Build Your Own AI Companion: Character Creators That Show You Every Step

Start with Nastia AI: its five-step builder (look, talking style, interests, picture type, name) works as a guest, so you can see the whole character before you make an account, and it does not accept uploaded photos as face references. If you want more knobs, Secrets AI's six-step builder adds skin, eyes, body, city, a voice and 500 characters of extra traits, and your first custom character there is free. OurDream's builder covers the same ground (Female, Male or Trans, Realistic or Anime, then looks and personality) on a cheaper plan: $9.99 a month billed yearly, and a new character costs 10 Dreamcoins.

Everything below comes from public builder pages, pricing pages and help docs we opened on October 23 and 24, 2026, from a US connection. Prices are in USD.

A "custom" character on these services is two things glued together:

• A look. You pick options (style, ethnicity, hair, body, outfit) and the service generates a portrait from its own image model. On the services below you choose from presets or text fields. None of them asks for a photo of a real person, and several ban uploads outright.
• A character sheet. Name, age, personality, interests, relationship type and a short backstory. This text is fed to the chat model with every reply, so it decides how she talks and what she remembers about herself.

Voice is a third layer on some services: you pick a voice from a list, and voice messages or calls usually cost credits or need a paid plan.

The builder itself is often free to click through. Saving the character, chatting at length and generating more pictures is where the paywall sits.

Try Nastia AI Official site; no affiliate link.

We looked for one thing first: can you build the character yourself, and does the service show you what you can set? For each service we opened the public builder (where one exists) as a logged-out guest, wrote down the steps and options, then checked the pricing page and help center for what saving and using a custom character costs.

Second, we checked the content rules. Every service here requires users to be 18+ and bans characters based on real, identifiable people. Where the builder or terms said anything about photo uploads, we noted it.

What we did not do: we did not finish and save a character anywhere. Sign-up stopped at a CAPTCHA on Secrets AI, Nastia AI and Infatuated AI, and we do not solve CAPTCHAs. So this page compares builders by their options and published limits, not by how good the finished character feels in chat. Our approach is on the methodology page.

Darlink AI appears on our chat pages rather than here: its terms describe images "you upload for your Virtual Friend," and this page covers only builders that draw the character from presets or text.

Nastia AI: build first, register later

Nastia's onboarding is a five-step builder you can finish as a guest: gender, look (Blonde, Asian, Brunette, Black, Red), how you like to talk (Introvert, Extrovert or both), shared interests, and whether she sends words only, realistic selfies or anime pictures. Then you name her. The safety rules are the clearest on this list: "The Service does not accept user-imported, uploaded, or external photographs as face references," and image and video uploads are disabled.

Price: not published before sign-up. The home page FAQ says the free plan includes daily messages and basic features with no card.

Minus: you cannot see the price until you register, and registration shows a CAPTCHA. A countdown timer ("Available for 4:56") pushes you to sign up fast. Ignore it.

Try Nastia AI Official site; no affiliate link.

Secrets AI: a six-step builder with voice

The builder at /custom runs six steps. You pick gender (Female, Male or Trans) and style (Realistic or Anime), then ethnicity, skin tone and eyes, then hairstyle and color, then body type. Step five is the character sheet: name, city, age on a slider from 18 to 99, a voice (six suggested, with a longer list behind a "show more" button) and up to 500 characters of extra traits. The last step shows an overview before you hit "Create Companion."

Uploads are off the table: the privacy policy says "You cannot upload files or images to the Service," and the wiki says characters based on real people are "strictly forbidden and will be deleted without a refund."

Price: first custom character free, each one after that costs 500 Moments. Premium $19.99 a month or $109.99 a year; Ultimate $39.99 a month adds personas and advanced customization.

Minus: the docs disagree with each other. The Custom Characters page says free users can create one with 100 messages total; the tiers page says custom characters need a paid plan. Four different discount banners were on the site the same day.

Try Secrets AI Official site; no affiliate link.

