Why Do AI Girlfriend Apps Use Credits If You Already Pay a Subscription?
The subscription buys the app. The credits meter what you do inside it. Here's why, and what that costs you.
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.
I paid $13.99 for Candy AI. Then I asked her for a video and watched 12 tokens leave my balance at once. I had 100 for the whole month.
That's the moment most people ask the question in the title. I already paid. Why is she asking me for tokens?
I've now paid for 20 AI girlfriend apps, and almost every one of them runs some kind of currency on top of the subscription: tokens on Candy, moments on Secrets AI, gems and coins on Replika, dreamcoins on OurDream, and, my favorite name so far, rubies on Ruby Chat. I wrote about what all of that cost me in a separate post. This one is about the why. The answer turned out simpler than I expected, and a little less flattering to the apps than they'd like.
The short answer: two products, one price tag
AI girlfriend apps use credits because their features cost very different amounts to run. A text reply and a generated video don't cost the platform the same, so most apps put ordinary access in the subscription and meter the expensive things separately.
Candy is the cleanest example I have. My $13.99 Premium month came with unlimited text messages and 100 tokens. The chat wasn't metered at all. The tokens were for the photos, the videos and the voice.
The subscription buys access. The credits meter consumption.
None of this was invented for AI girlfriends. Stripe, the payments company, lists it as a standard pricing model, under names like "fixed fee and overage" and "credit burndown." You pay a base fee, you get some usage included, you pay for more. The AI girlfriend apps just give the usage a cute name and a heart icon.
Why not just make everything unlimited?
Picture two people on the same $14.99 plan.
- The first one chats for half an hour in the evening and asks for four photos all month.
- The second one chats all day, asks for 300 photos, calls her every night and makes 50 videos.
They pay the app the same amount. They don't cost the app the same amount.
Generative AI is billed by use, all the way down. Amazon's own guide to running these models says the cost depends on the number of tokens processed and grows with the number of requests. It even tells developers to cap how long replies are, because output is the expensive part.
And it isn't going away as AI gets cheaper. In August 2026 Gartner described what it calls the Inference Paradox: the price per token keeps falling, but the more capable features it unlocks use far more of them, so total bills go up anyway. Video, voice and premium models are exactly those features.
So an "unlimited everything" plan has two options. Charge everyone enough to cover the second user, or lose money on them. Credits are the third option: a ceiling around the expensive part, so the first user isn't paying for the second.
What the exchange rates actually tell you
This is the part I found more interesting than the theory. I lined up the credit prices I paid on my own accounts, in each app's own currency, and asked one question: how many photos is one video worth?
| App | Photo | Video | Voice call | A video equals |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Crushi AI | 15 coins | 32 coins to animate a photo | not priced in my notes | about 2 photos |
| Candy AI | 2 tokens (v1), 4 (v2), as of August 22 | 12 tokens | not priced in my notes | 3 to 6 photos |
| AIAngels.io | 50 credits | 200 credits | 50 credits a minute | 4 photos |
| Xeve.ai | 5 credits | 20 credits | not priced in my notes | 4 photos |
| HeyGF | 3 coins (4 for V2) | 25 to 72 coins, by length and model | 1 coin a minute | 8 to 24 photos |
| Secrets AI | 50 moments | 600 moments | not priced in my notes | 12 photos |
| OurDream | 5 dreamcoins | 100 per 5 seconds, 200 ultra | 50 dreamcoins a minute | 20 photos |
The "a video equals" column is my own math: the video price divided by the photo price in the same app.
If credit prices simply passed on what the servers cost, these ratios should land in roughly the same place on every app. They don't. A video is worth about 2 photos on Crushi, 4 on AIAngels and 20 on OurDream. Voice is even stranger. On HeyGF a minute of voice costs a third of a photo, which after a 72-coin video felt like a rounding error. On AIAngels it costs one photo. On OurDream it costs ten.
Credits don't only cover costs. They're where each app decides what it wants you to do, and what it wants you to pay extra for.
HeyGF made calls cheap enough that I'd use them again without thinking. OurDream put calls at the price of ten pictures. That's a product decision, not a server bill. I don't know any of these apps' real infrastructure costs, and nothing here needs them. The prices say plenty on their own.
Replika makes the point even more plainly. The best-looking avatar clothes and accessories are locked behind gems and coins, and my $19.99 Pro plan came with none of either, so my Replika looked exactly the same after I paid. An outfit for a 3D avatar costs next to nothing to serve. That currency isn't covering a server bill. It's a wardrobe shop.
Why apps prefer credits: three reasons, one of them for you
1. They put a ceiling on heavy use
This is the honest reason, and it works. OurDream's help center lays it out almost like a menu: subscriber chat costs 0 dreamcoins, an image 5, a voice minute 50, five seconds of video 100. The person making videos every day burns through the monthly 1,000 in a week. The person who mostly chats never notices the meter.
2. Heavy users become the highest-paying users
Without credits, an app that wants to charge the video person more needs a pile of tiers. With credits it needs one plan and a top-up button. Someone who only chats stays on the base price. Someone who wants a photo now and then uses the included balance. Someone who wants videos every night buys more. CrushOn is the plainest version of this I've seen: its tiers mostly sell more of the same thing, from 2,000 message credits a month at $5.99 to 6,000 at $14.99.
