Plain-English definitions of the terms you will meet across our reviews. For adults 18+.
The AI companion category has picked up its own vocabulary, and a lot of it is jargon borrowed from machine learning or coined by the apps themselves. This glossary defines the terms we use across the leaderboard, the reviews and the blog, in plain language. If a word on this site sends you here, that is the point.
New to the category? Start with our benchmark explainer for how the scoring works, then the leaderboard for the picks.
Read how we scoreSoftware that simulates an ongoing personal relationship through chat, and often voice and images. Under the hood it is a large language model given a character description and your conversation history. "AI girlfriend" is the same idea framed romantically. We use "AI companion" as the umbrella term across this site.
Not safe for work: adult or explicit content. An NSFW-capable app permits it for users 18 and over, in chat, voice or image generation. Some mainstream apps, such as Character.AI and Replika, filter or block it. Content freedom is one of the five criteria we score, precisely because it decides what an app can be used for.
Large language model: the AI system that actually writes a companion's replies. It reads your messages plus the character definition and predicts a fitting in-character response. Differences in the underlying model, and how an app prompts it, are a big part of why chat quality varies so much across the leaderboard.
The character definition, personality, backstory, tone and speaking style, that an app wraps around the model so a companion stays in character. Consistent personas are what keep a scene coherent turn after turn. Swipey's personalities, from Sweetheart to Goth, are personas you can pick or combine when you build your own.
A pay-as-you-go virtual currency spent on premium actions like image generation, rather than a flat monthly fee. Swipey uses "hearts." The appeal is fairness for irregular use: a quiet week costs nothing. We compare this against subscriptions in our pricing guide.
Playing out a scene or scenario in character rather than open-ended chat: a specific setting, a defined dynamic, a story you steer together. It leans hard on persona consistency and memory. We rank the apps that hold a scenario best in our roleplay roundup.
An app's ability to recall earlier details, within a conversation and between sessions. Good memory is why a companion remembers the name you gave, the scene you set, or what you said last week. Weak memory makes even a fluent chatbot feel like it is meeting you for the first time each visit.
The small unit of text a language model processes, roughly a word-piece. It matters because "context windows", how much conversation the model can hold at once, and some pricing are measured in tokens rather than words. When an app forgets earlier turns, a token limit is often the reason.
CompanionRanked is owned and operated by the team behind Swipey AI, and part of the Companion Review Collective. These definitions are our own plain-English explanations, written for adults 18+. Nothing here is a fabricated user review.
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