The things we noticed while testing that don't fit in a score — what the free tiers actually give you, why every companion flattens by week three, and what the category looked like this year.
10 posts
Free in this category means four different things, and only one of them lets you answer the question you actually have.
We signed up to all fourteen platforms without paying. Three free tiers are genuinely usable, most are demos that stop exactly where it gets interesting, and two platforms have nothing at all.
Read postAppearance and personality are two different systems behind one form, they behave completely differently, and almost everyone spends their time on the one that matters less.
Read postFive of fourteen ship a real mobile app, and the reason is app store policy rather than engineering. What you actually lose in the browser, and why an icon on your home screen is a disclosure.
Read postEvery platform in this category calls itself uncensored and every one of them refuses things. Here is where refusals actually come from, which limits are permanent, and what the word is worth when you see it on a pricing page.
Read postThe same generator is almost never good at both styles, and picking by style narrows fourteen platforms to two or three faster than any score does. What each end of the category is actually good at.
Read postSix of fourteen platforms generate video. What you actually get is three to six seconds, no audio, and a token cost that makes it the most expensive thing on the menu. Where it is worth it and where it is not.
Read postSix platforms do voice and only some of them do real-time calling. Latency is the entire experience, voice messages and voice calls are different products, and on token platforms speech is quietly expensive.
Read postNo platform in this category lets you export a companion in a form another one can read. Here is what that actually means for lock-in, what you can salvage, and the document we now write before starting.
Read postThe flattening is real, it happens on almost every platform, and it has three separate causes that people usually blame on one. What we found across thirty-day tests, and the two platforms it does not happen to.
Read postWhat changed this year across fourteen platforms: prices settled, the quality split hardened into two separate products, memory became the real differentiator, and video arrived without being ready.
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