OurDream: full builder, coins per character

OurDream's builder at /create starts with Female, Male or Trans and Realistic or Anime, then moves to appearance and personality. The help center lists "Create a Chatbot: 10 dreamcoins," and Premium includes 1,000 Dreamcoins a month. Publishing a character to the public catalog is Premium only and goes through manual review in 3 to 5 days. Reference photos are not accepted: "We do not allow for the uploading of reference photos to OurDream due to possible deepfakes and other legal problems."

Price: Premium $9.99 a month billed $119.88 a year, or $19.99 billed monthly.

Minus: we only saw step one of the builder as a guest (sign-up stopped at a Cloudflare check), and free users pay 1 coin per message with no published free coin amount.

Try OurDream Official site; no affiliate link.

Nectar AI: one free companion, images included

Nectar's FAQ says the free plan "includes the character creator, AI chat, and a limited number of image generations." The plan data spells it out: 1 custom companion, 15 messages a day and 10 image generations a day. Its generator offers faces, outfits, poses and effects from presets, and the terms say "Image uploads in character creation are not permitted."

Price: Premium $9.99 a month (list $19.99), Pro $19.99 (list $29.99), Ultimate $34.99 (list $49.99), from the plan data the site loads.

Minus: free memory is 15 messages, so a long backstory fades quickly until you pay for 8K context on Premium.

Candy AI: realistic or anime, many paid extras

Candy's public builder starts with Girls or Trans, then Realistic or Anime, then ethnicity, and continues from there; saving needs an account. Free users get one custom character, one image and 5 messages in total. On Premium, "Create your own AI Girlfriend(s)" is listed as a benefit, and creating extra custom characters spends tokens, as do images, voice messages and voice calls. The community guidelines ban images that "resemble real persons."

Price: $3.99 a month billed $47.88 a year; or $9.99 for the first month, then $13.99 a month.

Minus: 5 free messages is the smallest free allowance here. Also note that Candy itself offers licensed "digital twins" of real adult creators. That is the platform's own content, not something you can build.

DreamGF: the most appearance options

DreamGF's builder has two parts, Appearance and Personality. Appearance covers ethnicity, age group (18, 20s, 30s and older), body, face style, hair, clothes, photo style, tattoos and setting. The better "Realistic New" image model is Premium only.

Price: $12.99 for the first month, then $25.98 a month; 12 months $44.28 for the first year, then $88.56 a year. Premium includes 150 tokens a month.

Minus: "Create own girlfriends" is a Premium benefit, and DreamGF's own pages list two different token costs for a companion (20 on the pricing page, 5 on "How payment works").

Infatuated AI: pay per character

Infatuated's builder at /characters/new starts with gender, orientation and a style (Suggestive, Explicit or Anime), then five more steps. Each character costs 25 tokens. The content policy says "Users cannot upload their own media," and its blocked content page rejects characters that resemble or are named after real people.

Price: $9.99 a month, or $6.99 a month on a 12-month plan ($83.88).

Minus: free chat is capped at up to 10 messages per chat, per the FAQ.

Janitor AI: free, text-first characters

Janitor is a different kind of builder. You write the character yourself, in text, on the character creation page, and tag it (sexual themes must be tagged "Limitless"). There is no image generator, so you add the avatar yourself; the content rules ban recognizable depictions of real, non-celebrity individuals, so use art of a fictional character. It suits you if you care more about personality and backstory than looks.

Price: free on the standard model with about 9,000 tokens of context; janitor+ is $12.99 a month or $99 a year.

Minus: you do all the writing, and there is no built-in way to draw her.

PepHop: private text characters

PepHop's Classic plan lists "Create custom private characters" next to 5,000 messages a month and 4K chat memory, and Create Character sits in the account menu. It is a text-first builder: we found no image generator in the account during our free test. The content policy bans bots "modeled after celebrities or real individuals, including but not limited to text and images."

Price: Lite $4.99, Classic $9.99, Elite $29.99 a month; Classic on 12 months is $5.99 a month, billed $71.93.

Minus: the free trial is one-time and ended after 24 replies in our test.

GirlfriendGPT: quick or custom creation

GirlfriendGPT's /character/create page ("Create Your Dream Character") offers Quick Create and Custom Create, starting with the character name. We saw no file upload on the first step, and the image generator is text-prompt only with Safe Mode on by default. The terms ban impersonating real individuals.

