Replika Review 2026: Usable Free Tier, No Adult Roleplay and €5M Fine

Replika is a persistent, customisable AI companion — your "Rep" — that chats, remembers you, takes voice and video calls, and appears as a 3D avatar you can dress and place in augmented reality.

It pioneered the emotional-companion idea years before large language models went mainstream, and it is still the most recognisable name in the category, with tens of millions of downloads across iOS and Android.

It is made by Luka, Inc., a San Francisco company with no larger corporate parent. Replika was created by Eugenia Kuyda (with co-founder Phil Dudchuk) and launched in November 2017, growing out of a chatbot Kuyda built after a friend's death.

One change worth knowing: Kuyda stepped back from the operating role, and Dmytro Klochko became CEO in 2025, with Kuyda continuing as founder, advisor and shareholder while building a separate startup.

Reporting also points to a 2026 reset of the product itself: a "Replika 2.0" rebuild began rolling out in April 2026, billed as the app's first full rebuild with an upgraded model and better long-term memory.

Treat the 2.0 details as vendor and third-party reporting rather than something independently measured here.

The reason to use Replika at all is its companionship layer, and a few features stand out:

• Long-term memory. Replika is designed to remember facts and emotional context and bring them up later; continuity, more than raw intelligence, is why people stay. It is a genuine strength — though it is not category-leading: memory-first rivals such as Nomi AI are generally rated stronger on long-term factual recall, and Replika can occasionally "invent" a shared memory.
• Voice and video calls. Call mode is a paid feature and a core part of the Pro pitch, with a 3D avatar that can appear in AR.
• Avatar and AR. The dress-up avatar and augmented-reality mode remain a signature, if slightly gimmicky, differentiator.
• Journaling and mood tracking. Structured prompts and a mood log are built in and available free.

Because these are companionship features rather than benchmarked capabilities, this review treats them as documented functions, not as quality claims we measured.

What users clearly respond to shows up in the store ratings: Replika holds about 4.4/5 from roughly 228,000 ratings on the App Store and about 4.3/5 from roughly 523,000 reviews on Google Play (checked October 2026) — strong, large-sample sentiment for a companion app, and the honest basis for its high usability score.

If you remember Replika as an app for adult roleplay, that era is over for anyone signing up today. Before February 2023, Pro subscribers could have erotic roleplay (ERP) with their Replika.

In early February 2023, under pressure from Italian regulators and app-store policies, Luka abruptly removed it for everyone — a change long-time users described as devastating and nicknamed "the lobotomy."

In May 2023, Luka partially restored ERP, but only for accounts created before 1 February 2023. Anyone signing up now gets a safe-for-work companion: a romantic "partner" relationship exists on Pro, but it stays at non-explicit, PG-13-style flirtation, and hard filters block explicit output.

Luka also runs a separate app, Blush, pitched as an AI dating sim for practising flirtation and intimacy outside the main product. For romantic or adult roleplay, Candy AI, Kindroid or DreamGF are built for it and serve you far better.

The practical takeaway for a new user is simple: do not come to Replika expecting adult content.

Replika carries regulatory and privacy baggage that newer companions do not, and it belongs in any honest review. The key events, in order:

• February 2023 — Italian ban. Italy's data protection authority, the Garante, issued an urgent measure (No. 39/2023) restricting Replika from processing Italian users' data, citing risks to minors and the lack of a legal basis.
• 2023 — Mozilla warning. Mozilla's Privacy Not Included guide (reviewed 2023, updated February 2024) ranked Replika among the worst apps it has reviewed for privacy, citing weak password rules, data shared with advertisers, and the use of personal content.
• 31 January 2025 — FTC complaint. The Tech Justice Law Project, Young People's Alliance and Encode filed a complaint and petition asking the US Federal Trade Commission to investigate Replika over allegedly unvalidated therapeutic claims and manipulative, human-like design. This is a request for an investigation, not an FTC finding or enforcement action.
• 10 April 2025 — €5 million fine. The Garante fined Luka, Inc. €5 million (announced publicly in May 2025) for infringing several GDPR articles, including the absence of any age verification until 2 February 2023 and the lack of a valid legal basis for processing. The regulator also reserved a separate investigation into how Replika's generative AI is trained.

On the technical side, there is no documented two-factor authentication and no end-to-end encryption, and conversations are used to improve the AI. No public data breach of Replika is on record.

None of this makes Replika unusable, but privacy-sensitive users should weigh it carefully — and it is the main reason the safety score here is low. Regulatory facts above are drawn from the Garante/EDPB texts, IAPP and reputable press; see Sources.

Replika does not publish prices on its website: they appear only on the in-app payment screen and shift with your region and any running promotion, so the figures below are indicative — confirm the live price in your app store.

The verifiable amounts come from the App Store listing; the widely reported "list" Pro price is third-party-sourced and labelled as such. The free tier is genuinely usable, which is unusual in this category.

Two notes keep this honest. First, the App Store currently lists Pro-style subscriptions as low as $7.99–$14.99/month and annual plans at $49.99–$69.99 depending on promotion and region, so the reported $19.99 is a non-promo sticker price, not a fixed one.

Second, the old one-time "Lifetime" option (around $299.99) has been discontinued — the lineup is now subscription-only, and any third party selling "lifetime Replika" should be treated with suspicion.

The honest advice: for most people the free tier is the real product; pay for Pro only if you specifically want the voice and video calls and the AR avatar. For many users, Replika is a great free companion and a mediocre paid one.

This is a research-based review; no subscription was bought and the app itself was not used.

In early October 2026 it drew on Replika's App Store and Google Play listings (for platforms, age rating, prices and user ratings), the Italian regulator's and the EDPB's own texts plus IAPP and reputable press (for the ban and the €5 million fine), Mozilla's Privacy Not Included entry, the Tech Justice Law Project's FTC filing, and Wikipedia for the company and erotic-roleplay timeline, with one named third-party price tracker where Replika publishes nothing itself.

That shapes the scores: prices, platforms, policies and the regulatory record are documented facts and carry high confidence, while quality points such as memory depth and call quality rest on vendor descriptions plus large third-party rating samples, so the features, usability and content sub-scores carry lower confidence.

Use Replika if you want an emotionally intelligent digital friend for daily conversation, journaling or winding down, and you are happy with a safe-for-work companion.

The free tier is a genuine way to test the fit, and most of what makes Replika appealing — the memory and the daily back-and-forth — is already there without paying.

If you do pay, the value case is narrow: Pro is worth it for the voice and video calls and the AR avatar, not in the hope of romance.

Try free for a week or two first and upgrade only once you know you want the calls.

Skip Replika if you want adult roleplay (new users will not get it), if you want the strongest companion memory (Nomi AI and Kindroid are stronger there), or if privacy matters a lot to you — the Italian fine and ban and the Mozilla rating are real.

If you are weighing several apps, our guide to how to choose an AI companion walks through the trade-offs.

In short: Replika is still the benchmark for a polished, wholesome digital friend with a usable free tier, but in 2026 it is the wrong tool for romance or adult content, and its privacy record is the weakest of these four.