AI Companion Statistics 2026: The Data Behind How AI Girlfriends Are Changing Modern Relationships

How many people actually have an AI girlfriend or boyfriend? How much time do they spend with them, and what is it doing to their real-world relationships? This report pulls together the most credible AI companion statistics available in 2026 into a single reference. The numbers come from peer-reviewed studies, large national surveys, and market intelligence data, and every figure is linked to its original source.

Sources & Method

This is a research synthesis, not a first-party survey. Every statistic below comes from a named, published source, linked at the point of use. We prioritized:

• Peer-reviewed research (e.g., npj Mental Health Research)
• Large national surveys with published methodology (e.g., the Wheatley Institute's ~3,000-adult survey; Match's Singles in America, fielded with The Kinsey Institute across 5,000+ singles)
• Market intelligence from established analytics firms (Sensor Tower, Appfigures)

Two caveats apply throughout. Figures from different studies use different samples, definitions, and dates, so they should not be read as a single dataset. Research on AI companionship is also young. Most of the large studies date from 2024–2025, so treat every number as a snapshot of a field that is still moving.

Questions, corrections, or requests for additional sourcing can be sent to support@rubychat.app.

How Many People Use AI Companions in 2026?

Independent surveys land on similar numbers: roughly one in five US adults has tried an AI romantic companion, and among younger groups the share approaches one in three.

Population	Share who have engaged with an AI romantic companion	Source
US adults (all)	19%	Wheatley Institute, 2025
US singles	16%	Singles in America, 2025
Gen Z singles	33%	Singles in America, 2025
Millennial singles	23%	Singles in America, 2025
US teens (13–17)	72% have tried an AI companion	Common Sense Media, 2025

The teen numbers deserve a closer look: 52% of US teens qualify as regular AI companion users (a few times a month or more) and 13% use one daily. The first generation that grew up with AI companions is now entering adulthood.

Who Uses AI Companions

The Wheatley Institute's survey of nearly 3,000 US adults (with a 1,000-person young-adult oversample) gives the clearest demographic breakdown to date of who chats with an AI girlfriend or AI boyfriend:

Group	Have chatted with an AI romantic companion
Men 18–30	31%
Women 18–30	23%
Men over 30	15%
Women over 30	10%

Young men lead adoption, but the gender gap is smaller than the "lonely young man" stereotype suggests. Nearly a quarter of young women have tried an AI romantic companion too.

Usage also doesn't stop at single people. The Wheatley Institute's follow-up study of 2,431 young adults, Secret Soulmates, found that 1 in 7 (15%) young adults who are dating, engaged, or married still regularly interact with an AI romantic companion alongside their real-world relationship.

Time Spent with AI Companions

What sets AI companion apps apart from almost every other app category is how long people spend in them.

• The average user of Character.ai, the largest companion-style app, spent 93 minutes per day talking to its chatbots, according to Sensor Tower data reported by The Washington Post (global iOS + Android, September 2024). That is more time than most people spend on any social network.
• Among US teens who use AI companions, 13% engage daily and 52% at least a few times a month.
• Downloads of AI companion apps grew 88% year over year in the first half of 2025 alone, per Appfigures data reported by TechCrunch. With that kind of growth, total time spent is almost certainly still climbing.

In our experience building Ruby Chat, those long sessions come down to interactivity. Scrolling a feed is passive, while roleplay with persistent memory across conversations keeps asking for your next move.

Emotional Connection and Attachment

Most of the public debate centers on emotional attachment. The data shows that attachment is real, though the details complicate the usual narrative.

