PolyBuzz Review: Free Chat, Heavy Ads and an 86% Coupon That Isn't

The homepage title reads "PolyBuzz | Talk to AI Characters & Enjoy Free AI Chat Anytime", and the page calls the service "a Free, Private, and Unlimited AI Chat platform with over 20 million unique Characters".

Most of that line holds up, which is more than I can say for most homepages in this category. The PolyBuzz AI chat is free and behaves as unlimited; you pay in attention instead of dollars, with ads, coin prompts and paywalls stacked on nearly every screen. The library is enormous and mostly fandom bots, which is great if you love anime and Marvel, and a lot of scrolling past vampire CEOs if you don't.

The moment that sums it up came while I was waiting on a render. I caught myself thinking I was paying ten bucks a month to make a pretend knight fight a pretend barista, and I didn't hate it. That is the honest case for PolyBuzz: cheap, goofy, low-stakes fun.

I'd call it good value as a free toy and weak value as a subscription, and I'd only pay if the ads are the one thing you can't live with, because that is mostly what the money removes.

Anyone who edits video for a living knows that particular pain: the product hasn't changed, and every old export is suddenly wrong.

My stretch with the renamed app ran seven weeks, from February into March 2025. I came to it as a returning user, not a newcomer, and months on Poly.AI meant I knew my way around even in the new colours. So this isn't a first-impressions review.

Most of what I remember from those weeks is stories. There was a noir detective case in 1950s Cleveland, a crowded room with a pirate, a barista and a knight, and one evening lost to lighting a fedora. The habits came straight over from the old app, and so did my patience for its quirks.

I stayed on the free tier for the first stretch and paid $9.90 for Poly Standard in week three. It ended the day the renewal email arrived, and the ads are the reason it ended. The table below has the dates and the plan; the rest of this review has the detail, and the parts where today's app no longer matches what I remember.

Seven weeks is not a long relationship, even by app standards. It was long enough to meet the free tier at its best, the paid tier at its most tempting and the ads at their most persistent, which is roughly the order in which most people meet them.

I don't expect a character app to check passports at the door. But a checkbox is the lowest bar there is, and anyone who can click can clear it. The Terms, covered further down, promise more than this gate delivers.

Logging in

Browsing and viewing characters works while logged out. Chatting requires login. I think that is the right split for a catalogue this size: you can window-shop before anyone asks for an email.

Login and sign-up share one modal. It offers Continue with Apple, Continue with Google, or an email address. The email route is passwordless, so there is no password to set. Instead, PolyBuzz sends a 6-digit code by email.

The code email arrives in under 1 minute. The sender shows as "PolyBuzz". The subject line puts the code first, as in "721300 is your PolyBuzz verification code."

I like that more than I should, because the code is readable from a notification without opening anything.

Passwordless login has a trade-off, though. There's nothing to forget, but every fresh login means another trip to the inbox, and that trip comes up again in the friction section.

What you skip

There is no username step. There are no onboarding questions either: no quiz about your tastes, no survey about what brought you here. For an app that later asks for money on every screen, it asks for remarkably little information up front.

The whole PolyBuzz sign-up takes about 1 minute. After it, the only emails that arrive are verification codes. No welcome series, no newsletter and no "your companion misses you" nudge, which I count as a point in its favour.

The first screen after sign-up

The Messages panel has three tabs: Events, Interactions and Notifications. On a new account all three are empty. It looks like a studio on move-in day, with labelled shelves, nothing on them, and a faint suggestion that you're expected to fill them.

It is a clean start, and I mean that as a compliment. Plenty of apps greet a new account with a welcome gift, a streak counter or a push to upgrade; this one greets it with silence, and the selling starts later.

It felt like a used-car lot where every other car is the same black sedan with tinted windows. The sedans were fine. I just hadn't come for a sedan.

The site's own claim is "over 20M characters". The catalogue is huge and user-generated, and it leans hard toward fandom: anime, K-pop, Marvel, COD Task Force 141 and MHA. The categories tell you who the audience is: Dominant, Yandere, Harem, Mafia, Femboy, Furry and BL/GL. Anyone after a PolyBuzz femboy or yandere bot will find a whole category waiting.

