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How We Review AI Companion Apps

Transparent, repeatable, hands-on. Here's exactly how we rate every AI companion app.

1 Our Testing Process

Every AI companion app on CompanionGeek goes through a rigorous, hands-on review process. We do not rely on screenshots from press kits or feature lists from marketing pages. Our reviewer creates accounts, pays for premium tiers, and spends a minimum of 10 hours interacting with each platform before assigning scores.

During testing, we create multiple companion characters across different genders, art styles, and personality types. We test conversations across a range of topics — casual small talk, emotional support scenarios, creative roleplay, and (where available) NSFW interactions. We evaluate voice calls, video generation, and image quality using the same companions to check for visual and tonal consistency.

We also examine each app's privacy policy, billing practices, and data handling. If an app claims discrete billing, we verify it. If an app says it does not sell user data, we read the fine print.

2 The 15 Traits We Score

We evaluate every AI companion app across 15 distinct traits. Each trait is scored on a 0 to 1 scale (displayed as a percentage), where 0 means the feature is absent or unusable and 1 means it is best-in-class. Here is what we measure:

Conversation & Connection

  • Romantic Connection (romantic) — How well the app handles romantic dialogue, flirtation, and emotional intimacy. Does it feel genuine or scripted?
  • Friendship & Chat (friendship) — Quality of platonic conversation. Can you talk about your day, share interests, and feel heard?
  • Roleplay & Stories (roleplay) — Depth and flexibility of narrative roleplay. Does the AI stay in character, advance the story, and respond creatively?
  • Broad Experience (exploration) — Range of experiences available. Can you explore different scenarios, settings, and conversation styles?
  • Chat Quality (chatQuality) — Overall coherence, memory, response length, and conversational intelligence.

Content Range

  • SFW Quality (sfwStrength) — Strength of the safe-for-work experience. Is SFW mode genuinely engaging, or does the app feel hollow without NSFW content?
  • NSFW Quality (nsfwStrength) — For apps that offer adult content: quality, creativity, consent handling, and content controls.

Visuals & Media

  • Anime Art (animeStyle) — Quality and variety of anime-style character art and generated images.
  • Realistic Art (realisticStyle) — Quality and variety of photorealistic character art and generated images.
  • Voice Quality (voiceQuality) — Naturalness, emotional range, and reliability of voice chat features.
  • Video Generation (videoCapability) — Availability, quality, and speed of AI-generated video content.
  • Image Generation (imageGeneration) — Quality, consistency, and speed of on-demand image generation.

Platform & Trust

  • Customization (customization) — How much control you have over your companion's appearance, personality, voice, and behavior.
  • Character Library (characterDiversity) — Size and variety of pre-made characters or community-created companions.
  • Privacy (privacy) — Data handling policies, encryption, discrete billing options, and transparency about how conversations are stored and used.

3 How We Calculate Scores

Each app's final score combines its 15 trait scores with its overall rating. The process works like this:

  1. Trait scoring. Our reviewer assigns each of the 15 traits a score from 0 to 1 based on hands-on testing. These scores reflect real experience, not automated benchmarks.
  2. Weighted aggregation. Trait scores are aggregated using a weighted formula. On the homepage, all 15 traits carry equal weight. In our recommendation quiz, weights shift based on your preferences — so the app that scores highest for you may differ from our overall rankings.
  3. Final blend. The weighted trait score accounts for 70% of the final score. The remaining 30% comes from our overall editorial rating (scored 0-5, normalized to a percentage). This blend ensures that individual trait strengths are reflected while still accounting for the holistic experience.
  4. Display. Final scores are displayed as percentages. An app scoring 85% means it earned 0.85 out of a possible 1.0 across the weighted formula.

We re-test apps when major updates ship and adjust scores accordingly. The "last updated" date on each review tells you when we most recently verified our scores.

4 Editorial Independence

CompanionGeek earns revenue through affiliate links. This does not influence our scores. Apps with affiliate partnerships receive the same testing rigor and scoring criteria as apps without them. We never accept payment for positive reviews, and we never let an affiliate relationship change a score.

If we discover an error in a review, we correct it promptly and note the change. You can report inaccuracies through our contact page.