How I review these apps

This page explains what an article on Companion Index is built on: where the information comes from, how an app is scored, and how affiliate links are kept away from the scores.

Scope

I cover apps that sell some form of ongoing, simulated relationship to adult users: AI girlfriend chatbots, AI companions, roleplay platforms where the main surface is conversational. I exclude general-purpose assistants and broad roleplay platforms where the companion features are incidental.

What I look at

For every app, the same sources, in the same order:

The pricing page and plans: what each tier costs by month, quarter and year, what is included, and what is sold separately as tokens or credits.
Billing and cancellation: how the charge is described, how renewal works, how to cancel, and what the terms say about refunds.
Terms of service and privacy policy: who runs the app, where the company is registered, what it keeps, and what content it forbids.
The help center: what the company itself documents about features, limits and account management.
Features: chat, memory, character creation, image, video and voice, as the app presents and documents them.
What users report: recurring praise and complaints on public forums, app review sites and press coverage, weighed against each other rather than quoted one by one.

Prices and plans in this category change often, so articles carry the date they were written or updated. A fact that comes from a company page is stated as a sourced fact.

Scoring: 8 axes, on /10

Every scored review on this site uses the same eight axes:

Conversational quality: does it produce coherent, sustained conversation that's substantively different from a generic chatbot?
Personalisation: do the customization controls produce observable, persistent differences in behaviour?
Pricing transparency: are prices, charges, and conditions visible without dark patterns? Does cancellation work cleanly?
Moderation and safety: is there real age gating, are content limits stated clearly, and are minors blocked?
UX and design: is the interface usable, accessible, free of manipulative friction?
Technical stability: does it work reliably, without recurring failures?
Value for money: at the listed price, is it worth what it costs against category peers?
Ethical practices: what does the app's behaviour signal about how it treats its users?

Each axis gets a whole number out of ten, and the global score is the plain average of the eight, rounded to one decimal. The axes are not weighted differently between apps. A product that's excellent at conversation and dismal at cancellation gets a fair score, not a flattering one.

A score is not edited after publication except to correct a factual error.

How every article is checked

Each figure in an article, from a price to a token count or a refund window, is checked against the app's own pricing page, terms or help center before publication. Scores come from the axes described above.

Every article published under the Companion Index byline is read in full and corrected before it goes live, and again whenever an app changes its prices or its plans.

Affiliate links and editorial independence

I use affiliate links. When you subscribe to an app through a link I post, I may receive a commission. The commission has no role in the score.

To be concrete:

The scoring axes and their weight are fixed before a review starts. I cannot raise a score because the app pays me: the axes have no "commercial fit" component.
Both apps scored on this site so far have an affiliate program. That is disclosed, and it did not set their scores.
The affiliate relationship is disclosed at the top of every review with tracked links, and again in the footer.

I don't accept paid placements. I don't run sponsored reviews. I don't accept payment to remove unfavourable coverage. If any of these offers come in, the answer is no, and I'll say so in the next review.

Apps without an affiliate program

If I cover an app with no affiliate program available to me, the article is framed as an overview. When it points you to an alternative, it does so in a clearly labelled section.

Corrections

If you think I got something wrong, write to corrections@thecompanionindex.com. Substantiated corrections are made within 72 hours and the article's update date changes with them. I don't silently update reviews.

A correction is for a factual error, not a disagreement about a score. I'm open to the disagreement, and sometimes I publish a response to it, but the score itself isn't negotiable on request.