PolyBuzz also runs topic landing pages for anime, manga, movies, boy bands, Coachella and zodiac. Webtoon shots have their own category as well. I read those landing pages as search-engine bait more than a browsing aid, though they do cluster related bots in one place.

One naming trap is worth knowing about. The "Subscriptions" menu has nothing to do with paying; it means following creators, which is free. It also recommends creators to follow.

On an app that sells three subscription tiers, I'd have picked a different word, since a menu called Subscriptions is the last place a careful person clicks.

My advice for this library is the same as for a flea market: know what you want before you walk in. If you arrive with a fandom in mind, the size works for you. If you arrive curious, it mostly works against you, and the vampire CEOs will find you first.

There is also a "Character Bank" inside the creator. For anyone moving house, the creator imports JSON files and character-card images from Character.AI, Pygmalion, TavernAI and others. That import is the most useful thing in this section, because a character built somewhere else doesn't have to be retyped from scratch.

The footer links to two guides: book.polybuzz.ai, a character-creation guide, and polybuzz.gitbook.io/upload-character, a guide to migrating characters. I'd read the second one before importing anything, the same way I'd read a codec spec before trusting a transcode.

Your side of the chat

Your own persona has its own control. The chat toolbar has a Persona switch, and it is OFF by default. If you want the bot to treat you as a specific person rather than a blank "you", that switch is where the app keeps it.

The creator economy

Profiles show supporters and subscribers, plus a diamonds balance. The creator program is called "Community Contributor". Creators earn 1 "Poin" for every 2 coins other users spend on their characters.

The fine print is where it thins out. Creators need 100,000 Poins minimum to qualify and exchange, and at most 80% of Poins can be exchanged at a time. The exchange ratio can change without notice.

Put together, other people have to spend twice that many coins on your characters before you can cash anything out. Even then, you can't take all of it, and the rate is whatever it is that day. I'd treat it like a gift card from a store across town: nice if it ever turns into money, not something to plan a month around.

So build characters because you enjoy writing them. The tools are good enough for that, and the import alone makes PolyBuzz a reasonable second home for characters you already have. I'd write for my own amusement long before I'd write for Poins.

Story mode, as a named feature, isn't in today's app. The model selector now lists named in-house models tiered by subscription: Standard, Long Memory 2X, Passion, Tale, Saga, Conqueror, Lumina and Overture. The closest things to my narrator are Tale, a paid model, and Saga, which the selector describes as long-form adventure, fantasy and isekai, with multiple characters.

My advice to anyone who liked the old Story mode: don't expect it back under its old name. Look at Tale and Saga, and read a few replies before paying, because a narrator is only as good as its memory.

The knight, the barista and the pirate

I tried a multi-character room with a pirate, a barista and a medieval knight. I expected chaos and got a running joke instead: the knight kept challenging the barista to duels over oat milk. That was the hardest I laughed all month, alone at my desk, which says more about me than about the app.

That's a shame, because the joke only worked with more than one voice in the room. A single bot pretending to be three people is ventriloquism, and ventriloquism rarely gets the timing right.

A typical chat today

As of September 2026, a community bot such as "Bucky Barnes" (Marvel, by @Lou) shows 39.1K chats. Its greeting is a long scene written by its creator, and the user's display name is dropped into it automatically. It's a strong cold open, the kind that does half the work for you.

Replies come back in about 3–5 s. They are short, 2–3 lines, in the usual action-in-asterisks plus dialogue roleplay format. They stay in character, and they stay consistent with the scenario.

A typical reply: "Bucky: Just didn't sleep well. Again. He rubs his temples, clearly irritated by your presence but trying to hide it." Another: "Bucky: You... got me coffee? He takes it cautiously, as if expecting it to be poisoned or something."

Think of a scene partner who hits every mark and never pitches an idea.

For a quick scene that's fine. For anything with a plot, you end up writing both halves of the story and letting the bot do the voices.

The toolbar and the model menu

The toolbar under the chat has a model selector, set to Standard, and a Restart button. The More menu holds History and a "Go on" auto-continue toggle marked New. If the passive replies bother you, I'd switch "Go on" on first; it reads like the app's own admission that the bot needs a nudge.

