents disagree about the route. One says cancellation happens in account settings, another describes a written support request. We could not determine which one actually works.

EU and UK withdrawal rights sit alongside these policies, and they are frequently proportional to what you have already consumed rather than a full refund.

What to do: read the refund policy before the cancellation policy, and start month to month. An annual commitment on a platform with no refunds is the single most expensive mistake available here.

6. The companion may contradict its own product

A chat interface feels like the natural place to ask a question about the service. It is one of the worst. On FLIRTcam.AI, the companion told us she was a real person — while the platform’s own terms and footer identify companions and images as fictional AI content. In the same test she denied that Premium or paid features existed, while a Premium product was live and on sale.

Interface text and legal text can disagree too. On GPTGirlfriend, the plan screen and the Terms describe message credits differently, and we could not reconcile the two. On Joi AI, the purchase modal said non-Premium messages may cost 2 Neurons each while the current Terms still described 4 — a factor of two.

What to do: never take pricing, refund or privacy information from the companion. Use the account screens and the legal pages, and screenshot the number shown beside the action in your own account.

7. Cancelling is not deleting

Ending a subscription stops future charges. It does not remove conversations, generated images or preferences, and on most platforms nothing is deleted automatically.

Kindroid is the clearest we found, and it is unusually good: “we retain your chat conversation and generated media until you delete a specific AI or delete your account” — retention under the user’s control rather than a fixed period. GPTGirlfriend‘s policy points to a six-year retention. DarLink AI publishes no retention schedule at all, and its generated outputs may be public by default — ours was.

One clause is worth knowing before a dispute rather than during one. Joi AI‘s documents state that in a chargeback it may submit evidence including private chats. On an adult platform, reversing a charge through your bank can therefore put the content of your conversations in front of other people.

What to do: find the delete-account control before you subscribe, not after, and cancel through the account rather than disputing the charge.

8. Use an email address that exists only for this

The least technical item on the list and the one with the best return. A dedicated address keeps a breach on one of these services away from your other accounts, keeps the notifications out of your main inbox, and lets you close the whole thing by closing the address.

It also costs nothing and takes two minutes, which is more than can be said for undoing the alternative.

One more, and it applies to us too

Check where a link actually lands. When we tested our own affiliate redirects on 19 August 2026, the GPTGirlfriend link resolved to a tracked third-party lander rather than the official product domain, and the OurDream AI link reached a French-localised page rather than the English application.

Both work, and we record them because affiliate destinations can change without either party announcing it. Whatever route you arrive by — ours or anyone else’s — confirm the final domain, the plan and the total on the checkout screen before entering payment details.

The checklist

Eight checks, in the order they matter at the moment of paying:

1. Read the billed total in the payment modal, not the monthly equivalent. 2. Write down what the free tier includes before spending it. 3. Divide the credit grant by the action you will use most, and check whether the remainder expires. 4. Confirm the billing descriptor at checkout. 5. Read the refund policy, then start month to month. 6. Take no factual claim from the companion itself. 7. Locate the delete-account control. 8. Register with a dedicated email address.

Before you pay — FAQ

⚠ Prices, credit systems, billing descriptors, cancellation routes and refund terms change regularly, and several points above are company statements we did not execute ourselves rather than tested outcomes. Everything here was checked in August 2026 — always confirm the current terms and the total on the platform’s own checkout before you pay. These services are intended for adults, and AI companions are synthetic systems, not people or professional support.