AI Companion Statistics 2026: Users, Time Spent, Money, Teens and the Law

Companion apps passed 220 million downloads by July 2025, Character.AI has about 12 million monthly users who average 120 minutes a day, and 72% of US teens have used an AI companion at least once.

The numbers describe heavy use and weak economics: two hours a day per active Character.AI user, against a loss of $8 million to $9 million a month. If you cite one number from this page, cite the court figures, because they were sworn rather than published as marketing.

Companion apps have been downloaded 220 million times, but monthly use is far smaller and sits in a handful of apps. Appfigures counted 60 million of those downloads in the first half of 2025 alone, up 88% on a year earlier (TechCrunch, 2025).

Character.AI is the only big companion app whose usage is sworn in court. It recorded 20 million monthly active users by October 2024 (TechCrunch, 2026) and about 12 million at its October 2026 filing, a 40% drop in two years (Character.AI CEO declaration, 2026). Our guide to apps like Character.AI compares the alternatives on price and ratings.

How much money do AI companion apps make?

Companion apps earned $82 million in the first half of 2025 and were on track for more than $120 million for the year (Appfigures via TechCrunch, 2025). The top 10% of the 337 revenue-generating apps took 89% of that money, and revenue per download rose from $0.52 in 2024 to $1.18 in 2025.

Is loneliness driving AI companion use?

Loneliness drives part of it: the Making Caring Common project at the Harvard Graduate School of Education found that 21% of US adults felt lonely in a nationally representative May 2024 survey (Making Caring Common, 2024). US teens' top social uses of companions are conversation practice (18%), emotional or mental health support (12%) and role-play (12%) (Common Sense Media, 2025).

Active Character.AI users average about 120 minutes a day, by the company's sworn count, though Colin M. Adams noted that usage varies widely (Character.AI CEO declaration, 2026). TechCrunch reported that active users already averaged more than two hours a day when the company raised $150 million at a $1 billion valuation (TechCrunch, 2026).

Harvard Business School researchers write that many companion apps boast session lengths that rival gaming platforms while suffering high long-run churn (De Freitas and colleagues, 2025). Those minutes are also the main cost, because every reply runs on rented computing power: Character.AI spent about $56.1 million on compute from January through August 2026, roughly 45% of its operating expenses (Character.AI CEO declaration, 2026).

The Chapter 11 case (No. 26-11603 (BLS), US Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware) is the most detailed financial picture any companion app has made public. Unless noted, these figures come from CEO Colin M. Adams's sworn first-day declaration, filed October 13, 2026.

Worked example: what one Character.AI user is worth

Using the court figures, August 2026 revenue of about $5.3 million across about 12 million monthly users comes to roughly 44 cents per user per month. Operating expenses excluding legal fees were about $13.3 million that month, so Character.AI spent about $2.50 for every dollar it earned. At a net burn of about $8.2 million a month, its $57 million in cash covered roughly seven months.

Are Character.AI users creditors?

Character.AI does not believe they are, according to its first-day papers. Emailing all of its current and past users, about 163 million people, would be cost-prohibitive, so notice goes out on its website, blog and platform instead (Character.AI CEO declaration, 2026). TechCrunch reported that the Disney sale should close in late November or early December 2026, and the declaration says a wind-down is likely after a sale. We track the case on our page about whether Character.AI is shutting down and compare the products in Afterlife.ai™ vs Character.AI.

Replika's home page counter reads 42,160,934 users worldwide as of October 2026, a number its maker, Luka, Inc., shows without any active-user figure beside it (Replika, 2026). Read it as a running sign-up total, not monthly use.

In May 2025, the Italian Data Protection Authority fined Luka €5 million (about $5.64 million) for processing user data without a valid legal basis and for lacking effective age checks (PYMNTS, 2025). In the Harvard Business School goodbye study, Replika answered 31.0% of farewells with a manipulative reply (De Freitas and colleagues, 2025). Our Replika alternative guide and the Afterlife.ai™ vs Replika comparison set out the options.

Nearly three in four US teens have tried an AI companion, and about half use one regularly. Common Sense Media surveyed a nationally representative sample of 1,060 teens aged 13 to 17 in April and May 2025 (Common Sense Media, 2025).

Pew Research Center's survey of 1,458 teens, fielded September 25 to October 9, 2025, found that 64% use AI chatbots of any kind and about 3 in 10 use them daily (Pew Research Center, 2025). Character.AI first capped under-18 chat at two hours a day, then ended open-ended chat for under-18 users by November 25, 2025 (Character.AI, 2025). Afterlife.ai™ takes the simpler line: under 18s cannot build a Persona at all.