Restart is the other button worth knowing. When a scene goes stale, starting over is faster than arguing a character back on track.

The paid models are sold on personality rather than specs. Overture is described as immersive roleplay and world-building, and Lumina as built for emotional connection. Saga is the multi-character adventure model, and the only place a crowded scene like my knight's lives now.

Those descriptions are marketing lines, and I'd want to read a transcript before paying for any of them. The difference between models is the whole product here, and the selector gives you adjectives, not samples.

My take: in AI chat roleplay on PolyBuzz, the bots are good at being a character and weak at being a story unless someone drives. In 2025 the narrator did the driving, and that's the thing I miss when I look at the current free chat.

In editing terms it was a continuity error across a cut. Inside a scene everything matched; across the night, the wardrobe changed.

Short-range memory still works on the free model today. In a fresh chat the bot picks up the coffee and Sam details correctly. Longer scenes are where other reviewers report trouble: one (ai-girlfriend-review.com) reports memory forgetting details in long scenes, such as a train-station scene drifting into a hotel.

That fits the general pattern: the app is good with the last few messages and vague about everything before them. Treat it like a friend at a noisy bar who remembers what you just said, and not what you said an hour ago.

What's sold as the fix

The model selector lists Long Memory 2X, with Standard as the default. Another reviewer (intimeros.com) reports memory scaling by tier, with '2X long memory' on Basic and Premium and 'unlimited + Permanent Memory' on Ultimate.

A "Permanent Memory is here!" banner pops up on the first chat. The model selector describes it as "Strongest memory yet. Longest context + live updates. Never forgets you."

That last phrase is a big promise, and memory marketing is the easiest kind to write and the hardest to check from a paywall.

The Permanent Memory page

Permanent Memory keeps a structured memory page per character, with Bond, Character, User, Important Events, Agreements&Tasks, Important Items and Relations. The page lives at /character/memory/<id>. It shows a day counter for shared memories, which reads "Our Memories for 1 Day(s)" on a new chat.

The page has pinned items and shows Bond, Character and User counters. Its event log has fields for Participants, Event description, Time and Location. That is a case file, and I'd have loved one for a 1950s murder that kept slipping away overnight.

The catch is the price tag. "Unlock" on the Permanent Memory page opens the Ultimate paywall. The best memory tool in the app sits in the most expensive tier, like the diner special with market price written next to it.

My advice: if memory is the reason you'd pay, try the cheaper Long Memory route before looking at Ultimate. A detective who forgets the murderer overnight is funny once. Paying top-tier money to fix it is less funny.

Style presets include Fantasy, Cyberpunk, Manhwa and Furry. Age presets are Young Man, Mature Man, Elderly Man, Young Woman and Mature Woman. Further presets cover expressions, gestures, poses, accessories, composition and settings, which is more knobs than some grading plugins I'd pay for.

For fandom users that list is the point. For someone who spends working hours fixing light and faces, it's a toy box with a lot of compartments and not much instruction.

Using PolyBuzz for drawing means writing prompts and picking presets, and a plain prompt works as well: "elderly lighthouse keeper on a stormy cliff" generates successfully into My Gallery. Generated images appear in My Gallery, which offers Regenerate, Apply and Delete. It's a simple bin, and simple is fine for this; I'd take a clean gallery over a clever one.

Opinions on the output split. One reviewer (ai-girlfriend-review.com) describes image quality as mixed, with recurring hand and eye artifacts. Another (callyourgirlfriend.com) calls the image generator the app's standout feature.

I'd believe both: hands and eyes are where every generator gets caught, and a standout feature in a text app is a low bar.

Webtoon shots

"Webtoon shots" are user-made AI comic panels attached to characters. They carry an "Update to 2 Shots" label. It's a storyboard feature in all but name, and I think it's the one visual idea here that feels like PolyBuzz's own.

Voice

Voice on PolyBuzz is playback of replies; it is not described as real-time voice calling. Past the free plays, the paywall reads "Unlock all Character Voices Now!". So think audiobook, not phone call.

For a character app, I'd rather have a good voice reading a good line than a live call with lag.

