Ship a companion people come back to.
Field-tested playbooks, a launch checklist and the operator news that matters, from first persona to fifty thousand daily users.
- Write a persona bible
- Build visible long-term memory
- Add a crisis protocol
- Pick age assurance per market
- Benchmark your pricing
Find the playbook for your problem
Monetisation
Pricing, tokens, subscriptions and turning traffic into revenue.
Subscriptions, tokens and tips: how AI companion apps make money →Payments
Processors, high-risk billing and keeping disputes down.
Guide: payments, processors and chargebacks for companion businesses →Retention
Memory, personas and the habits that bring users back.
Retention, not acquisition, decides who wins →Trust & safety
Moderation, minors, crisis handling and policy design.
Moderating intimacy at scale: trust & safety basics for companion platforms →Tech stack
Models, inference costs, voice and infrastructure.
Guide: choosing a model stack for a companion product →Compliance
Age assurance, the EU AI Act and the rules you must meet.
Age assurance for AI companion operators: a practical guide →This week in companion apps
All operator news →
Apple’s New App Store Rule Explained: Why Dating And AI Companion Apps Are Now 18+
4 November 2026
Chinese Tech Giant Tencent Launches AI Companions For Gamers
Yesterday
I asked ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude & Perplexity about AI companions in 2030 — here's what surprised me
2 days agoPlaybooks
All playbooks →
Age assurance for AI companion operators: a practical guide
From the UK's Online Safety Act to US state laws, keeping minors out is no longer optional. Here's how operators are approaching it.
Subscriptions, tokens and tips: how AI companion apps make money
The category has moved beyond the simple monthly plan. A look at the monetisation models operators are using — and their trade-offs.
Guide: payments, processors and chargebacks for companion businesses
Taking payments is the single most fragile part of running a companion business. Here is how operators approach high-risk classification, descriptors, refunds and chargeback control.
Moderating intimacy at scale: trust & safety basics for companion platforms
Companion apps face safety challenges that general chatbots don't. These are the foundations every operator needs.
Guide: choosing a model stack for a companion product
Hosted APIs or open-weight models? One model or many? A practical walk-through of the decisions behind a companion product's AI stack.
Retention, not acquisition, decides who wins
Plenty of companion apps can buy installs. Far fewer can keep users past the first month. Why cohort curves, memory and daily rituals matter more than ad budgets.
Vendors & platforms
Full directory →White-label AI companion sites for traffic owners
User-created characters at massive scale
One of the biggest adult AI companion brands
Adult AI companions with image and video generation
Web-scale character chat built by its community
One of the longest-running AI companion apps
Character chat with collectible cards
Uncensored character chat with its own models