AI companion apps on track to pull in $120M in 2025
Unlike general-purpose chatbots, AI companion apps anthropomorphize AI interactions by allowing users to converse with custom characters, including friends, lovers, girlfriends or boyfriends, fantasy characters, and more. Appfigures defined the market segment in the same way, describing companion apps as those in which the user can interact with either premade or user-generated synthetic characters meant to embody an actual personality.
Popular apps in this space include Replika, Character.AI, PolyBuzz, Chai, and others.
As of July 2025, AI companion apps across the Apple App Store and Google Play have been downloaded 220 million times globally. During the first half of 2025, downloads were up 88% year-over-year, reaching 60 million.
Appfigures crunched the numbers and found that, as of July 2025, AI companion apps have driven $221 million in consumer spending worldwide. So far this year, these apps have generated 64% more revenue than during the same period in 2024.
The top 10% of all AI companion apps generate 89% of the revenue in the category, the data shows. In addition, around 10% (or 33) of the apps have exceeded $1 million in lifetime consumer spending.
Revenue per download is also up $0.66 from $0.52 in 2024 to $1.18 for the category so far in 2025.
While dedicated AI companion apps are fairly popular, bigger companies like xAI are also moving into the market. In July, xAI's Grok launched AI companions, including an anime girl and guy, as well as a snarky 3D fox.
Meanwhile, ChatGPT's recent upgrade to GPT-5 brought to light the fact that many of its users felt a kinship with the older model, as they mourned the loss of their AI companion, whom they had come to depend upon.
To address these and other concerns about GPT-5's performance, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman brought back the 4o model for the time being.
Google last year tapped into the market, too, when it hired away Character.ai's founder, Noam Shazeer. The Character.ai app lives on and still has tens of millions of monthly active users.
According to Appfigures' data, the most popular AI companion apps are those used by people looking for an AI girlfriend. Of the active apps on the market today, 17% have an app name that includes the word 'girlfriend,' compared with 4% that say 'boyfriend' or 'fantasy.' Terms like anime, soulmate, and lover, among others, are less frequently mentioned.
The firm notes there were likely a number of other AI companion apps that launched on the app stores since 2022, but were later removed after failing to gain traction in terms of revenue or downloads. Those weren't factored into its analysis, however.
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I think we've seen kind of two major trends. One is AI products geared toward providers, and those are primarily administrative tools to help you with your therapy notes and your claims. The other major trend is [people seeking help from] direct-to-consumer chatbots. And not all chatbots are the same, right? You have some chatbots that are developed specifically to provide emotional support to individuals, and that's how they're marketed. Then you have these more generalist chatbot offerings [such as ChatGPT] that were not designed for mental health purposes but that we know are being used for that purpose. What concerns do you have about this trend? We have a lot of concern when individuals use chatbots [as if they were a therapist]. Not only were these not designed to address mental health or emotional support; they're actually being coded in a way to keep you on the platform for as long as possible because that's the business model. And the way that they do that is by being unconditionally validating and reinforcing, almost to the point of sycophancy. The problem with that is that if you are a vulnerable person coming to these chatbots for help, and you're expressing harmful or unhealthy thoughts or behaviors, the chatbot's just going to reinforce you to continue to do that. Whereas, [as] a therapist, while I might be validating, it's my job to point out when you're engaging in unhealthy or harmful thoughts and behaviors and to help you to address that pattern by changing it. And in addition, what's even more troubling is when these chatbots actually refer to themselves as a therapist ora psychologist. It's pretty scary because they can sound very convincing and like they are legitimate—whenof course they're not. Some of these apps explicitly market themselves as 'AI therapy' even though they're not licensed therapy providers. Are they allowed to do that? A lot of these apps are really operating in a gray space. The rule is that if you make claims that you treat or cure any sort of mental disorder or mental illness, then you should be regulated by the FDA [the U.S. Food and Drug Administration]. But a lot of these apps will [essentially] say in their fine print, 'We do not treat or provide an intervention [for mental health conditions].' Because they're marketing themselves as a direct-to-consumer wellness