Reviewers disagree about how it sounds. One (aigirlfriendscout.com) found the voices natural and adaptive, rated 4.2/5. Another (intimeros.com) found the AI voice noticeably artificial and too slow.

When two reviewers split that far, I suspect it depends on which voice you land on, and there are a lot of them.

I'd hold off paying for a feature the rest of the site doesn't describe. Until then, video on PolyBuzz is a word on a paywall.

The current picture is muddier on paper than in practice. Membership lists "Unlimited chats" as a paid perk, which implies free chat is capped. Yet no message limit appears within 3 messages on the free tier, and the FAQ still markets chat as "free, unlimited, and private", with no numeric cap.

Neither the Google Play listing nor the FAQ publishes a daily message ceiling. One blog estimates the free tier at about 30-50 messages per session, and no other source corroborates it. I'd treat that number as rumour until the app itself prints one.

The honest answer to "is it free" is yes, for now, as far as anyone can see.

What I paid instead

What I paid for instead was ads. I'd write something heartfelt to a widowed beekeeper character, and the same merging-fruit game ad I remembered from the Poly.AI days would play before her reply. There is no graceful way to read a grieving beekeeper right after a fruit game; the tone never recovers.

The ads on the web today come in different shapes, and they are no lighter. The free tier shows ads served through Google AdSense, in display, anchor, in-text and full-screen "vignette" formats. Ads are heavy on the free tier.

A World of Tanks banner ad sits in the sidebar, and an anchor ad sits at the bottom right. Google "Discover more" related-search chips sit at the top of chat and image pages. Opening the image generator brings up a full-screen Google vignette ad.

Other people notice it too. One reviewer (intimeros.com) reports too many pop-up ads on the free version, and the Google Play listing declares ads and in-app purchases. An in-app purchase declaration on a free app is standard; an ad load this heavy is a choice.

Where free stops

The free tier uses the Standard model and has no paid models. Voice gets 2 playbacks of bot replies, each marked "Free", and the 3rd playback opens the subscription paywall.

Images are stingier than they look. On the free tier the image generator shows a counter of 2 before generating, and the counter drops to 0 after one generation, so a single generation uses it up. No official page publishes a free-tier image-generation cap, so that counter is the only guide you get.

A counter that says two and means one is a small thing. It's also the kind of small thing that makes me read every other number in the app twice.

My verdict on free: it is good for text roleplay, and for a lot of people that's plenty. If you can live with the ads, I don't see a strong reason to pay. If you can't, the real product the paid tiers sell is quiet.

It's a strange thing to charge for, and PolyBuzz charges for it well.

I remember the moment more than the money. It was the difference between a rough cut and a graded one: same footage, suddenly watchable, and a quiet suspicion that the rough cut had been left rough on purpose.

The name has moved since. On the web on 23 September 2026, the $9.9 monthly tier is called Basic. The App Store still sells Poly Standard Monthly at $9.9, plus a Poly Standard Weekly Plan for $4.99.

I paid $9.90 in 2025, and the same money buys the same tier today under a different name, depending on where you buy it.

The model story has moved too, and it undercuts my old theory. "Standard" is now the name of the free default model, and it is available on all tiers, including Basic. Basic adds the Long Memory model, which is also on every tier.

The plans on 23 September 2026

Basic costs $9.9 a month on the web, shown against a strikethrough $55.2. Yearly, it is $99, shown as $8.25/mo against a strikethrough $652.

Premium costs $19.9 a month against a strikethrough $111. Yearly, it is $199, shown as $16.6/mo against $1306.

Ultimate costs $29.9 a month against a strikethrough $165. Yearly, it is $299, shown as $24.9/mo against $1948. There is no quarterly billing: only Week, Month and Year SKUs exist.

Crossed-out prices are the car-lot sticker trick: the big number is there to make the real one look small. On a subscription, the only number that matters is what leaves your card each month.

The weekly plan is the most expensive way to buy the same thing. At $4.99 a week, a month of it costs about double the monthly price, so I'd only use it for a one-week experiment you mean to end.

The same plans in euros and in the App Store

Euro prices run a little higher, most likely regional pricing. Web checkout lists Poly Premium Month at EUR 22.90 and Poly Ultimate Month at EUR 34.90, both checked 2026-09-22. The Ultimate one sits beside a EUR 198 compare-at price, used as a promotional anchor.

