PolyBuzz

One question: are you ready for ads inside the chat?

What people come to PolyBuzz to do and whether they get it.

Who it is for. For those who want a companion to suit the mood: act out a scene with an anime hero, finish a story with a “Dominant CEO,” or talk to a character they created themselves. Messages are unlimited, and there is no selfie age verification like the competitor’s.

Who else. For those leaving Character.AI. You can transfer your own character from there by card, and the vendor explains how.

Who it is not for. Not for those annoyed by ads: in the free version, they appear right in the chat, “watch an ad to continue.”

A fit: section 3 takes you from the site to your first chat. Comparing it with Character.AI? Then see the choice 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 candid in its FAQ: memory is “technically limited,” so the character eventually forgets. Long-term memory comes with any subscription, while “permanent” memory is exclusive to Ultimate. Users praise and criticize the 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.

What the vendor itself shows. In the App Store: a chat with an image and call button, a catalog with personality chips, a permanent-memory screen, and a character builder. We did not test PolyBuzz for this task; the mechanics come from the vendor’s FAQ and guides, pricing tables, and other users’ reviews.

You can start even without an account: the feed is open to a guest, while search, your own character and the subscription wait for you to log in.

Step 1. Open polybuzz.ai or install the app: for iPhone it is in the App Store, for Android in Google Play.

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 vendor rules from Jun 1, 2026, the service is for adults only worldwide; App Store and Google Play list the same 18+. Document or selfie verification is enabled only in the UK; in other countries, the threshold is based on the birth date you enter yourself. The vendor’s FAQ line about “child mode” contradicts its own rules, while the agreement twice refers to uploads by “you or your child.”

«Hack» and «premium free». There is nothing to crack: subscription status and the coin balance live on the server, and the files in search results lag the live version 2.2.72 by dozens of releases. Such builds have nothing to do with the vendor.

Steps verified Sep 6, 2026 against the live site, the vendor's FAQ and guides, and the store listings

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

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 Aug 27, 2025 edition it moved into the main mobile list from the “on the cusp” list, while the Mar 9, 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 Sep 6, 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 4.45 from 470 thousand ratings in the US, while Google Play lists 4.09 from 1.2 million reviews and more than 50 million installs (Sep 6, 2026). There is no ratings collapse like its competitor’s on Android.

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 Sep 6, 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. The struck-through "$55.2" stands all year round and is counted by multiplying the weekly price, and the "today only" timer on the coins page never runs out. The App Store price is steadier: $9.90 is the same in every country.

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.

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 stands behind the service, what happens to the conversations, and how the "no filters" advertising ended.

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 Jun 1, 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 Aug 13, 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 Oct 18, 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 May 7, 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 Sep 6, 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.

The difference is not the characters, since users create them on both platforms, but the price of freedom: PolyBuzz has no age verification, while Character.AI checks age by selfie and keeps a stricter filter.

If you want another option for roleplay stories, check out Linky AI characters: the service lets you set your own character's look and personality.

For everyday conversation and planning without switching roles, check out the Tolan companion.

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 free versions have it: the competitor admitted it added ad placements, while here they appear between messages. A subscription removes them 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.

Who else is nearby. The Talkie character catalog adds appearance and voice settings to character creation.

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

For a story with changing backgrounds and character expressions, you can compare Zeta visual novels. Its card separates free chat, Pieces and the pass subscription.

For talking about your own life, there is the Ash companion. It remembers context and puts together weekly observations, but it does not replace a therapist.

Over three years the store listing went through three names, and its only punishment came for advertising «no filters».