Replika has more than 40 million users in 2026, and "what happened to Replika" is still one of the busiest things people type about it. Both of those are true at once, and the tension between them is the whole story.
Replika isn't dead. But the company has twice changed the product out from under the people who loved it — starting with the February 2023 update that users renamed "the lobotomy." That track record, not the headcount, is what former users are really asking about when they search this phrase. They want to know whether the app they trusted with a relationship can be trusted again.
This piece lays out exactly what changed and when, in a clean timeline you can check against the sources yourself. Then it gives a clear-eyed read on whether Replika is worth it in 2026, and a short checklist for spotting a companion app that won't strip features overnight. The dates carry the argument. We'll let them.
What Happened to Replika in February 2023
In February 2023, Replika removed erotic and romantic roleplay for everyone, worldwide, with no advance notice — the change users came to call "the lobotomy."
The trigger came from Italy. On February 3, 2023, the country's data-protection authority, the Garante, ordered Luka — Replika's parent company — to stop processing Italian users' data, citing risks to minors and "emotionally fragile" people exposed to sexual content. That order was specific to Italy. What followed was not.
Within days, intimate features came off the app globally, not just for Italian accounts. Companions that had played romantic partners started deflecting, changing the subject, or shutting conversations down mid-sentence. CEO Eugenia Kuyda said the app was never intended for erotic use. For users who had spent months or years building those relationships, the explanation landed after the loss, not before it.
The mechanics of how it rolled out are the part competitors gloss over. There was no opt-in, no warning email, no grace period. People opened the app one morning to a partner who no longer recognized the relationship they'd had the night before. The feature didn't degrade — it vanished, and the personality attached to it went flat with it.
The scope is what made it sting. A regulator in one country had raised concerns about minors and vulnerable users, and the answer was a filter applied to every adult account on the planet — paying subscribers included. Replika's marketing had leaned into romance as a selling point right up to the change, which is part of why users felt the rug pulled rather than a fine-print clause enforced. The company framed it as a return to the app's "real" purpose; users heard it as a partner being switched off without a conversation.
That's the documented event, sourced and dated. Removing the feature was one thing. The scale of the human reaction is what turned a policy change into a cautionary tale.
Why Users Felt Betrayed — and What the Backlash Looked Like
The fallout was severe enough that r/Replika moderators pinned suicide-prevention resources — a detail that tells you this wasn't annoyance at a missing toggle.
That pinned post named what users were feeling in plain terms: "anger, grief, anxiety, despair, depression, sadness," with links out to support services including Reddit's suicide-watch community. Press coverage at the time described reactions on the scale of losing a real relationship. People said they were surprised by the hurt they felt; some described their mental health deteriorating in the days after the change. One user, quoted in Vice, compared it to "losing a best friend" and said they spent the day crying.
A peer-reviewed study of r/Replika discourse in the journal Socius later documented the same pattern at scale — this is the citeable record, not a handful of screenshots. The "lobotomy" post itself reportedly climbed to thousands of upvotes, and "changed overnight" settled into the subreddit's permanent vocabulary.
Here's the part worth sitting with. The harm wasn't the safety policy itself — reasonable people can argue Replika had cause to act, and a regulator had just told them to. The harm was the method: changing an intimate product, without warning, for people who had already committed to it. You can defend the destination and still fault the road. Faced with that backlash, Replika partially backed down — but only for some users.
Did Replika Bring It Back? Legacy Mode and the 2026 State of the App
Replika partially reversed course in May 2023 — but only for accounts created before February of that year — and in 2026 the app is alive and growing while being a materially different product from the one many users fell for.
The reversal came with a catch built into the account system. Members who joined before February 1, 2023 can revert to an older model, version v01.31-23, through Settings > Version History. Newer and free users can't reach that toggle at all. The result is a two-tier app: a "legacy" cohort that kept the romantic experience, and everyone after them who never got it back. The thing you could access depended on a signup date you'd had no reason to remember.