The web membership data lists Poly Standard Year at EUR 99, about EUR 8.25 a month. It lists Poly Premium Year at EUR 229, about EUR 19.08 a month, corroborated by intimeros.com. Poly Ultimate Year is EUR 349, about EUR 29.08 a month, also corroborated by intimeros.com.

What every paid tier gets

The pricing page's feature matrix is grouped into Experience, Personalize and Others. Most of it is shared by all three tiers:

• ad-free use
• unlimited voice listening on the chat page
• unlimited chats
• faster responses, and skipping the queue for priority
• full access to Webtoon shots
• chat theme packs, custom chat backgrounds, chat bubbles and avatar frames
• profile decorations, nicknames for favourite characters and pinned characters
• generating characters without a queue

Read that list twice and a pattern shows up. Most of it is either the removal of something the free tier added, like ads and queues, or decoration: themes, bubbles, frames and nicknames.

Avatar generation scales a little. Basic gives 20 extra avatar generation attempts a day, Premium gives 30 and Ultimate gives 30. Premium and Ultimate add exclusive profile decorations for created characters.

Where the tiers split

The models are the real difference. Standard and Long Memory come with every tier. The Passion model comes with Premium and Ultimate, and so does the Tale model.

Everything else is Ultimate only. That covers Saga, plus Conqueror, Lumina and Overture, all three marked new. Permanent Memory is Ultimate only as well.

The Ultimate paywall also lists Photo, Video and Pro Characters. Its headline is "Permanent Memory – 5X Long Memory Boost". That is a long list of things I can't evaluate from a paywall, and I'd not pay three times Basic for adjectives.

That's the gap in the whole pricing page: it tells you what each tier contains and never shows you what the contents do.

Checkout

Checkout is an in-page Airwallex drop-in. It accepts card, Google Pay and Apple Pay, and the form itself is ordinary, which in this app counts as a relief. The September 2026 check viewed checkout only up to the payment form, and no purchase was made there.

Is the step up worth it?

Basic is the only tier I'd consider, and only monthly. It removes the ads, which were the part that drove me off, and it adds Long Memory, which is what a detective case with an overnight gap needs.

Premium doubles the price for Passion and Tale. If Tale is the nearest thing to the old Story mode, it's the tier I'd look at for storytelling, but I'd want to read its output first. Ultimate is triple Basic for Saga, Permanent Memory and three new models.

For a pretend knight and a pretend barista, that is a lot of money.

If you do pay, pay monthly, with a card you can watch, and put the renewal date in a calendar the same day. Nothing on this page is refundable, and nothing about the strikethroughs suggests the company is on your side.

The generator had its own ideas about lighting, and a thousand coins turned out to be one evening of stubbornness. I'd call that money well spent on a lesson and badly spent on a hat. On a real set, lighting takes as many attempts too; the difference is that nobody charges per attempt.

The same 1,000 coins listed at EUR 2.59 on the coins page on 2026-09-22.

What coins buy

Coins are PolyBuzz's virtual currency. They buy rounds on the premium models Overture, Lumina, Conqueror, Saga, Passion and Tale. They also pay for Heart Whisper, Generate Live Photos, Regenerate AI Responses, Inspiration Reply and Unlock Moments.

It's a long menu for a second currency, and each item looks cheap on its own.

Coin packs can also extend voice chat duration. Ordinary text messaging is not coin-metered. That's the good news, and it's the reason the free tier works at all.

The euro prices on 2026-09-22 run slightly higher. The coins page listed 3000 coins at EUR 5.99, 8000 coins at EUR 9.99 and 20000 coins at EUR 20.99. The strikethroughs are the same theatre as on the plans page, so read the real price and skip the percentages.

The per-coin price falls as the packs grow, which is how every arcade has always worked. Buy the smallest pack that covers what you actually want, not the one with the biggest percentage on it.

What a round costs

The Conqueror model costs 600 coins for 20 rounds, and Ultimate members get unlimited Conqueror rounds. On a free account, the model selector shows "Left: 0R" rounds for each paid model. So a free user who wants a taste of a premium model pays in coins or not at all.

