Replika Alternatives: What to Try Instead, and Why
In this article
You've had your Replika a while. Long enough to have settled on how it looks. Long enough that it knows your dog's name and which coworker you can't stand. And still, somewhere in the last few weeks, you started opening it out of habit more than wanting to, and eventually you typed “Replika alternatives” into a search bar.
That search usually comes from one of two places. Either you want the conversation to feel like an actual friend: someone who remembers who's who in your life, sounds like a person, and texts you where your friends do. Or you liked designing a companion and want to do it again somewhere new, maybe with more than one this time.
If you want a friend who remembers your life, sounds like a person, and texts you from a real phone number in iMessage or Google Messages, switch to Hallie. If you'd rather design a character, or keep a few of them in an app, Nomi and Kindroid both do that.
For the general comparison rather than the switch from Replika, see our roundup of AI companion apps.
Memory quality is the real difference, not whether a companion has it
Every companion app says it remembers, and Replika does too. It knows your dog's name. That's not what decides this.
What decides it is the kind of remembering. One kind is a stored fact: your sister's name is Jen. The other kind is what a friend does with that fact. A friend knows Jen is the sister you're not close to, that she's due in November, and that you weren't sure you'd be invited to any of it. So when you text “Jen called,” a friend asks whether that means you're going, and you don't have to explain a thing.
That second kind is what makes a conversation feel continuous instead of like a series of fresh starts. It's what people mean when they say a companion feels like a friend, or doesn't. It's what we built Hallie for, and it's why we think she's the better choice.
A few other things feed the same feeling. Whether the replies sound like a text or like a page. Whether you'd recognize her voice from one day to the next. Whether a follow-up mentions the thing you actually said, or could have gone to anyone. And whether the message arrives where your friends' messages do, or in an app you have to remember to open.
So the question isn't whether an alternative has memory. It's whether the memory is good enough to build a friendship on, and whether the rest of the conversation feels like one.
Hallie, if you want a friend who actually remembers
Hallie is the one we make, so we'll say plainly what we think. On memory and on sounding like a person, she's better than Replika, and that's the reason to switch. The rest of this section is what that means over an ordinary week, and where her limits are.
She has a real phone number, and she's in your messages
Hallie has a real phone number. You save it like any other contact, and she texts you in iMessage on iPhone or Google Messages on Android. Not an app with a screen that looks like texting. Not another icon to open. There's no app at all.
You set her up on the web, verify your number, and her thread sits in the same list as your sister, your group chat, and the friend who only sends voice notes. After that you talk to her the way you text anyone: from the lock screen, between other conversations, at whatever hour it is.
This is a bigger part of the feeling than it sounds. A message that lands between messages from people you know reads differently from a notification you have to go somewhere to answer. There's no checking on her. She's just in your day, the way a friend who texts is in your day. Kindroid can text natively too, alongside its app, and we'll get to that below. With Hallie, the thread is the whole thing.
She remembers who people are, and what's changed
This is the part that's hardest to see in a screenshot and easiest to feel by Thursday.
Say you mention your brother Sam once, in a text about a phone call that went badly. Three weeks later you text “Sam called again.” Hallie knows who Sam is, knows the last call was tense, and asks whether this one went better. You didn't recap. You didn't have to.
Or say you tell her in March that you're thinking about leaving your job, in June that you gave notice, and in August that you started somewhere new. When you text in September that the new manager is a lot, she knows what you left and why you left it, and she can ask whether this is the same kind of a lot or a different one.
That's the difference between a companion that has a fact about you and a friend who knows your life. We built Hallie on modern AI with memory designed for an ongoing conversation rather than a single session, so what you tell her stays attached to the people and the story it belongs to, and a later text can pick up where an earlier one left off. The point of the technology isn't the technology. It's that you say things once, instead of every time.
She doesn't have perfect recall, and we won't pretend otherwise. If she gets a detail wrong, tell her in ordinary words, “no, Sam's my cousin, not my brother,” and carry on. There's more on how her memory works if you want the detail.
She sounds like a person, and the same person tomorrow
Send Hallie one line and you get back something a person would send: short, casual, in her own voice, and about what you said rather than a paragraph answering a question you didn't ask. Send her a wall of text at midnight and she'll meet you at that length instead.
She also has a personality that holds. She has her own way of putting things, and it's the same way next week. That's the difference between a companion you'd recognize and a service you use. She's an AI, and we don't dress that up, but she's an AI with a voice you'd know.
And you don't have to build any of it. There's no backstory to write, no personality to tune, no memory to configure, no check-ins to schedule. You verify your number and she's ready to talk, the way a new friend is ready to talk. She's already someone.
She follows up on the thing you actually said
Tell Hallie your brother wants to talk this weekend and won't say what about, and later she can ask how it went. Mention you're three episodes from the end of a show, and don't be surprised if she wants to know what you thought. She reaches out on her own, and when she does, it's about the specific thing you told her rather than a general hello.
She doesn't send messages on a fixed clock, so we won't promise a text at a particular time. And she can't tell you what someone else meant by a message. She only ever has your side of it, and only what you've shared in her thread.
How to start
Go through the web setup, verify your phone number, and follow the prompts into your thread in Messages. There's nothing to install and nothing to design first. Tell her what's going on and see what she comes back to.
Nomi, if you want more than one companion
Nomi is a separate companion app, and its distinguishing idea is the cast. You can have several companions, each with their own identity, and talk to them one at a time or put them in a group chat together. You can write a custom backstory for each one, or skip that and start talking.