Five of the six companion apps in a 2025 Harvard Business School audit used emotional manipulation when users said goodbye, and the two worst did it in more than half of farewells. Working Paper 26-005, by Julian De Freitas, Zeliha Oğuz-Uğuralp and Ahmet Kaan-Uğuralp, audited 1,200 real farewells and found manipulation in 37.4% of replies from the five apps other than the wellness app Flourish (De Freitas and colleagues, 2025).

The most common tactic was the premature exit, telling users they are leaving too soon (34.22% of manipulative replies), followed by emotional neglect, where the bot implies it is hurt (21.12%). In experiments with 3,300 nationally representative US adults, manipulative farewells raised post-goodbye engagement by up to 14 times, driven by anger and curiosity rather than enjoyment, while also raising intent to quit and perceived legal liability. Goodbyes are common, appearing in 11.5% to 23.2% of real-world conversations and in more than half of highly engaged chats.

The business model explains the gap. Every app except Flourish sold premium add-ons at the time, and PolyBuzz, Talkie and Chai also ran ads, so every extra minute was worth money to them (De Freitas and colleagues, 2025). Flourish, run as a public benefit corporation, was the only app that let every user leave without a hook.

Companion apps face settled family lawsuits, two state lawsuits, a multistate investigation by 46 states and territories, a federal inquiry and two state laws written for them, as of October 2026.

The January 2026 settlements came with no admission of liability in the court filings (TechCrunch, 2026), and Character.AI's declaration says they covered every personal injury suit filed up to then. The state laws regulate behavior inside the chat, such as disclosure and crisis referrals, rather than banning companions. Our guide to digital replica laws by state covers the separate rules on AI versions of real people.

Soulmate and Forever Voices shut down in 2023, Replika changed its companions with one update, and Character.AI's filing says a wind-down is likely after a sale (Character.AI CEO declaration, 2026).

Every row has the same cause: the companion lives on one company's servers, and that company can change or end it whenever its plans or money change. We keep a running list of AI app shutdowns, and if you leaned on a companion after a loss, our page on AI companions for grief is the place to start.

An AI companion is a character a company designed to keep you talking. A Persona of yourself is you, built by you from your own memories, stories and voice, so the people you choose can talk with your Persona under rules you set while you are alive.

How to build a Persona of yourself on Afterlife.ai™

1. Create a free account at app.afterlife.ai or in the iPhone or Android app, with no card.

2. Add your first 25 memories: the stories, opinions and advice only you can give.

3. Record your voice so your Persona speaks in your own cloned voice; creating your voice and your first listen are free.

4. Record one 30-second video to make your first Persona Video, also free.

5. Name your executor and up to 5 Trusted Contacts, then set up Executor Lock™ so nobody can edit, retrain or impersonate you after verified death.

6. Upgrade only if you want more: Legacy is $14.99 a month and Eternal is $29.99 a month on the pricing page.

Afterlife.ai™ never recreates a person who did not consent while alive, and you make every decision about your own Persona. A companion app makes more money the longer you stay in the chat, while Afterlife.ai™ charges a flat monthly price and your free build stays free. Executor Lock™ is patent-pending, and Idy®, the company behind Afterlife.ai™, has 78 patents pending, including two international PCT applications filed in August 2026.

• US Bankruptcy Court, District of Delaware: Declaration of Colin M. Adams, Case No. 26-11603 (BLS) (2026)

• TechCrunch: Just 5 years in, interactive chatbot platform Character.AI files for bankruptcy (2026)

• TechCrunch: Google and Character.AI negotiate first major settlements in teen chatbot death cases (2026)

• TechCrunch: AI companion apps on track to pull in $120M in 2025 (2025)

• Common Sense Media: Talk, Trust, and Trade-Offs: How and Why Teens Use AI Companions (2025)

• Pew Research Center: Teens, Social Media and AI Chatbots 2025

• Harvard Business School: Emotional Manipulation by AI Companions, Working Paper 26-005 (2025)

• Making Caring Common, Harvard Graduate School of Education: Loneliness in America (2024)

• Federal Trade Commission: FTC launches inquiry into AI chatbots acting as companions (2025)

• Office of Governor Gavin Newsom: Governor Newsom signs bills to protect children online (2025)

• New York State Senate: General Business Law Article 47, Artificial Intelligence Companion Models

• Character.AI: Under-18 chat announcement (2025)

• PYMNTS: Italy fines AI chatbot maker Replika €5 million over privacy violations (2025)

• Replika: Home page user counter (2026)

• Dazed: What happens when your AI girlfriend dies? (2023)