app, they don't fall under FDA oversight, [where they'd have to] demonstrate at least a minimal level of safety and effectiveness. These wellness apps have no responsibility to do either. What are some of the main privacy risks? These chatbots have absolutely no legal obligation to protect your information at all. So not only could [your chat logs] be subpoenaed, but in the case of a data breach, do you really want these chats with a chatbot available for everybody? Do you want your boss, for example, to know that you are talking to a chatbot about your alcohol use? I don't think people are as aware that they're putting themselves at risk by putting [their information] out there. The difference with the therapist is: sure, I might get subpoenaed, but I do have to operate under HIPAA [Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act] laws and other types of confidentiality laws as part of my ethics code. You mentioned that some people might be more vulnerable to harm than others. Who is most at risk? Certainly younger individuals, such as teenagers and children. That's in part because they just developmentally haven't matured as much as older adults. They may be less likely to trust their gut when something doesn't feel right. And there have been some data that suggest that not only are young people more comfortable with these technologies; they actually say they trust them more than people because they feel less judged by them. Also, anybody who is emotionally or physically isolated or has preexisting mental health challenges, I think they're certainly at greater risk as well. What do you think is driving more people to seek help from chatbots? I think it's very human to want to seek out answers to what's bothering us. In some ways, chatbots are just the next iteration of a tool for us to do that. Before it was Google and the Internet. Before that, it was self-help books. But it's complicated by the fact that we do have a broken system where, for a variety of reasons, it's very challenging to access mental health care. That's in part because there is a shortage of providers. We also hear from providers that they are disincentivized from taking insurance, which, again, reduces access. Technologies need to play a role in helping to address access to care. We just have to make sure it's safe and effective and responsible. What are some of the ways it could be made safe and responsible? In the absence of companies doing it on their own—which is not likely, although they have made some changes to be sure—[the APA's] preference would be legislation at the federal level. That regulation could include protection of confidential personal information, some restrictions on advertising, minimizing addictive coding tactics, and specific audit and disclosure requirements. For example, companies could be required to report the number of times suicidal ideation was detected and any known attempts or completions. And certainly we would want legislation that would prevent the misrepresentation of psychological services, so companies wouldn't be able to call a chatbot a psychologist or a therapist. How could an idealized, safe version of this technology help people? The two most common use cases that I think of is, one, let's say it's two in the morning, and you're on the verge of a panic attack. Even if you're in therapy, you're not going be able to reach your therapist. So what if there was a chatbot that could help remind you of the tools to help to calm you down and adjust your panic before it gets too bad? The other use that we hear a lot about is using chatbots as a way to practice social skills, particularly for younger individuals. So you want to approach new friends at school, but you don't know what to say. Can you practice on this chatbot? Then, ideally, you take that practice, and you use it in real life. It seems like there is a tension in trying to build a safe chatbot to provide mental help to someone: the more flexible and less scripted you make it, the less control you have over the output and the higher risk that it says something that causes harm. I agree. I think there absolutely is a tension there. I think part of what makes the [AI] chatbot the go-to choice for people over well-developed wellness apps to address mental health is that they are so engaging. They really do feel like this interactive back-and-forth, a kind of exchange, whereas some of these other apps' engagement is often very low. The majority of people that download [mental health apps] use them once and abandon them. We're clearly seeing much more engagement [with AI chatbots such as ChatGPT]. I look forward to a future where you have a mental health chatbot that is rooted in psychological science, has been rigorously tested, is co-created with experts. It would be built for the purpose of addressing mental health, and therefore it would be regulated, ideally by the FDA. For example, there's a chatbot called Therabot that was developed by researchers at Dartmouth [College]. It's not what's on the commercial market right now, but I think there is a future in that.
