Users have poured $427.3 million into romantic and NSFW AI companion apps on the App Store and Google Play since ChatGPT arrived in late 2022, according to figures analytics firm Appfigures shared with Decrypt. That is across 214 apps and roughly 165.3 million downloads. And it is almost certainly an undercount.
The undercount matters here. Appfigures only tracks mobile app stores, which means the whole web-based side of this market, places like Joi AI, Candy AI, and SpicyChat AI, contributes nothing to that $427 million figure. Those platforms run in the browser, outside Apple and Google's reach, and some of them are not small. So treat the number as a floor, not a ceiling.
The money is in the mobile numbers
The $427 million is gross consumer spending, before Apple and Google take their cut. Randy Nelson, who heads insights and media relations at Appfigures, told Decrypt the rankings reflect spending before platform fees, which usually run around 30%. Knock that off and developers are keeping closer to $300 million. Still a lot for a category most people pretend does not exist.
First half of 2026 alone: $162.8 million on the romantic and adult apps. Zeta led on revenue with about $33 million, followed by Tipsy Chat at $15.2 million, ChatBox at $13 million, Crushie AI at $8.8 million, and Emochi at $7.5 million.
Downloads and dollars don't line up
Here is the part worth sitting with. The most-downloaded app is not the top earner. Emochi pulled roughly 7.9 million installs in the first half of 2026, more than double Zeta's 3 million, yet Zeta made over four times the money. Amora, BIMOBIMO, and MiraiMind rounded out the download leaders. Downloads are cheap. Getting someone to pay for a virtual girlfriend is the actual business.
And people do pay, more readily than they pay for the tamer stuff. General companion apps, the PG-rated ones, got downloaded nearly twice as often but brought in $164.8 million over the same six months, basically neck and neck with the adult category despite the download gap. Whatever else is going on, the adult-content crowd converts.
Who's actually doing this
A May 2026 Wheatley Institute study, run with Brigham Young University and the Institute for Family Studies, surveyed 2,431 partnered U.S. adults aged 18 to 30 and found that 1 in 7, about 15%, regularly chat with an AI that simulates a romantic partner. Another 20% to 30% said they had at least experimented.
"Because interactions with AI companions are by their nature counterfeit, we caution using terms like 'partner' or 'relationship' to describe interactions with AI algorithms." That is lead author Brian Willoughby, and the framing tells you where the researchers stand before you read a single chart.
The stat that will get quoted everywhere: 69% of these users would rather their real partner not learn the full extent of it. The study also links regular use to lower relationship stability and worse communication, though correlation-and-causation caveats apply, and the authors mostly do not pretend otherwise.
Appfigures updates its category rankings through the year, so the H2 2026 numbers will show whether Zeta holds its lead or Emochi finally converts those downloads into cash.
