If you are reading this in the United States, you are standing in the market that invented the category. Replika shipped the first mass-market companion in 2017; Character.AI turned «talk to a character» into a daily habit for tens of millions in 2022; the download charts and most of the consumer spending sit here. It is also the one country where AI roleplay is being reshaped by wrongful-death suits, a federal inquiry and a stack of state statutes, all at once. The biggest market and the hardest rules: that is this map.
Numbers first. Appfigures counted 337 active, revenue-generating companion apps on the two mobile stores by July 2025, 128 of them launched in that half-year alone, with 220 million lifetime downloads. Its other finding is the one that matters: the top ten percent of those apps take 89 percent of the revenue. A few winners, a long tail of clones, and a public that keeps typing «alternative» into the search box.
Who is actually left standing
Character.AI is still the reference point — «character ai alternative» is the phrase every other product is measured against, and we wrote up what people check before they leave it. What changed this year is its shape: mid-chat ads for free users from late 2025, then in March 2026 metering of swipes, go-ons and memos on the free tier, with an in-app currency to buy past the caps. And since late November 2025 it offers no open-ended chat to anyone under 18, with age checks to enforce it.
Replika is the elder: the original companion, an older and more relationship-minded audience. Janitor AI and Chub are the web front ends — huge community card libraries, bring-your-own-key or proxy; our Janitor piece shows the 1,800 English searches around that brand are about keys, proxies and outages, not filters. Janitor added ID-plus-selfie age checks for UK, Australian and Brazilian visitors in April 2026; the US is not on that list yet.
Talkie and PolyBuzz are the mobile-native, anime-leaning apps that won the download charts on polish and push notifications; on the phone, they simply feel better. Then the giants: Alphabet, Meta and Instagram, Snap, OpenAI and xAI were all served FTC orders in September 2025 because each now ships something that behaves as a companion. xAI's Grok companions, with an affection meter, are the loudest example.
What the law now requires, and what a good actor does anyway
The litigation came first. Megan Garcia sued Character.AI and Google in October 2024 after her fourteen-year-old son died. Families in Colorado, Texas and New York followed. In January 2026 the companies moved to settle — terms undisclosed, no admission of fault. On 11 September 2025 the Federal Trade Commission ordered seven companies to explain how they monetise engagement, test for harm, restrict minors and handle what people say in conversation.
Then the states wrote it down. California's SB 243 has been in force since 1 January 2026. An operator of a companion chatbot must give a clear notice that the user is talking to an AI wherever a reasonable person might think otherwise, and state that the product may not be suitable for minors. It must have a protocol for expressions of suicidal ideation or self-harm — sending the person to a crisis line — and publish that protocol on its website; from 2027 it reports referral counts to the state annually. Where the operator knows a user is a minor: a break reminder every three hours, and reasonable steps to keep sexual content out of the chat. An injured person can sue directly. New York's companion-model law was in force from November 2025, and one legal tracker counted a dozen states with companion-chatbot statutes by mid-2026 — every one demands a crisis protocol, most a non-human disclosure. On 30 April 2026 the Senate Judiciary Committee unanimously advanced the GUARD Act, which would require age verification for every chatbot user and bar minors from AI companions outright; it awaits a floor vote.
Translate that out of statute and it is a short list. Say what you are. Never let a character claim to be a person when asked. Keep anything sexual away from anyone who has not confirmed they are an adult. Have a plan for the darkest message a user can send, and publish it. Publish what you do with the conversation. The good actors were already there; the law is now the floor for everyone else.
Where Talaforge stands on that list, plainly. Our data-processing policy is one public document at one URL — what we receive from Telegram, what leaves for the model providers, what is kept and how to delete it. Public surfaces are all-ages; adult roleplay sits behind an 18+ confirmation inside the bot, and that confirmation is a self-declaration, not an identity check. A character here is a written fiction, not a person, and we do not design her to insist she is one. SB 243 is where the category is heading, and we would rather be measured against it than around it.
Why so many products live outside the app stores
Every subscription sold inside an iPhone or Android app hands the store a share. That share is why Character.AI reached for ads and metering, and why Janitor and Chub are websites. The rules moved in 2025: the Epic v. Apple ruling in April forced Apple to allow links out to external payment in US apps, and in December the Ninth Circuit said Apple may charge a «reasonable commission» on those links, with the number still to be set by the lower court.
Telegram is the third path, and it is worth being exact about it in this country. Telegram is a second-tier messenger in the US — a Statista survey put regular use at about nine percent of respondents, near the bottom of the countries polled. So the pitch here is not «everyone is on Telegram». It is narrower and truer: if you already use it, or you want a product in neither store that needs no card, a bot in Telegram gives you a character who lives in your chat list like a contact, pays in Telegram Stars, and needs nothing installed. «Ai roleplay telegram bot free» is a phrase Google autocompletes for US users today; someone is already asking.
What US search actually asks for
We pulled US autocomplete for the category this week. Around «character ai alternative» the modifiers are reddit, for roleplay, free, no sign up, with personas, with voice, with group chat. Around «ai roleplay apps» they are free, «with good memory», and «like c ai». «Ai chat no sign up» is a neighbourhood of its own. And the cluster nobody likes to look at: «is character ai safe for 13 year olds», «for kids», «for teens» — the parents' question, which is the one the legislation above answers. The market is asking for exactly what the law is starting to require.
Where the US natives beat us, and where they do not
Honestly first. Character.AI has the brand and the scale; Talkie and PolyBuzz have the mobile polish; Janitor and Chub have libraries of community characters we cannot match; and every one of them reaches a US user without a messenger most of their friends do not use. If any of those is your deciding factor, they win.
What we do that they do not: the character remembers you, and you can open that memory and edit it; the same face in every photo she sends; a choice of models switchable mid-chat, with no key and no proxy; 36 languages; and no store between you and the product — free to start, Telegram Stars if you want more, nothing else to sign up for. The memory is what people notice; the locked face is what they screenshot.
The ten-minute test
Open Telegram, find @talaforge_bot, describe a character in one sentence. Tell her something a stranger would not know about you. Ask her, mid-scene, what she is. Ask for a photo, then another, and check it is the same person. Close the chat and come back tomorrow: does she remember what you told her, and can you open that memory and change it? Ten minutes, no card, no key — and if you already know you want a native app with a marketplace, you have your answer before the timer starts.