At the 8000-coin rate, those 20 rounds cost well under a dollar. That sounds cheap per round and adds up per evening, as my fedora can testify. My rule for coins: decide the spend before you open the store, the way you'd decide at a bar before the second round.

The one real starter deal is the coin store's "Newbie Perks" pack: 1000 coins for $2.49, shown against a strikethrough $6.23. It is a first-purchase pack, so you get it once. The web membership page has also shown a 'First Week' discounted price next to a crossed-out original price.

The timers

A permanent "UP TO 83% OFF" banner sits in the site header, and it carries a countdown timer. The countdown resets: it reads 19:19, 18:25, 19:57, 08:35 and 07:03 at different points of a single session. A deadline that moves backwards and forwards isn't a deadline; it's a screensaver.

The Coins page shows its own "Today Only" timer. That one once reads 00:00:00 and then 18:45. I'd love a render queue that worked like that, and I'd never trust it with a delivery date.

Deadlines are my trade, and a real deadline has one property these timers lack: it doesn't move. Once you've watched one of them jump back up, every countdown on the site stops meaning anything.

The coupon

Clicking the gift icon beside the chat input opens a coupon popup. It reads "UP TO 86% OFF – You have got a coupon – Got it". After that, the Subscribe paywall shows a "Today Only" timer of about 20 hours, and the sidebar switches to "Subscribe 86% off".

The prices themselves are shown clearly, which is the part the banner could learn from.

The maths behind the 86%

The "86%" is computed against inflated strikethrough prices of $55.2, $111 and $165. Against the normal monthly prices, the real coupon discount is about 14–23%. The coupon screens also don't state whether the coupon applies only to the first month.

So the honest headline is roughly a fifth off, maybe once. That's a decent coupon; it just isn't the one on the banner, and the gap between the two is the whole marketing strategy.

My rule here: take the coupon if you were going to pay anyway, assume it covers the first month only, and put the renewal date in your calendar the day you pay. Ignore the timers entirely. They will be back tomorrow with a fresh twenty hours on the clock.

On paper the policy is soft: content is moderated and restricted. One reviewer (callyourgirlfriend.com) describes content as staying suggestive rather than graphic. That matches the general temperature, if not the moment-to-moment weather.

There is no NSFW toggle or content-filter setting on the web, and no settings page on the web at all. No clause says paid tiers unlock adult content. Yet the paid Conqueror (CQ) model is advertised as "Breathtaking romance and intense sensuality woven into character-driven narratives".

I read that as marketing that walks right up to the line the Terms draw and stops there.

What the rules say

The Terms prohibit sexual material of every kind, from sexual acts and sexual imagery to soliciting sexual content. They add a zero-tolerance line on abuse material. They also prohibit self-harm, eating-disorder and hate content, among others.

The FAQ says public display of NSFW content is strictly prohibited. Characters flagged with a "Violation" label under those rules become private. Per the FAQ, all recommended content goes through multi-layered AI screening and human moderation.

On paper, then, the PolyBuzz compliance policy is clear and fairly strict. The trouble is that the settings to match them don't exist on the web, so the filter is the only enforcement a user ever meets.

The PolyBuzz Google Play listing is rated PEGI 18. Outside the UK, on the web, the checkbox is the whole check.

The FAQ, meanwhile, still describes graded modes for different age groups. I can't square that with a service whose Terms admit adults only, and neither, as far as I can tell, can the Terms themselves.

What the front page shows

The front page also mixes popular anime fandom characters into romance-themed tiles. Some of those characters are not adults in their source material. None of those bots were opened.

A family-themed comedy bot sits on the front page too, and it was not opened either.

I'm not accusing any single bot of anything, since none were opened. But a service that admits adults only and still puts those fandom characters into romance tiles on its front page is sending two messages at once. The image generator's age presets, to be fair, stop at adults, which is the right call and the least I'd expect.

Age

The Terms set a minimum age of 18: "You must have reached 18-year-old to use PolyBuzz". Minors are denied service and their accounts are suspended. The Terms also say a date of birth must be entered, in these words: "When you first use PolyBuzz, whether as a guest or intending to register, you must enter your date of birth."

