PolyBuzz

There are two questions: are you ready for ads inside the chat, and do you need a character with a Russian description rather than machine translation.

What people come to PolyBuzz to do and whether they get it: the six most common Yandex requests over a month.

Search volume - Wordstat, Russia region, 06.09.2026

Who it is for. For those who want a companion for the mood: play out a scene with an anime hero, finish a story with a «dominant CEO», or talk to a character they created themselves. Messages are not counted, the site opens directly from Russia, the interface switches to Russian, and there is no selfie age check like its neighbor has.

Who else. For those leaving Character.AI. You can transfer your character from there with a card, the vendor explains how, and in the Russian Google Play listing PolyBuzz has 3.96 versus its neighbor's 2.3, with reviewers explicitly saying that is why they came.

Who it is not for. For those annoyed by ads: free users get them right in the chat, «watch an ad to continue», and half of recent Russian reviews are only about that. And for those expecting Russian characters: the catalog is global, character descriptions go through a translator, and you need to ask characters to reply in Russian.

Good fit: section 3 takes you from the site to your first chat. Comparing it with Character.AI? Then see the fork in section 7.

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Three floors: chat with a character, your own character with imports from others, and everything the vendor added around chat, from pictures to webtoons.

Chat with a character. Pick a hero from the feed, where the vendor claims 20 million characters, and chat as in a messenger. The character keeps the personality from its description, sends pictures in chat, and you can regenerate a reply or get a «hint»; both buttons spend coins. You can listen to a character's voice for free with a limit, unlimited only with a subscription.

Your own character. Name, gender, description, greeting, and who can talk to them: public characters appear in the feed and search, private ones are visible only to you. A voice is built from the library, with up to five timbres in a mix. The main move against its neighbor is here too: the site accepts character cards as JSON or PNG files, and the vendor's guide names Character.AI, Pygmalion, TavernAI, and six more platforms as donors.

Memory. The vendor is honest in its FAQ: memory is «technically limited», and the character forgets over time. Long memory comes with any subscription, «permanent» only with Ultimate, and its screen appears in the Russian listing: events, agreements, and a «our memories for 999 days» banner. Users praise and criticize memory in roughly equal measure.

Pictures and webtoons. A separate generator with 15 templates from stickers to a «character card», a gallery and library of other users' prompts, paid «live photos» for coins. On the same homepage, the vendor sells a second product: short dramas and webtoons featuring catalog heroes; the subscription calls this «full access to webtoon shots». Plus themed quests such as «LIAR GAME» with a «PLAY» button.

In Russian. The interface switches to Russian in settings, the site has an address polybuzz.ai/ru, and the Russian App Store listing carries its own screenshots with a Russian interface. The catalog is global: the same characters in the same order, descriptions are machine-translated, and tags include «Ｗerewolf».

Replies. The vendor advises asking the character directly in chat to reply in Russian; it does not promise reply languages. In 57 recent reviews across three listings, users did not complain about Russian once.

What the vendor itself shows. In the App Store listing: a chat with a picture and call button, a catalog with personality chips, the permanent memory screen, and the character builder, all in Russian. We did not run PolyBuzz for this task ourselves; the mechanics come from the vendor's FAQ and guides, pricing tables, and other users' reviews.

You can start from Russia without workarounds and even without an account: the feed is open to guests, but search, your own character, and subscriptions require sign-in.

Step 1. Open polybuzz.ai or install the app: it is available for iPhone in the Russian App Store listing, for Android in Google Play, while RuStore has a reupload from aggregator GoodApp, not the vendor, and it is one version behind. The site opens directly from a Russian IP address; a 06.09.2026 test from a Moscow node returned the same responses as Germany and the US.

Step 2. Browse the feed as a guest, then sign in for chat via Google, Apple, Facebook* or email. Under the service rules, it asks for your date of birth on first visit even as a guest, and guests cannot change it later. There is no desktop client; the website works on a computer, while «download for PC» searches lead to Android emulators.

Step 3. Choose a character from the feed or build your own with the «Create» button: name, gender, description, and greeting. Transfer a Character.AI character with a JSON file or PNG card; this works only on the website. Change the interface language in settings on the «Me» page.

Age. Under the vendor's rules from 01.06.2026, the service is adults-only worldwide; the App Store, Google Play in the Russian listing, and RuStore all set the same 18+. Document or selfie verification is enabled only in the UK; elsewhere, the threshold relies on the date of birth you enter yourself. The «child mode» line in the vendor FAQ contradicts its own rules, while the agreement itself twice mentions uploads by «you or your child».

