Disclosure: I earn a commission if you sign up for Candy AI, Ourdream AI, JOI AI, Lovescape or Kupid AI through links on this page; any other app mentioned here doesn't pay me. Adults (18+) only. Everything below comes from Candy's own subscriptions page, help centre and terms of service, read on 5 October 2026, plus a handful of public reports that are labelled as third-party where they appear. I haven't run a long personal test of the paid plan, so none of this is first-hand experience.
Short version: you can open a Candy AI account for $0, but the free account is a sample, not a plan you can live on. Candy's help centre spells out the allowance as five chat messages in total, one custom character and one generated image. After that, chatting needs Premium, and every picture, voice call or video clip draws on a separate token balance.
So "is Candy AI free?" gets a two-part answer: free to look at, paid to use. Below: what the free account covers, whether a trial exists, what tokens buy, which billing period is cheapest, and how to avoid renewal and refund trouble.
What the free account lets you do (and where it stops)
Start with the limits, since they arrive fast.
- Five messages, shared across every character. Not five per companion and not five per day. The help article "What can I do as a free user?" (updated 30 September 2026) says up to 5 messages in chat across all characters, and section 9 of the terms repeats that a free user "may generally send a maximum of 5 messages".
- One image. Either from the image generator or from inside a chat, not both.
- One custom character. Designing one is allowed, but five messages won't show you much of how it writes.
- No Live Action. Candy's help page for Live Action marks it as unavailable to guests and free users; it is Premium-only and costs tokens even then.
- No spendable tokens. Ex-subscribers back on the free service can't see or use leftover tokens until they pay again.
Use it as a shop window: browse the character library, check the site on your phone and read a couple of replies.
Is there a Candy AI free trial?
Not a time-limited one. No official page offers days or weeks of Premium at no cost; the "Candy AI free trial" people mention is the five-message account above.
The closest thing to a paid trial is the discounted first month. On 5 October 2026 the monthly card read "First month $9.99", then $13.99 every month after that, and it renews automatically. It's the cheapest single payment on the page for a short test; set a calendar reminder a couple of days before renewal.
The official price list
These are the three plan cards shown on candy.ai/subscriptions on 5 October 2026 (US dollars, before any local tax):
| Plan | Billed | Per month | Tokens included | Renews at |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Free account | $0 | $0 | none | n/a |
| Premium, 1 month | $9.99 first month | $9.99, then $13.99 | 100 a month | $13.99 monthly |
| Premium, 3 months | $26.97 | $8.99 | 100 a month | same price and term |
| Premium, 12 months | $47.88 | $3.99 | 100 a month | same price and term |
| Premium Plus | not listed publicly | not listed | 330 a month (help centre) | n/a |
Every Premium billing period includes unlimited text messages, your own companions, image and video generation, Live Action and 100 tokens a month. Premium Plus, per its help article, lifts that to 330 tokens and adds 20 memory slots, user personas, chat customisation, clone chats and a 10% top-up bonus on quarterly and yearly terms. Its price wasn't on the public page, so check at checkout.
One oddity: the page's checkout text also contains weekly ("billed as $5.6") and two-weekly ("$9.79") lines, though only the three cards were displayed. If weekly billing ever appears for you, $5.60 × 52 is $291.20, six times the yearly card.
Monthly, quarterly or yearly: the maths
The "$3.99 a month" headline assumes $47.88 paid up front. A full first year on each route:
- Monthly: $9.99 + (11 × $13.99) = $163.88
- Quarterly: 4 × $26.97 = $107.88
- Yearly: $47.88
Same chat, same 100 tokens a month, so yearly saves $116 over monthly. The break-even point arrives early: four months on the monthly plan ($9.99 + 3 × $13.99 = $51.96) already costs more than the whole year. Quarterly wins over monthly for any three-month stint ($26.97 against $37.97).
Yearly members don't get 1,200 tokens on day one: per Candy's paid-user article, 100 arrive each month on your subscription date while the card is charged once. Tokens can't be cashed out or moved to another account.
Go here if you already know you'll use Candy for more than three months: the 12-month card is the obvious pick. If you're unsure, pay for one month at $9.99 and decide before it renews at $13.99.
How tokens work and what they buy
On Premium, text is unlimited and tokens pay for the rest. Candy's own list of token uses covers image generation, creating a custom AI, listening to voice messages, voice calls (still labelled beta), private content packs and turning an image into a short video. A few prices are official: Candy Roulette video chat is 5 tokens a minute, an exclusive character unlocks for a set amount ("e.g., 200 tokens"), and the referral scheme describes 200 tokens as "a $20 value", which works out at roughly ten cents a token.
Candy doesn't publish a per-feature price list, so the next table leans on reviewers who watched their balance. Treat every figure as third-party and approximate:
| Feature | Tokens (reported) | What 100 tokens covers |
|---|---|---|
| Standard image | 2 to 4 | about 25 to 50 images |
| Live voice call | 3 per minute | about 33 minutes |
| Custom character | about 10 | about 10 characters |
| Image-to-video clip | 12 to 20 | about 5 to 8 clips |
| Candy Roulette (official) | 5 per minute | 20 minutes |
Extra tokens are sold at candy.ai/tokens behind a login, so I couldn't read the packs. Independent write-ups from September and October 2026 list packs from $9.99 for 100 to $299.99 for 3,750. That puts a 4-token image at about 40 cents on the small pack and roughly 8 cents on the largest. Video is the one exception to the missing price list: Candy's Create Video page shows 12 tokens for a five-second scene and 20 for a ten-second one, and our guide to Candy AI's video, image and Live Action features takes each of them in turn.