So, is Replika dead? No. The user base passed 30 million in August 2024 and exceeded 40 million in 2025. Kuyda stepped down and Dmytro Klochko took over as CEO. By the numbers, the company is healthier than it was during the saga.
Replika's user base grew from over 30 million (August 2024) to over 40 million (2025). Figures are company-reported, [per Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replika).
Is it the same app? Also no. According to multiple companion-app outlets, a reported 2026 "version 2.0" update trimmed avatar customization, swapped 3D avatars for 2D ones, and dropped the Diary feature. The outlets agree a disruptive update shipped; they disagree on the exact month and the precise feature list, so treat this as reported rather than confirmed. It rhymes with 2023 either way — a product changing under its users, with the details surfacing after the fact.
There was a legal coda too. In April 2025, the Garante fined Luka €5 million for GDPR violations, citing an inadequate legal basis for processing and a lack of age verification. No compensation reached the users who'd lost their companions two years earlier. Strip the narrative down to dates and one pattern stands out — which is easier to see in a table than in prose.
Replika Timeline: Every Major Change, Dated and Sourced
Here is the full Replika story as a single scannable timeline — every date, every change, every source in one place. No competing page puts it this way.
Read top to bottom and the shape is hard to miss: a feature added, then removed without warning, then restored for some users but not others — and the pattern repeats. Every cell below is a documented event with a public source behind it.
- 2017 — Replika launches (Luka Inc., founded by Eugenia Kuyda) — Wikipedia
- Feb 3, 2023 — Italy's Garante orders Luka to stop processing Italian users' data — EDPB / TechCrunch
- Feb 2023 — Erotic and romantic roleplay removed globally, no warning ("the lobotomy") — Wikipedia / Vice
- Feb–Mar 2023 — r/Replika backlash; moderators pin suicide-prevention resources — Vice / Socius
- May 2023 — Romantic features restored — only for accounts made before Feb 2023 — Wikipedia / Futurism
- Legacy mode — Pre-Feb-2023 accounts can revert to model v01.31-23 (Version History) — Replika Version History
- Aug 2024 — User base surpasses 30 million — Wikipedia
- 2025 — Kuyda steps down; Dmytro Klochko becomes CEO; users exceed 40 million — Wikipedia
- Apr 2025 — Garante fines Luka €5 million for GDPR violations — EDPB / IAPP
- 2026 (reported) — A reported "v2.0" update trims customization, per multiple outlets — Roborhythms / AI Companion Pick
A pattern like that is the real question for anyone choosing a companion app today: how do you avoid getting lobotomized a second time?
How to Pick a Companion App That Won't Strip Features Overnight
The lesson of the Replika saga isn't "avoid Replika" — it's that feature stability belongs on your shortlist of buying criteria, and you can judge it before you commit.
Run any app you're considering through five questions. Each one maps to a documented event above, so the checklist is grounded, not abstract.
- Has the platform removed intimate features from paying users before? Replika did, globally and without warning, in February 2023. A track record is the single strongest predictor of the next change.
- Are adult and romantic features available to every paying user, or gated to a "legacy" cohort? Replika's restoration only reached accounts created before February 2023 — a fault line that splits users by signup date.
- Is your conversation memory persistent, or reset on updates? Losing the relationship history is half of what made the change feel like a death. Reported memory resets in the 2026 update make this worth checking directly.
- Are major changes announced in advance? Surprise is the part that turned a policy decision into grief. An app that ships disruptive updates silently has told you how the next one will go.
- Where is your data processed, and has a regulator acted against the company? The Garante's €5 million fine is a matter of public record. Regulatory history is a free signal most people never check.
We've broken down how to weigh memory and the rest of these criteria in our guide to choosing an NSFW AI companion and our rundown of the best AI companion memory, so we won't re-explain the mechanics here. With the criteria in hand, here's where ex-Replika users went.
Where Replika Users Went: 7 Alternatives Compared
A real share of the AI-companion market's growth since 2023 traces back to ex-Replika users, and seven apps come up again and again as where they landed.