«Hack» and «premium free». «Hack» and «premium mod» queries total 12 thousand a month (Wordstat, 06.09.2026), but there is nothing to crack: subscription status and coin balance live on the server, while files in search results lag dozens of releases behind the live version 2.2.72. Such builds have nothing to do with the vendor.

Not working? In a RuStore review on 04.09.2026, the app «doesn't even open», while on 24.08.2026 it «only works with a VPN, and not always»; we did not test mobile networks, but the site opened from Moscow datacenter nodes. The service code has a regional denial mechanism, and the «service unavailable in your region» screen is translated into Russian too, but it was not enabled on 06.09.2026.

Steps checked on 06.09.2026 against the live site, vendor FAQ and guides, store listings, and an access test from Russian nodes

There are no arenas or benchmarks for companions, so the measurements here cover demand, placement in global lists, and store ratings.

Demand in Russia. «Polybuzz» gets 126 thousand searches a month, «polybaz» another 35 thousand, and «poly buzz» 13 thousand (Wordstat, 06.09.2026). This is the only companion searched in Russia almost as much as Character.AI, if you add up all forms of the name, demand for all other neighbors is two orders of magnitude lower. The most common tails are not about capabilities but actions: download, hack, in Russian, no ads. There is almost no Russian analysis of the service online; the first search-results page is dominated by intermediaries and subscription sellers.

Worldwide ranking. In a16z's list of one hundred consumer AI apps, PolyBuzz is in both the web top 50 and mobile top 50: in the 27.08.2025 edition it moved into the main mobile list from the “on the cusp” list, while the 09.03.2026 edition, using January data, keeps it in both. Exact ranks are shown as an image. In the storefront screenshot, the vendor calls itself “#1 AI character chatbot,” while the live US App Store storefront on 06.09.2026 shows it ranked #48 in the “Entertainment” chart. Similarweb ranks polybuzz.ai #417 worldwide, with 17 minutes and 17 pages per visit, with more than half of traffic from the US (July 2026).

Stores. App Store gives it 4,45 from 470 thousand ratings in the US and 4,42 from 5,8 thousand on the Russian storefront; Google Play, with 1,2 million reviews and more than 50 million installs, shows 4,09 in English and 3,96 in Russian (06.09.2026). Unlike its Android neighbor, there is no rating collapse here, and recent Russian reviews fault the ads rather than the service as a whole.

The vendor does not disclose audience, revenue, or investor funds, and has no company profile in any startup database. This tool’s position among its peers in our catalog is shown beneath the card title, while the full tool ranking is on the main page.

Messages are free and unmetered; users pay for no ads and higher-tier models. There are three subscriptions, and the storefront shows different prices to different people.

Free. All characters, custom characters, images, and voice come with limits. The limits are not in a counter but in friction: ads directly in chat, a queue under load, a basic model, and short memory. The vendor publishes numerical limits nowhere, and its chat rules are marked experimental, so they may differ between users.

Ads. Where the vendor talks about being free, it does not warn about ads, yet it sells “ad-free” in the subscription description, and Google Play labels the app “Contains ads.” App Store RU reviews from late August 2026 describe the pattern: a video every few minutes or every ten messages, one to one-and-a-half minutes long, plus a forced “break” after several minutes of chatting.

Three tiers. Basic $9,90, Premium $19,90, and Ultimate $29,90 per month; the yearly price everywhere equals ten monthly payments, while weekly plans from $4,99 are sold in the apps. All three remove ads and the queue, provide long memory and the Standard model. Premium adds the Passion and Tale models; Ultimate adds five more, including persistent memory. In the Apple receipt, the Basic tier is called Poly Standard, but it is the same thing.

Two price lists. The website storefront shows different things to different people. The site archive from US addresses showed $13,99, $27,99, and $40,99 for the same tiers for six straight months, while our 34 requests on 06.09.2026 returned three sets: three quarters got Basic for $9,90, one quarter had no Basic tier at all, and entry started at $14,90 per week or $15,90 per month. Page data marks this with an experiment field.

Struck-through. Struck-through “$55,2” prices stay up year-round and are calculated by multiplying the weekly price, while the “today only” timer on the coins page never expires. App Store pricing is more stable: $9,90 or 899 ₽ are the same in all countries.

Coins and opals. Internal currency is sold by the unit: turns with higher-tier models, response regeneration, reply prompts, and “live photos.” Packs range from 1000 coins for $2,49 to 20 000 for $19,90. Opals, the second currency, are known at one price: 1000 for $5,90 in the App Store. The vendor credits character creators with a third currency, Poins, for other people’s spending on their characters.

