Pricing analysis
PolyBuzz's cheapest plan is its most expensive
$4.99 a week feels like nothing. It works out to roughly $259 a year — more than double PolyBuzz's own monthly plan, and over five times what Candy.ai charges annually. The numbers are on its App Store listing; the arithmetic is nobody's job but yours.
The plans, and what they cost per year
| Plan | Listed price | Annualised | vs cheapest |
|---|---|---|---|
| Standard — weekly | $4.99 / week | $259.48 | 2.2× |
| Standard — monthly | $9.90 / month | $118.80 | baseline |
| Premium — monthly | $19.90 / month | $238.80 | 2.0× |
| Ultimate — monthly | $29.90 / month | $358.80 | 3.0× |
$4.99 × 52 weeks = $259.48. PolyBuzz's own monthly plan is $9.90 × 12 = $118.80.
The weekly plan costs 2.2 times the monthly plan for the identical Standard tier. It is not a cheaper option — it is the same option, billed in a way that makes the number small enough not to think about.
Weekly billing is also the highest-churn pricing structure in consumer software, and that is the point of it: 52 small charges a year attract far less scrutiny than one visible annual one.
Coin packs run $2.49 to $19.90 on top of the subscription, so the plan price is a floor rather than a ceiling.
Against the rest of the category
| App | Annual cost |
|---|---|
| Candy.ai, annual plan | $47.88 |
| Character.AI, annual plan | $94.99 |
| Nomi.ai, annual plan | $99.99 |
| PolyBuzz, monthly plan | $118.80 |
| PolyBuzz, weekly plan | $259.48 |
| DreamGF, at renewal | $311.88 |
PolyBuzz's weekly plan is 5.4 times Candy.ai's annual price, and it puts you in the same bracket as DreamGF's renewal — which is the most expensive option in this category and one we rank last specifically because of it.
What the product actually is
Run by Cloud Whale Interactive Technology LLC, formerly branded Poly.AI — the rebrand is visible in the app's package history, where the bundle identifier still reads ai.socialapps.speakmaster.
4.4 out of 5 from roughly 466,000 App Store ratings, which is a large and credible sample. Features include voice, a "character thinking" display, and public or private character creation from a community-made library. Apple's content warnings on the listing cover frequent cartoon and fantasy violence, mature themes, sexual content, unrestricted web access, and user-generated content.
So this is a real product with a real audience, not a scam. The complaint is about how it charges, not what it is.
The dominant complaint is ad spam on the free tier — reported every 10 to 50 messages. That frequency is what pushes people toward the subscription, and the weekly plan is the one presented as the easy yes.
Long-term users describe decline: the developers "make it worse and worse," with features moving behind the paywall over time.
For balance, a genuinely positive note from the same reviews: "makes me feel less lonely despite it being an AI." People are getting real value here. That's exactly why the pricing structure is worth understanding rather than dismissing.
One thing PolyBuzz has that Candy.ai and DreamGF don't
PolyBuzz bills through Apple and Google in-app purchases. That means a refund request goes to the platform's process, with a published route and an appeal — not to whatever the company wrote in its own terms.
Compare: Candy.ai's own policy gives you 24 hours and dies at 20 tokens. For DreamGF we could not find a published refund policy at all. The full comparison is here.
If you do get caught by the weekly renewal, you have somewhere to go. That is worth something real, and it partly offsets the pricing structure.
What to do
If you want PolyBuzz, take the monthly plan. $9.90 against $4.99 sounds worse and is less than half the price over a year. That is the entire recommendation and it takes one click at checkout.
If you're just trying it, the free tier works — you'll pay in ad interruptions every 10 to 50 messages rather than in dollars. Use it long enough to know whether you want the app before you subscribe to anything.
If price is your main criterion, you're in the wrong app. Candy.ai at $47.88 a year is less than half PolyBuzz's cheapest annualised plan, and Janitor AI is free.
Whatever you pick, set a calendar reminder. Weekly billing is designed to be forgotten, and 52 charges of $4.99 leave the account far more quietly than one charge of $259.
See how PolyBuzz ranks against the rest →
Sources
- PolyBuzz pricing, coin packs, rating, feature list and content warnings — Apple App Store listing for "PolyBuzz: Chat with Characters," checked 25 August 2026.
- Cloud Whale Interactive Technology LLC and the Poly.AI rebrand — app package history via APKMirror and AppBrain; bundle identifier
ai.socialapps.speakmaster. - Comparison pricing: candy.ai/subscriptions, dreamgf.ai/pricing; Character.AI and Nomi from their Apple App Store listings.
- Apple refund request process: reportaproblem.apple.com