Original Research Into AI Companions
I test AI companion products with my own money, survey the people who use them, and track the companies building them. This page is the index: every study, the methods behind it, and the files you need to cite it.
Researched & written by Ranji Mercado · The Coach, aigirlfriend.coach
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Ranji Mercado · content writer & data researcher
I run every page on this site the same way: experience first, write second. I subscribe with my own money, live in each app, log the dates, prices and screenshots, and only then write. Nothing here is a rewrite of someone else's article or a press kit.
- 2,150U.S. adults surveyed
- 30companies in the funding dataset
- $415.6Mdisclosed funding mapped
- 16platforms tested firsthand
- 13apps in the memory benchmark
- 11paid plans purchased and compared
The State of AI Romance 2026
AI Romance and Modern Relationships
A survey of 2,150 U.S. adults on AI girlfriends, AI boyfriends and romantic AI companions, fielded through SurveyMonkey Audience on 26 to 27 August 2026. 1,709 responses analyzed after quality screening.
Download the full research
The Rest of the Program
Four standing studies, each with its own method and its own downloadable evidence.
AI Companion Funding Tracker
30 companies and $415.6M in disclosed funding, compiled by hand. The headline finding: 99.25% of that money went to safe-for-work positioning. Published under CC BY 4.0.
Read the analysis →The 7-Day Memory Test
One trip planted in 13 chatbots, buried under a week of small talk, then asked about. Eight remembered it. Four invented trips I never took.
See the benchmark →The Image Test
The same request made of all 16 apps on the roster: realism, context, consistency and what each photo actually costs in credits.
See the test →How AI Chat Services Are Priced
11 paid plans bought and tracked through every token, credit, image charge and renewal, to find what a subscription really buys.
Read the analysis →The hands-on platform testing all four studies draw on is in the reviews.
How the Research Works
Sample design, field dates, screening rules and exclusions are published with every report, including the responses I removed and the exact rule that removed them.
Platforms meet the same prompts, the same planted facts and the same time periods, so the results compare across products rather than describing one.
Funding and company figures are compiled from documented sources, with the source notes published beside the dataset.
I create the accounts, exhaust the free tiers and pay for the subscriptions myself. Nothing here is written from a press kit.
No company can buy a ranking, a review or a research finding. Some review pages carry affiliate links, disclosed where they appear, and that revenue pays for the subscriptions.
Question wording, tables and screenshots are published so any claim can be traced back to its evidence. Full testing methodology →
Statistics and Reference Pages
Eighteen reference pages, each one compiled from published research rather than from my own fieldwork. That difference matters, so I state it here rather than letting the four studies above lend them credibility they did not earn.
Compiling these is slower work than it looks. For each question I read through the published research, the government surveys, the industry reports and the academic papers, then work out which of them are actually measuring the same thing, because very often they are not. A lot of the job is tracing a widely repeated figure back to whoever first published it, and saying plainly when that source turns out to be a press release, a marketing study, or nothing at all.
So every page names its sources, shows where credible estimates disagree instead of picking the most quotable one, and marks the questions nobody has actually measured yet. Where a page carries a number from my own research, it says so and links the study it came from.
For Journalists and Researchers
Media enquiries are welcome and do not require a commercial engagement. I can help with:
- Comment on AI companion industry developments
- Additional cuts of the survey data
- Market, pricing and product questions
- Firsthand observations from testing the platforms
- Charts, datasets and citations
- Interviews
Ranji Mercado is the founder of AI Girlfriend Coach, an independent publication researching AI companions and human-AI relationships. His work combines original consumer surveys, industry datasets and firsthand testing of AI companion platforms, every subscription paid for himself.
A companion workbook with every cross-tabulation and statistical test, plus an anonymized respondent-level dataset, is available on request for verification.
The Research Starts on the Products
None of this began as a research plan. It began with subscriptions: accounts created, free tiers exhausted, paid plans bought with my own money, and a written record of what actually happened. The questions that testing raised, whether these apps really remember anyone, why people use them, who is funding all of it, are the questions the studies on this page went and answered.
That is still where the work lives. Every platform I cover gets a living review that grows as the product changes, and the best AI girlfriend apps I have tested are ranked and compared from those notes rather than from anyone's marketing.