Paying from Russia. The Russian App Store storefront shows 899, 1 790, and 2 490 ₽ per month, but there is no way to pay: stores do not accept Russian cards, and the RuStore build takes payments through Google, while three reviews from two weeks in August 2026 report payments that do not go through. The website has a separate ruble checkout page at a hard-coded exchange rate, but we did not see a live payment from it. Individual payments still happen: on 05.08.2026, an App Store RU user wrote “I bought the maximum subscription,” but the method is unknown.

Middleman. There is only one working route: a middleman with a markup from 350 ₽ per month of Basic. How to subscribe, in the guide to paying for AI services from Russia.

Refund. Under the service rules, paid purchases are not refunded even after a subscription is canceled, and a separate clause denies refunds for purchases made by a child. Beneath the plan table, however, there is a “Refund&Unsubscribe” button; it is an application form, not a guarantee. Canceling a store subscription goes through App Store or Google Play, and access remains until the end of the paid period.

Four questions: who is behind the service, what happens to chats, how the “unfiltered” advertising ended, and whether it will work from Russia tomorrow.

Who is the vendor. The apps are published in stores by Cloud Whale Interactive Technology, a Delaware company at a registered-agent address, while the website is operated under an agreement dated 01.06.2026 by a Hong Kong company. The vendor does not explain how they are connected; founders’ and executives’ names are not public, nor are investors or revenue. Disputes under the agreement go to New York arbitration with a class-action waiver.

Chats. In the FAQ, the vendor promises that neither character creators nor the company itself have access to chat text. The privacy policy says nothing either way about training on chats, but does allow uploaded photos and precise geolocation to be "used to train the algorithm." What you upload grants the company a perpetual, irrevocable, free license with downstream transfer rights, while you receive a limited, revocable right to use the result. If the vendor wins money over your character, half goes to it under the contract.

Disclosure index. VerifyWise's independent disclosure index, dated 13.08.2026, gave the policy a D for what it does not say: zero points for disclosing training and retention periods. This rates the text, not the practice.

Filter. The vendor has three voices, all official. Marketing calls chats "unlimited," while a press release dated 18.10.2024 explicitly said chat content is not filtered. The rules prohibit publishing pornography and promise AI and human moderation of the feed.

Questionnaire and storefront. The App Store questionnaire acknowledges "frequent intense sexual content" in the app. There is no contradiction: the storefront is moderated, while private chat is for adults.

Regulator. On 07.05.2025, the UK advertising regulator ASA upheld a complaint over a PolyBuzz ad for an "unfiltered Character.AI alternative" with explicit lines, shown inside a game rated 12+, and banned it. The vendor did not respond to the regulator's inquiry, and the regulator counted that silence as a third violation. In December 2025, the vendor renamed the app in the store, its listing address changed, and a rumor spread online that it had been removed, but there is no confirmation of removal.

What is missing. No lawsuits, US Federal Trade Commission cases, attorney general investigations, leaks, or rightsholder claims against PolyBuzz were found as of 06.09.2026, although Genshin Impact and Naruto characters are openly available in the catalog. The entire wave of pressure that hit Character.AI passed it by.

From Russia. The domain is not in the registry of banned sites; no Roskomnadzor claims or court cases were found, and the rules contain no country restrictions. The service code has a regional denial mechanism, and the account-registration country is sent to the server with every request, so "works today" does not mean "forever." The vendor does not say where data is physically stored.

The split is not in the characters, since users make them on both platforms, but in the price of freedom: PolyBuzz allows access without age verification and in Russian, while Character.AI verifies age by selfie and keeps a stricter filter.

Different access. Since November 2025, Character.AI has closed open chat to everyone under 18 and verifies every user's age by selfie; without an account, it does not even show the catalog. PolyBuzz opens the feed to guests, asks for a date of birth, and verifies documents only in the UK.

One ad. Both have it for free users: the rival admitted it added ad slots, while here it sits between messages and accounts for half of recent Russian reviews. A subscription removes it for about the same price, $9,90 versus $9,99 per month, but PolyBuzz also has two more tiers up to $29,90 and individual coins.

Ratings in Russia. In Russian storefronts, the rival sits near the bottom, at 2,3 in Google Play and 2,7 in RuStore, while PolyBuzz holds 3,96 and 4,2 with three hundred ratings in RuStore. People explain the switch plainly; an App Store RU review dated 04.09.2026 says: "if Character could not do it, you did." PolyBuzz accepts your character from there as a file; the vendor itself describes the transfer.

Who else is nearby. Alice AI offers around thirty characters from Yandex and a builder for your own in Russian with payment in rubles, but Talkie builds a similar catalog, though it is searched for dozens of times less often in Russia.

Further down the list. Chai is in the same genre with even lower demand, while Replika grows one steady friend instead of a catalog.

Over three years, the store listing has had three names, from a language app to the second most sought-after companion in Russia, and its only penalty was for a "no filters" ad.