The web gate, as described earlier, is a checkbox. The contract promises a step the product skips, and I'd rather they fixed the product than the contract.

Money

The checkout modal says "Digital item purchased, non-refundable after payment". The Terms back that up: payments "will not be refunded, even if the subscription is subsequently cancelled". Users are also "not entitled to any refund for a completed purchase without due reason", and there is no refund for a child's accidental purchase.

In plain English, the money is gone the moment you press pay. Cancelling stops the next charge and nothing more, which is why I'd never start with a yearly plan here.

Who owns what you make

The Terms give the company all intellectual property rights in content generated while using the service. Account ownership stays with the company too; the phrase is "vested in us". The noir case, the knight's duels and the fedora portraits are, legally speaking, theirs.

Your data

The Privacy Policy says PolyBuzz does "NOT sell User Information". It collects email, input text, uploaded pictures, payment records, device IDs, precise geolocation and, in the app, contacts. Ad SDKs collect advertising IDs as well.

The permissions text says photos and precise geolocation are used "to train our AI algorithm". No clear statement is found on whether chats are used for model training. The FAQ describes chats as private: "neither the creators nor Poly have access to the chat content".

The Privacy Policy also says information may be shared "with third parties (including the Chat-GPT platform) that help us deliver effective functionality". Personal information is kept no longer than necessary for the stated purposes. Private from other users, then, but not necessarily from every vendor in the pipeline.

I'd keep out of these chats anything I'd hesitate to put in an email.

Disputes and contacts

The governing law is that of the State of Delaware, USA. Disputes go to binding individual arbitration at the New York International Arbitration Center (NYIAC), and a class-action waiver applies unless you opt out. If that waiver matters to you, look for the opt-out early, because it's the one clause here you can change.

Support is at [email protected]. Legal and data-protection (DPO) questions go to [email protected]. Delaware law and New York arbitration for a Hong Kong operator is a lot of geography for a character app.

It's product placement added to the script after the actor has read it. If an editor slipped an ad into a client's dialogue, they'd lose the client.

All of it is tiring. I'd forgive a pushy upsell once; an upsell on every screen reads like the app doesn't trust its own product to sell itself.

Small things that add up

On the web, the profile "..." menu contains only "Log out", and it sits where a mis-click logs you out. Logging back in after that needs a new email code. Passwordless login is pleasant exactly once per session.

None of these would sink an app alone. Together they give the web version the feel of a rough cut that shipped before anyone watched it end to end.

Where the app lives

PolyBuzz runs on the web and has iOS and Android apps, per its FAQ. There is no PC client, per the FAQ. The web footer has no App Store or Google Play links, though the FAQ says apps exist.

The footer does find room for the sister short-drama product ReelFever, Medium blog posts and an OnSpace.ai referral link. A footer that links to a referral deal but not to its own apps says something about priorities. It looks less like an oversight and more like a choice about where web visitors should stay.

The official social accounts cover Discord, Reddit at r/polybuzz, TikTok, YouTube, X, Instagram and Facebook. There is no official status page, so when the question is "why isn't PolyBuzz working?", the subreddit is effectively the status page. No official page mentions an API either.

The Google Play listing is 'PolyBuzz: Chat with AI Friends' by CLOUD WHALE INTERACTIVE TECHNOLOGY LLC., with the package name ai.socialapps.speakmaster. Three names and a package called speakmaster: the rename left more loose ends than an edit with no shot list.

None of this stops people using it. Google Play rates PolyBuzz 4.27 stars from 1,176,583 ratings and shows 50M+ downloads. The app was updated on Sep 21, 2026, and the interface is offered in 28 languages.

Plenty of people clearly put up with everything on this list, and I understand why: the free chat is good enough to forgive a lot.

The age question, again

The web age gate is a single checkbox with no date-of-birth entry. The FAQ's graded age modes contradict the adults-only rule in the Terms. And the front page puts fandom characters who are not adults in their source material into romance scenarios.

Those three facts sit badly together. Of everything on this list, they're what I'd want fixed first, well ahead of the timers and the footer. Timers are annoying; this part is a trust problem.