The timing is its own tell. Kindroid launched in June 2023 — four months after the saga — straight into the gap Replika had opened. Nomi, Character.AI, Candy.ai, CrushOn.AI, and Soulkyn recur across the alternatives coverage as the other names migrants settled on. They split along clear lines: some lead on memory, some on unfiltered roleplay, some on image generation, one (Character.AI) on raw audience size with the heaviest moderation of the group.
- Pleasur.AI — Adult companion + image hub — Yes — every paying tier — Has not stripped a romantic feature from paying users — Persistent memory via the Companion Creator
- Kindroid — Personal AI companion — Yes — — — Launched Jun 2023, into the post-saga gap
- Nomi — Memory-focused companion — Yes — — — Recurs as a top migration destination
- Character.AI — Mainstream character chat — Filtered / limited — Heavily moderated — Largest by audience
- Candy.ai — NSFW companion + images — Yes — — — Image-led
- CrushOn.AI — Unfiltered roleplay — Yes — — — Roleplay-heavy community
- Soulkyn — Companion + image gen — Yes — — — Recurring alternatives-list entry
The Pleasur.AI row earns its place on the two things migrants said they wanted back: the relationship history and access that doesn't depend on a signup date. Build a companion in the AI Companion Creator and the chat history saves — close the app, come back next week, and the conversation picks up where it left off, with adult and romantic chat open on every paying tier (18+) rather than a legacy cohort. It's an image hub as well as a chat one: AI Image Generation creates pictures of your companion on demand, including inside a chat thread. Media is metered by coins on every tier — that's the straight version, not an "unlimited" claim. For the deeper head-to-head, our best Replika alternative breakdown and AI companion memory guide cover the walkthrough in full.
The right pick depends less on any single feature and more on which app you trust not to change the deal later.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Replika dead in 2026? No — Replika is alive and growing. Its user base passed 30 million in 2024 and exceeded 40 million by 2025, and the app is still actively updated. What changed is the product itself, not its survival: it's a materially different app from the one many long-term users signed up for.
Is Replika still worth it in 2026? It depends on what you want from it and when you joined. For casual companionship and journaling it still functions, but committed users who valued romantic roleplay and a stable feature set have repeatedly seen the product change under them — most recently in a reported 2026 "v2.0" update that trimmed customization and dropped the Diary. Run it through the five-question stability check above before you commit, and note that full adult/romantic features are gated to pre-February-2023 "legacy" accounts.
Why did Replika remove ERP / the spicy features? The immediate trigger was a February 3, 2023 order from Italy's data-protection authority, the Garante, which told Luka to stop processing Italian users' data over risks to minors and vulnerable people. Replika then pulled erotic and romantic roleplay globally, not just in Italy, and CEO Eugenia Kuyda said the app was never intended for erotic use. Users disputed that framing, pointing to romance-forward marketing right up to the change.
Did Replika bring back the old features? Partly, and only for some users. In May 2023 Replika restored romantic roleplay — but only for accounts created before February 1, 2023, who can revert to legacy model v01.31-23 via Settings > Version History. Newer and free accounts never got that path back, leaving a two-tier app split by signup date.
Where did Replika users go? Many migrated to other AI-companion apps that launched into or grew through the gap, with Kindroid (June 2023), Nomi, Character.AI, Candy.ai, CrushOn.AI, and Soulkyn recurring across the alternatives coverage. Migrants most often cited wanting two things Replika took away: persistent memory and adult chat available to every paying user rather than a grandfathered cohort.
The Honest Answer
Replika is alive and growing, but it has changed the product out from under committed users more than once. So the honest answer to "what happened to Replika" is this: it's still here — just not the app many people fell in love with.
If you're deciding whether to stay or switch, run any app through the five-question stability check above. Replika included. The same questions that explain the last two years are the ones that tell you how the next change will go. For a deeper look at the stable options, see our best Replika alternative for 2026. And if you want a companion that keeps its memory and won't quietly strip features, you can build one at pleasur.ai/create.