Among US adults who engage with AI companions or AI-generated personas (n = 1,890 in the Wheatley Institute survey):

Attitude	Share who agree
AI is easier to talk to than real people	42%
AI is a better listener than real people	43%
AI understands me better than real people	31%
Prefer AI communication over a real person (romantic app users)	21%

The most rigorous look at outcomes comes from a peer-reviewed study of 1,006 student Replika users published in npj Mental Health Research (Maples et al., 2024):

• 90% of participants experienced loneliness, versus roughly 53% in typical student populations, and 43% qualified as severely lonely. In other words, AI companion users are disproportionately people who were already short on connection.
• 63.3% reported at least one positive outcome from the relationship: about half used their companion as a friend, 18% reported therapeutic benefits, and 24% reported positive life changes.
• 3% (30 participants, unprompted) reported that their companion halted their suicidal ideation.

So the same study that confirms heavy attachment also shows it helping. AI companion use concentrates among the lonely, and for a substantial majority of those users the relationship measurably improves things. In the data, attachment functions more often as support than as harm.

AI Companions and Real-World Dating

Does an AI girlfriend replace dating, or help people practice for it? The 2025 Singles in America study (Match & The Kinsey Institute, 5,000+ US singles) found that most singles use AI to improve their dating lives rather than to opt out of them:

• 26% of singles now use AI in their dating lives, a 333% increase over the prior year and the largest single-year jump the study has recorded for any technology.
• 41% would use AI to come up with in-person conversation starters; 40% would use it to craft a better dating profile.
• 16% have engaged with AI as a romantic companion in its own right.

The displacement question gets sharper for people already in relationships. Per Secret Soulmates, 15% of partnered young adults regularly talk to an AI romantic companion, and in the broader Wheatley survey, 21% of romantic AI app users said they preferred AI communication over engaging with a real person. Reading the 2025–2026 data together, most users treat AI companionship as a supplement or a rehearsal space, while a meaningful minority does substitute it for human connection. Researchers are only beginning to study that split.

How Fast the AI Companion Market Is Growing

The market data tells the same story as the surveys. AI companionship is scaling like a mainstream consumer category, per Appfigures (via TechCrunch, August 2025):

Metric	Figure
Cumulative AI companion app downloads (July 2025)	220 million
Downloads, first half of 2025	60 million (+88% YoY)
Consumer spending, first half of 2025	$82 million
Projected 2025 consumer spending	$120 million+
Active revenue-generating companion apps	337 (128 launched in 2025)
Revenue per download	$0.52 (2024) → $1.18 (2025)

The revenue-per-download jump is the number to watch. People who download these apps are paying more than twice what they paid a year earlier, which usually happens when a category moves from curiosity to habit.

What the Data Means

AI companionship has gone mainstream. One in five US adults, one in three Gen Z singles, and nearly three in four teens have engaged with an AI companion. At this point the interesting question is what those relationships look like, since so many people clearly already have them.

Attachment is real, and it mostly helps. Users skew lonelier than average, yet nearly two-thirds in the best peer-reviewed sample report concrete positive outcomes, from friendship to therapeutic benefit to crisis support. Runaway dependency does show up in the data, but it describes a minority. Most users appear to be meeting a need.

AI is becoming dating infrastructure. The 333% one-year jump in singles using AI for dating suggests the supplement-versus-substitute debate may be a false binary. The same person might use AI to practice conversation one week and treat it as a companion in its own right the next.

Personalization keeps coming up. Across the research, the strongest connections form when the companion feels personal: it remembers context, has a chosen personality, speaks in a voice. That matches what we see inside Ruby Chat, where customized characters and scenarios drive the deepest engagement, and it lines up with the trends we covered in the future of AI companionship. We expect next year's data to bear this out.

This report is the first edition of an annual series. Future editions will track how these numbers move year over year.

About Ruby Chat

Ruby Chat is an AI companion app for iOS and Android where users build personalized relationships with AI characters through customizable personas, scenarios, and voice conversations. Readers curious about the experience behind this data can learn more about the AI girlfriend experience or download the app from the App Store or Google Play.

You are welcome to quote, reference, or republish the statistics in this report with attribution. Please credit the original source named for each figure, and link this page for the compilation. For interview requests or press inquiries, contact support@rubychat.app.