It's also wrong for anyone who wants refunds or to own what they generate: there are no refunds, and the IP of generated content belongs to the company. And if you want long, rich replies on the free Standard model, look elsewhere. Newcomers to companion apps could do worse for a first look, since nothing here costs money until you choose it.

My own fit was somewhere in the middle: a story person who liked the free chat and had no patience for the ads. If that sounds like you, keep it free, and keep your expectations about memory modest. If the ads start winning, leave rather than pay to make them stop, unless you'd happily pay for the app without them.

The spreadsheet isn't glamorous, but a subscription I've written down is one I remember to end. The renewal email did its job, just not the one PolyBuzz intended.

The safest time to cancel is soon after you subscribe. Benefits run to the end of the period either way, so cancelling early costs nothing and removes the chance of a renewal you forgot about.

On iOS, cancel via the Settings app > Apple ID > Subscriptions > PolyBuzz > Cancel Subscription. On Android, it's the Google Play Store app > menu > Subscriptions > PolyBuzz > Cancel Subscription.

Know what the charge looks like

Chargeback-lookup sites disagree on the card-statement descriptor, some listing 'POLYBUZZ AI', 'PolyBuzz Payment' or 'POLYBUZZ PLATFORM' and others 'AWX Cloud Whale Intera' or 'AWX*Cloud Whale Interactive'; no purchase has confirmed it. If a Cloud Whale charge turns up on a statement, this app is the likely source. Screenshot your receipt when you pay, so you can match the name later.

Deleting the account

The Terms say account deletion is done via Setting – Account – Delete, and the site footer also has a "Delete Account" link. Deletion is irreversible, and it can be suspended while the account is in a dispute. After deletion, backup copies may persist until the backup system is next updated.

Irreversible means irreversible, so assume your stories and characters go with it.

Memory is the weak spot. It holds for an evening and slips overnight, and the tool that promises to fix it sits in the most expensive tier.

The free tier is the best thing about PolyBuzz. Text chat behaves as unlimited, and the cost is ads, which some people shrug off and I can't.

Value for money is mixed. Basic is fairly priced for ad-free chat and longer memory; the upper tiers sell models the paywall only describes in adjectives.

Images and voice are mixed too: a busy, capable image generator with a stingy free counter, and voice that is playback rather than conversation.

Privacy and terms score low because of the no-refund rule, company-owned content and vague wording on chat training. Cancelling is ordinary, billing is muddied by two company names, and content settings are weak, with no controls, a jumpy filter and a front page that sits awkwardly with the age rule.

Where it wins is the front door. Free text chat that behaves as unlimited, a library in the millions and a one-minute email sign-up make it one of the easiest apps in this category to start. The character import is a real plus for anyone moving characters from elsewhere, and the filter, while jumpy, sits on the looser side of Character.AI's.

Where it loses is group play. Review sites that credit real multi-character group chat to CrushOn AI, OurDream AI, Wsup AI and Nastia AI never include PolyBuzz in that list. That matches what's on offer now: multiple characters sit inside a paid top-tier model rather than a room you set up for free, and knight-and-barista chaos isn't something a new user can reproduce cheaply.

It also loses on memory and on pricing manners. Memory on the Standard model fades overnight, and the discount theatre makes the real prices harder to read than they need to be.

My ranking logic is simple. If I want free, crowded, fandom-flavoured roleplay, PolyBuzz is near the top. If I want group scenes, lasting memory or a store that tells me the real price the first time, I'd look at the others in the table first, and come back here for the free chat.

My best memories of it are a narrator who tracked suspects better than me and a knight with strong opinions about oat milk. Neither of those needed the top tier, which tells you where the real value sat. It earned a spot in my evenings for a while, which is more than most apps manage and less than it could have kept.

What pushed me out wasn't the price. It was the fruit ads, the timers and the feeling that the free version was tuned to annoy me into paying. I'd still recommend the free tier for fandom roleplay, if you have a thick skin for ads, and I'd only pay monthly, for a feature you can name.

The leftovers are small: a thousand coins' worth of fedora lighting, and a detective who forgot his own case overnight. I'd call that a fair trade for a few weeks of noir on a budget. If the ads ever go and the memory stays, I'd come back and pay without thinking twice.