Some apps make the credits a fully separate purchase. Nomi's Standard plan came with zero Nomi credits; the packs start at 40 for $4.99. On OurDream you can't even buy coins on their own: topping up requires an active subscription, so the credits always sit on top of the plan, never instead of it.
3. Credits are easy to give away
A coin is much easier to hand out than a dollar. OurDream gave me ten dreamcoins before I had an account and fifty-five more when I signed up. AIAngels gave me 100 credits on sign-up and 15 more every day I came back, with a mystery gift on day seven. Ruby Chat started me with 8 rubies, enough to unlock two photos. DreamGF paid me 15 tokens to verify my email, Secrets AI paid 200 moments for the same thing, and My Lovely AI hands out a token for every daily check-in. OurDream's own list of ways to get coins includes contests, events, referral codes and gifting. "Here's 50 credits" lands better than "here's 99 cents," and it costs the app nothing until you spend it.
The part I don't love: credits hide the dollar price
Compare these two buttons:
- Generate video: 12 tokens
- Generate video: $0.54
They're the same button. Candy sold me an extra 200 tokens for $9, which makes a token about four and a half cents, so the 12-token video I made was about 54 cents. I'd probably still have made it. But I'd have thought about it for a second longer.
Where I know what a top-up costs, here's what the same things come to in dollars:
| App | Top-up I saw | One photo | One video |
|---|---|---|---|
| Candy AI | 200 tokens for $9 | about $0.09 to $0.18 | about $0.54 |
| Chai AI | no currency: 3 free images a day, then pay per image | $0.12 | not offered in my notes |
| My Lovely AI | 150 tokens for $9.99 | about $0.27 | not priced in my notes |
| Xeve.ai | 70 credits for $4.99 | about $0.36 | about $1.43 |
| AIAngels.io | 500 credits for $9.95 | about $1.00 | about $3.98 |
A photo costs five to eleven times more on one app than the other, and you'd never see that from "4 tokens" and "50 credits." That's the real problem with credits. 100 Candy tokens are not 100 OurDream coins, and there's no shared exchange rate. By the time I wrote my pricing post I'd already had to learn five currencies: tokens, credits, gems, moments and coins.
The one app that skipped the currency entirely was Chai: three free images a day, then 12 cents a picture. No tokens, no exchange rate. It's the only image price on my roster I never had to convert, and I wish that were less rare.
OurDream's help center tells you exactly what a dreamcoin buys, which I appreciate, but it doesn't list what a top-up costs, so I can't convert that one without the price in front of me.
To be fair to AIAngels, its top-up credits never expire, which I rarely see, and for someone who wants one photo a month it's a reasonable deal. Expensive per photo and reasonable for the right person can both be true.
When credits stop being "just for extras"
The clean story, chat included and extras metered, isn't true everywhere. In my testing, credits went somewhere I didn't expect in two ways.
Some apps meter the chat itself
- Nectar's paid plan came with 5,000 credits, and the better chat models cost more per message, from 3 credits up to 20 for Orchid, the flagship. One good conversation on Orchid took me from 4,750 credits to 3,405. On Nectar the subscription isn't access plus extras. It's a budget.
- CrushOn sells its plans in message credits, so the number you're really choosing between tiers is how much you're allowed to talk.
Some apps spend credits I didn't choose to spend
- Candy's automated photos and voice notes quietly ate my balance down to 23 tokens while I was only chatting.
- Crushi auto-generates photos as you chat, and they cost coins. I went from 400 to 385 before I had deliberately bought anything.
- Xeve.ai sent photos I didn't ask for once a chat got spicy, already unlocked, at five credits each, and I couldn't find a way to turn it off.
- Secrets AI showed me a video preview first, which I liked. I declined it. After a reload my balance sat at 7,400: the preview I said no to had cost me the 600 anyway.
That's where credits go from a pricing model to a problem, and it's one of the eight in the common problems I keep finding in AI girlfriend apps.
So, are credits bad?
No. I don't think they're a scam, and the economics don't support calling them one. An app that lets you chat as much as you like and charges separately for video is being more honest than one that raises the plan for everybody to cover the few who make 50 videos a month.
The fair version looks like HeyGF: unlimited chatting on every paid plan, coins only on images, video and calls, and prices low enough that I knew what I was spending. DreamGF did the same with genuinely unlimited messages and a token price list right in the menu. Nomi and AIAngels both sell credits that don't expire, which takes the use-it-or-lose-it pressure off. Kindroid went further and opened up newer models without charging credits for every message at all.
The unfair version is the one where you only find out what a credit buys after you've paid, or where the meter runs on things you didn't ask for. Credits solve a real cost problem for these apps. They also solve a pricing problem: they let an app charge heavy users more without raising the price on the front page. The cost of that is paid in confusion, and the user pays it.
What I'd check before paying
Look past the monthly price. These four questions tell you what an app will actually cost you:
- What does the plan include? Is the chat unlimited, or does it cost credits per message on the better models?
- How many credits come with it? And do they reset every month, or roll over?
- What does one photo, one video and one voice minute cost? Divide the included balance by the photo price. That number is your real monthly allowance.
- What does a top-up cost in dollars? If the app won't tell you before checkout, that tells you something too.