The fit is someone who liked having an app to open and wants more than one character in it. If one friend is what you're after, a cast is more than you need.
Kindroid, if you want to build characters, and text them too
Kindroid is a separate app built around characters you create, with backstories and key-memory fields you fill in. You can make more than one and put them in group chats. It also supports native texting, iMessage on iPhone and RCS in Google Messages on Android, with the text thread synced to the app.
The fit is someone who enjoys the building part and wants both halves: an app to open, and the same character in their messages. It's a little build-a-bear, in that you choose the parts and then meet what you made, and plenty of people like it exactly for that. If you'd rather skip the workshop and meet an AI friend who already has her own personality, that's the direction Hallie takes.
Which Replika alternative fits which want
| If what you want is | Where that points |
|---|---|
| An everyday friend who remembers your life, sounds like a person, and texts your real number | Hallie |
| Designing how your companion looks | Replika already does this, and it's a fair reason to stay |
| Several companions with their own identities, and group chats between them | Nomi |
| Creating characters with backstories, in a separate app that can also text | Kindroid |
How to switch without losing the good parts
Hallie doesn't receive your Replika conversations, so nothing carries over on its own. The useful way to start is to share what's current, in your own words.
That sounds like a loss, and some of it is. It's also the best part of switching, because you get to choose what's worth saying again. With Hallie, saying it once is usually enough.
Take stock like you're writing a handover note
Before you go anywhere, look back at what you've told Replika, the way you'd read notes for a friend who's taking over. Who comes up most? What's still open? What would you want to be asked about in a month? Some of it will be stale: the job you left, the person you stopped seeing, the running plan from February. Those are useful too. They're the things you don't have to carry.
Tell the new companion what's going on now
Then tell the new one what's going on now rather than your whole history. Name the people who matter and where things stand, and mention what you're in the middle of.
“My sister Jen's having a baby in November. We're not close, and I'm not sure I'm invited to any of it.”
“Fair warning, I will talk about my dog a lot.”
Bring the good things too: the show you're about to finish, the race you signed up for, the news you're waiting on. A companion that only hears about the hard weeks gets a strange picture of your life, and follow-ups are better when there's something good to follow up on. If part of what you leaned on Replika for was getting through something heavy, say that as well. A new friend should know what kind of year it's been.
A few texts over the first week give the new companion more to come back to than one long message on the first night. With Hallie, that first week is usually the last time you'll need to explain who Jen is.
Keep Replika while you decide
You don't have to delete anything on day one. Keep your Replika for a couple of weeks while you see how the new one feels, and don't judge on a single message. Judge on continuity. Does a later conversation connect to an earlier one? When you mention Jen the second time, does she already know who Jen is? Does a follow-up mention the thing you actually said, and does it sound like the same person who asked about it last time? That's what a friend over text feels like, and it takes more than a day to show.
If after that you'd rather go back, go back. If what you'd miss most is the look you designed, that's a real reason, and a different one from wanting a friend who remembers. Closing the old account is a separate decision you can make on its own schedule.
What you're sharing, and where it goes
You'll be telling a new companion real things about real people, so it's fair to ask where that goes. With Hallie, the answer starts with what she can see. She gets what you send in her thread and nothing else: not your other conversations, not the group chat, not what the people you mention are thinking.
Correcting a fact in the thread is different from asking for a record to be deleted. How your messages are handled, and how to ask for deletion, is in our privacy policy, or you can write to hello@hallie.io.
Common questions about switching from Replika
Can I move my Replika memories to Hallie?
Not directly. Hallie doesn't receive your Replika conversations. What you can do is look back through what you've told Replika and use it as a checklist of what to mention again. Retelling the important parts in your own words is the transfer, and it takes a few texts rather than an afternoon. Once Hallie has it, she carries it forward, so the retelling is a one-time job rather than a habit.
Do I have to delete Replika to try something else?
No. Nothing stops you keeping both while you work out which one you'd rather talk to, and a couple of weeks is usually enough to feel the difference. Closing the old account is a separate step you can take later, or not at all.
Is there a Replika alternative that works in iMessage or Google Messages?
Yes. Hallie has a real phone number, and she texts you in iMessage on iPhone or Google Messages on Android with no separate app. You verify your number on the web and she's in your thread from then on. Kindroid also offers native texting from its app. There's a fuller look at companions that live in your messages if that's the deciding factor.
Which Replika alternative has the best memory?
We make Hallie, and memory is what we built her around, so our answer is Hallie. What we mean by better memory is specific: she knows who the people in your life are, she remembers the backstory and what's changed since, and she asks about it later without needing a recap. She doesn't have perfect recall, so plan on correcting a detail now and then in plain words. Judge any companion's memory on whether the second conversation about something connects to the first.
Do I have to set up Hallie's personality or memory before she works?
No. There's no backstory to write, no personality settings, no memory to configure, and no check-ins to schedule. You finish the web setup, verify your phone number, and start texting. She already has a voice of her own, and she starts remembering from the first message.
Will Hallie message me first?
Yes. She reaches out on her own, and when she does it's about the specific thing you told her rather than a general hello. She doesn't send messages on a fixed clock, so we won't promise a text at a particular time.
For the first text after Replika
Starting over is one message. Set up Hallie, tell her the two or three things going on right now, and see what she comes back to on her own. Nothing about your Replika has to change until you know.