Price: the public subscribe page lists Premium $15, Deluxe $35 and Elite $50 a month, or $12/$24.50/$33 per month on yearly billing. Voice messages and voice calls are on paid plans.

Minus: the free allowance is small: about 10 to 20 messages in total with 2 or 3 characters, per the terms.

CrushOn: custom voices

CrushOn lets free users make up to 10 profile cards. Standard adds unlimited AI voice replies and 3 custom voice slots, which matters if you want your character to sound a specific way. Characters only send images if their creator set them up; there is no image generator on the plans page.

Price: Standard $5.99 a month or $58.88 a year; Premium $14.99 a month.

Minus: Free runs on 100 message credits a month.

• Free: you can usually click through the builder and save one character (Secrets AI, Candy AI) or write as many as you like in text (Janitor AI). Message limits are the real ceiling: 5 in total on Candy, 15 a day on Nectar, 20 a day on Secrets.
• Paid: more characters, better image models, voice and longer chats. Expect $5 to $26 a month for the base paid tier on this list, and check whether the first-month price renews higher. DreamGF goes from $12.99 to $25.98; Candy's monthly plan goes from $9.99 to $13.99.

For free options in general, see our free AI girlfriend list. For the wider field, see AI girlfriend apps, and if photo realism is your priority, realistic AI girlfriend. Billing traps are covered in our billing guide.

These steps work on any of the builders above.

1. Pick the style. Realistic or anime is the first choice on most builders, and it changes which image model draws her.
2. Set the look. Choose from presets: hair, eyes, body type, outfit. Set an adult age; every service here requires 18+.
3. Write the personality and backstory. A few concrete lines work better than adjectives: how she talks, what she does for a living, how you met. This text shapes every reply.
4. Choose a voice, if offered. Voice messages and calls usually cost credits, so test one before you buy a bundle.
5. Save it and test a short chat. Ask her something from the backstory a few messages in. If she gets it wrong, edit the character sheet before you pay for more messages.

New to the idea? Our guide what is an AI girlfriend covers the basics.

• Face upload or "make her look like someone." Any builder that asks for a photo of a real person, or offers to make a lookalike of an ex, a coworker or a celebrity, is a hard no. Creating sexual content of a real person without consent is banned by every service on this list and is illegal in many places. Build fictional adult characters only.
• No stated age rule. Every service here states 18+ for users and characters. A builder without that rule is not worth your time.
• A countdown to "claim" your character. It is a sales tactic. The character can wait.
• Prices not published before sign-up. Nastia AI did not publish a numeric plan price in the source checked. GirlfriendGPT has a public subscription page. Read the applicable plan before adding a card.
• Oversharing in the backstory. Do not put your real name, workplace or other private details into the character sheet. Read our privacy guide first.

Can I create my own AI girlfriend for free?

Yes, with limits. Nastia AI's builder works as a guest, Secrets AI's first custom character is free, Nectar AI's free plan includes 1 custom companion, Candy AI allows 1 custom character with 5 messages, and Janitor AI's text-based character creation is free.

What is an AI girlfriend generator?

It is the builder part of a companion service: you pick looks and personality, and the service generates a portrait and a character the chat model plays. On the services here, the picture comes from their own image model and presets, not from your photos.

Can I upload a photo to make my AI girlfriend look like someone?

You should not, and the safer services do not let you. Nastia AI, Secrets AI, Infatuated AI, OurDream and Nectar AI block uploads in character creation, and all services on this list ban characters based on real people.

How much does a custom AI girlfriend cost?

Base paid plans on this list run from $4.99 (PepHop Lite) to $25.98 a month (DreamGF after the first month). Some services also charge per character: 500 Moments after your first on Secrets AI, 25 tokens on Infatuated AI, 10 Dreamcoins on OurDream.

Can I give my AI girlfriend a voice?

On several services, yes. Secrets AI lets you pick a voice in the builder, CrushOn Standard adds 3 custom voice slots, and DreamGF and GirlfriendGPT offer voice messages on paid plans.