What is PolyBuzz used for? A plain-English answer

Here is how I'd sum up the main uses, in order of how central they are:

• Text roleplay and story chat with community characters, free on the Standard model with ads
• Building your own character, with its voice, tags, story and appearance
• Bringing characters over from Character.AI, Pygmalion and other services
• Generating static images from text prompts, paid with coins after one free image
• Listening to replies read aloud, with two free voice plays before it becomes a plan or coin extra

The first two carry the app. Everything else is a side dish you pay for sooner or later.

What I find useful for a lot of readers is how open the setup is. The homepage talks about AI girlfriends and AI boyfriends in the same breath, and the character builder lets you decide who your character is instead of handing you one default. If you want a companion who isn't the usual template, that freedom matters more than any premium model.

A lot of people land here after a filter elsewhere annoyed them, so a quick word on that. PolyBuzz's own content line is soft: romantic and suggestive chat fits, fully explicit text does not. If you're comparing it with the bigger name, that side is covered in my piece on whether Character AI will allow NSFW chat.

Right below, the table "The apps side by side" puts PolyBuzz next to five other apps on content policy, free start and price. Use it to check whether its main use matches yours.

You get millions of characters and the option to shape one into whoever you want to talk to every evening.

That makes PolyBuzz feel closer to a story app than a dating simulator. If you like switching between a fantasy adventure, a slow-burn romance and a comfort chat on the same night, it suits you. If you want one person who knows you well, keep reading, because memory is where it gets thinner.

The official pages don't describe a memory feature for the free plan at all. Premium lists stronger memory chat models, and Ultimate adds a model called Permanent Memory. Other reviewers report that details can slip in long scenes, with one story set at a train station later drifting into a hotel with no transition.

If that's right, I'd treat free PolyBuzz as great for fresh scenes and less great for a months-long relationship.

• Text chat on the Standard model, with ads and no published daily cap
• Free character creation on the mobile app or the web
• Two free voice plays
• One image generation to start

What it doesn't include is an ad-free screen, stronger memory or unlimited voice listening. Other reviewers report the free version shows too many pop-up ads, and I'd believe it, since ads are the price of the free text chat. That's a fair trade to me, as long as you know it going in.

For a plan-by-plan look at chat quality and extras, my PolyBuzz review with every tier goes deeper. My short advice here: use the free plan until the ads or the memory really bother you, then decide.

• Group chats with several characters at once: none of its own pages mention it, and the one character named "Group-Chat Maker" is a normal one-on-one bot
• Video: the "Live Photos" feature makes static images from text prompts, not clips
• Real-time voice calls: voice means listening to replies, not a live phone-style call
• Fully explicit text: the content policy is soft on every plan
• Building your own tools on top of it: no API is mentioned anywhere official

None of that is a scandal. It's just a focused app. But I don't love that the "Live Photos" name sounds like moving pictures when the coins page itself describes turning text prompts into visuals. If you buy coins expecting video, that name will disappoint you, so read it as "images".

The voice gap matters more to me than the rest. Plenty of people want to hear a companion, not only read one. On PolyBuzz, the free plan gives two voice plays, and after that you need a membership for unlimited listening or coins to extend voice chat. Even then it's playback, not a conversation you have out loud.

If any item on that list is the reason you came, look elsewhere first rather than paying to find out. OurDream AI, in the box below, lists group chat, voice calls, images and video, with adult content allowed under its policy. The catch is money: the free plan there lists 55 Dreamcoins to start at 1 Dreamcoin per message, while its help centre says it does not currently offer free dreamcoins, so that number may change. Standard costs $19.99 a month.

Nomi AI is the other one I'd look at if voice and group chats matter. Its free plan never ends and allows 50 messages a day, and group chats and voice calls sit on its paid plan from $15.99 a month.

For a full ranking of apps that cover the same ground as PolyBuzz plus the bits it skips, see my list of apps like PolyBuzz worth trying.

The packs on the coins page are priced in euros. 1,000 coins cost €2.59, 3,000 cost €5.99, 8,000 cost €9.99 and 20,000 cost €20.99. The bigger packs are cheaper per coin, which is normal.

What's missing is the other half of the math: the official pages don't say how many coins an image, a regenerated reply or a voice extension costs. Without that, I can't tell you what €9.99 actually buys.

That's the thing that bothers me here. I like knowing what a purchase gets me before I pay, and a pack price without a per-action cost is a guess. I'd buy the smallest pack first, use it only on the extra that matters to you, and watch how long it lasts before topping up.

There's also a second currency on the Apple in-app list, 1000 Opals for $5.90. No official page explains what Opals do, so I'd leave them alone until PolyBuzz says.

If memory is the point, Premium at $19.90 a month is the first tier that lists stronger memory models.

One plan I'd skip: the weekly Standard plan at $4.99. It sounds small, but it works out to $21.62 a month, more than double the monthly Standard price. The yearly web plans, $99 for Standard and $199 for Premium, only pay off if you already know you'll stay.

Before buying either, see my live deals list, though it has no PolyBuzz code now; the web membership page shows first-week discounts at times.

The character collector. If you like trying a new persona every night, a library of that size is the whole appeal. Discovery is the fun part, and it's free.

The builder. Character creation costs nothing, and you control voice, tags, story and appearance. If you want a boyfriend, a girlfriend or someone who doesn't fit either label, you can build that without paying first. That's the part I'd highlight for anyone who's tired of apps that assume one kind of reader.

The switcher. If you have characters on Character.AI or Pygmalion, the import option means you don't start from zero.

The non-English speaker. The interface comes in 28 languages, from Arabic and Catalan to Vietnamese. That's rare in this category and worth a mention.

And if you're sensitive to ads, know that the free plan runs on them. That's the deal that keeps text chat free, and it may push you toward Standard at $9.90 a month sooner than you'd like.

It's a similar story if you want a companion you can phone. Voice here means listening to replies, and the free plan stops after two plays. For a real voice conversation, you need a different app.

The refund rule is the other reason I'd go slowly. Completed purchases aren't refunded without due reason, and a payment isn't refunded even if you cancel the subscription later. So I'd never buy a year of anything here as a test.

For quick answers on billing, deleting chats and similar questions across apps, my help section with short guides is the fastest place to look. Find your one question, then get back to chatting.

It doesn't say in plain words whether chat text itself trains the model. That's unclear, and I'd rather tell you it's unclear than guess.

What you can do is delete your account under Settings > Delete Account. Backups can still hold copies until their next update, so deletion isn't instant everywhere. My advice: keep real names, addresses and anything you'd hate to see leaked out of your chats, on this app and any other.

A billing detail for the discreet: the records have no statement name for PolyBuzz. It accepts card, Apple Pay and Google Pay, according to the records. The App Store seller is listed as CLOUD WHALE INTERACTIVE TECHNOLOGY LLC, while the legal documents point to Singularity Mutual Entertainment Culture Media Limited, registered in Hong Kong.

I wouldn't use it as a memory-heavy long-term companion on the free plan, a video app, a voice-call app or an adult chat app. It isn't built for any of those, and paying won't turn it into one. If that's what you need, the table and boxes on this page point to apps that fit.

Want to know how the facts on this page were gathered and dated? My note on how I check the apps explains the sources I rely on. Short version for PolyBuzz: start free, stay if you love the characters, and keep your wallet closed until then.