Three ways a month can go
- Text only. Tokens untouched; you pay the subscription alone, $3.99 a month on the yearly card.
- One picture a day. About 120 tokens at 4 each, so the 100 run out near day 25 and one small pack (third-party price $9.99) covers the gap.
- A weekly half-hour call plus clips. Four 30-minute calls are about 360 tokens before any video, which is how the bills in public complaints balloon.
When free is enough, and when paying makes sense
Stay on the free account if you only want a look at the characters and interface. It costs nothing and needs no card.
Pay for Premium if you mainly want unlimited text chat and the odd image from the monthly 100. On the yearly card it's one of the cheapest unlimited-chat deals among the big companion apps.
Budget extra if visuals are why you're here. Candy is the strongest of the five I cover for pictures, voice and short video under one login, but the subscription price is only the entry fee. Set yourself a monthly token ceiling before you buy the first pack. If that trade-off sounds fine, check Candy AI's current plans and start with chat before spending tokens.
For the full feature rundown, see our plain-English Candy AI review or the longer Candy AI breakdown on GitBook.
If Candy's pricing model doesn't fit
Each of these charges differently, and one may fit your habits better:
- Ourdream AI has no free allowance. Per its help centre, every message costs non-members a coin and nobody gets free coins (other Ourdream pages say you get 55 coins at sign-up); paid plans run $19.99 monthly or $119.88 yearly. It's the one to look at if you want to build the character yourself with memory tools.
- JOI AI offers a no-cost Basic tier with capped chat and 6 lifetime image generations (help centre), but its terms charge Neurons for romantic or explicit messages, and voice and video aren't part of it. Third-party checkouts showed the annual plan at about $47.99, close to Candy's yearly card. JOI AI's free Basic tier is a longer free look than Candy's five messages, for non-adult chat.
- Lovescape lets you chat for free, and its own February 2026 pricing post put Premium at $71.88 a year, though recent checkout reports show $95.88 a year or $19.99 a month. Lovescape suits people who care most about designing looks.
- Kupid AI has a free plan of 15 messages on its official table, and then weekly or yearly billing only (Pro $12.99 a week or $179 a year). There's no monthly option, so read the checkout carefully before you try Kupid AI's free messages.
If you want text roleplay and never plan to pay, Character.AI (no affiliation) keeps free chat open, with stricter filters and no companion-style images. To see every free plan side by side, read what each AI girlfriend app gives away for nothing. If you've already decided Candy isn't for you, our Candy AI alternatives guide, sorted by reason picks up from here.
How to avoid surprise charges (and cancel cleanly)
Most Candy complaints trace back to billing rules that are written down but easy to miss:
- Renewal is automatic. Plans renew for the same term, and monthly jumps from $9.99 to $13.99 after month one. Price rises are announced before renewal, per the terms.
- Cancelling isn't a refund. Cancel under My Profile → Settings → Unsubscribe; Premium runs to the end of the paid period and nothing is refunded unless you ask support. There's no pause option. Our step-by-step guide to cancelling Candy AI, asking for a refund or deleting the account covers each of those routes separately.
- The refund window is 24 hours. Outside the EU and UK you have to ask within a day of paying and have used no more than 20 tokens. Token packs only qualify if they're unused. Only card payments can be refunded, so paying with crypto or a bank transfer gives up that option.
- In the EU and UK you have 14 days to withdraw from a first purchase, counted from the confirmation email. The refund is reduced for what you've already used, and renewals aren't covered.
- Leftover tokens are unclear after you cancel. A help article from August 2026 says your balance stays on the account for when you return. Section 10.2 of the terms says remaining tokens expire at the end of the billing period. Plan by the stricter rule and spend them first.
- A backup card can be charged. If the main payment method fails at renewal, the terms let Candy charge a saved backup card, and you can't remove your only card while a subscription is active.
- Know the statement name. Charges show as "EverAI", Candy's Malta-based operator.
FAQ
Is Candy AI free to use?
Only as a sample: five messages across all characters, one custom character and one image. Unlimited chat needs Premium.
Does Candy AI have a free trial?
No free time-based trial. The nearest equivalent is the first month at $9.99, which renews at $13.99 unless you cancel.
How much does Candy AI cost per month?
$13.99 monthly after a $9.99 first month, $8.99 on quarterly ($26.97) or $3.99 on yearly ($47.88), per the official page on 5 October 2026.
How many tokens do I get, and what does one cost?
Premium includes 100 a month, Premium Plus 330. Candy values 200 referral tokens at $20; third-party pack prices work out at about 8 to 10 cents a token.
Do Candy AI tokens roll over or expire?
After cancelling, the help centre and the terms disagree on whether leftovers survive, so spend them before the period ends.
Can I get my money back?
Within 24 hours with 20 or fewer tokens used (card payments only), or within 14 days of a first purchase in the EU and UK.
By Charles of onlyfanssearch.co. Prices from official Candy AI pages checked 5 October 2026; token costs from labelled third-party reports and subject to change. Every review is also collected on our GitBook AI companion hub.
More reviews on this blog: Ourdream AI · JOI AI · Lovescape · Kupid AI