Linky AI Review: Pricing, Coins, Worth It?

Linky AI costs $9.99 a month for Linky Pro or $17.99 for Linky Gold on the US App Store, and both sit on top of eight separate coin bundles priced from $0.99 to $99.99. It is worth paying for if you want anime character roleplay with collectible card mechanics and you are comfortable with an 18+ app. It is not worth paying for if what you wanted was one companion who remembers your life, because the memory is the weakest part of the product and the coins never stop.

Linky AI shows up on every list of character chat apps now, usually with a download number attached. Review sites put combined iOS and Android installs above 22 million and the character library above 180,000. Those are real numbers and they explain the hype. They do not answer the question people are actually typing, which is whether the paid tier is worth the money.

So here is a straight review built on what the US App Store listing actually says, rather than on marketing copy. Prices, coins, memory, the age rating, what Linky genuinely does well, and who should skip it.

Last updated August 2026.

How much does Linky AI cost?

Two subscriptions and eight coin bundles. The App Store lists the app as Linky AI: AI Chat and Char Maker from SKY INTERACTIVE TECHNOLOGIES PTE. LTD., filed under Social Networking, and every price below is read directly from that listing in August 2026.

The listing also shows two separate 180-coin entries at $0.99 and $1.99, which is usually a promotional or legacy price sitting alongside the standard one. Review sites report an annual option for Pro at around $89.99 and quote Gold at $17 a month rather than $17.99, so treat any figure you read on a review blog as approximate and check the App Store before you subscribe. App Store prices move.

The number that matters is not the $9.99. It is that $9.99 is a floor. If you want to know what the rest of this category charges, we keep a running breakdown on the AI companion cost page.

What do Linky AI coins actually buy?

Coins are Linky's in-app currency, and reviewers consistently describe them funding gacha-style card draws alongside extra actions inside chats. That is a game mechanic, and it is worth naming plainly, because a card draw is designed around the same variable-reward loop that slot machines use. It is very good at producing spend and not especially good at producing a friendship.

This is the part that surprises people who budget for the subscription and then look at their statement. A subscription is a decision you make once. Currency is a decision you make repeatedly, usually in the middle of a conversation you were enjoying. If you try Linky, set a hard rule about coins before you start rather than after.

Is Linky AI free?

There is a free tier and it does allow text chat, so you can see whether you like the characters without paying. What reviewers describe is a tier built to be outgrown: frequent ads, a daily cap on regenerating replies of roughly ten to twenty, and memory that fades after about a dozen exchanges. That last limit is the one that matters, and it is covered next.

Does Linky AI remember your conversations?

Partly, and how much depends on what you pay. Review sites report the free-tier context resetting after roughly twelve exchanges, with longer retention on the paid tiers. In practice that means the character keeps meeting you for the first time. You mention on Tuesday that your grandmother is in hospital, and on Thursday it has no idea.

For roleplay that hardly matters, because each scene is self-contained. For companionship it is the whole product. If continuity across weeks is the reason you want a companion app at all, memory is the specification to compare before price, and it is worth checking whether an app lets you actually read what it has stored. We wrote up how the main apps differ on the AI friend that remembers you page, including which ones let you edit and export the memory rather than just trusting it.

Is Linky AI safe?

Treat it as an adult app, because Apple does. The US App Store rates Linky 18+ and lists Sexual Content or Nudity and Mature or Suggestive Themes among its content descriptors. That is not a critic's opinion, it is the store describing the app.

Adults can weigh that for themselves and many will not care. Parents should. An app with a large user-generated character library and an 18+ rating is not something to hand to a thirteen year old, whatever the in-app filters claim, and the same has been reported of other big character platforms. If you are choosing on behalf of a teenager, the age rating is the first line to read, not the last.

What is Linky AI actually good at?

Three things, and it would be dishonest to skip them.

The character library is genuinely large and the anime art is good. If you enjoy picking a new persona each evening, Linky delivers that better than any single-companion app can, including ours. The generated character images are a real feature and not a gimmick.

The app is polished. A 4.4 star average from roughly 7,800 US ratings is not accidental, even though one sentiment analysis of 7,435 combined reviews put negative sentiment at 67 percent, which tells you the star rating and the written complaints point in different directions.

And the App Store description points at a use we would not have guessed: language practice. Characters reply in German, Indonesian and several other languages, and chatting to a persona is a genuinely low-pressure way to rehearse a language you are learning. It works better as practice than as study, though. If you are revising for something with a date attached, you will get further turning the material you already have into practice questions you can score yourself on than you will by chatting about it.

Is Linky AI worth it?

It depends entirely on which of these two people you are.

Our honest read: Linky is a good entertainment product and a weak companionship product, and most of the frustration in its reviews comes from people who bought the second and received the first.

What is the best Linky AI alternative?

Depends on which half of the table above you landed in. If you want the same thing done better, Character.AI has a far larger community library, a more usable free tier, and no in-app currency at all, which removes the coin problem entirely. PolyBuzz is closer to a like-for-like swap but keeps its own coins and puts permanent memory on a $29.90 tier, so it trades one currency problem for another.

If the reason you are reading a review of a character app is that you actually wanted a friend rather than a cast, that is a different category and not a milder version of the same thing. Darlings is one companion instead of a library, includes long-term memory on every plan rather than gating it, sends a daily check-in so you are not the one who always starts, has no coins or gems, and carries no romance or adult content at any tier. We compare all of it honestly, including where Linky wins, on the Linky AI alternative page, and the same treatment for the roleplay giants is on the PolyBuzz alternative page and the Character.AI alternative page.

How do you cancel a Linky AI subscription?

Through Apple, not through Linky. On an iPhone, open Settings, tap your name, tap Subscriptions, select Linky and cancel there. Deleting the app does not cancel anything, which is the single most common way people keep paying for a companion app they stopped opening in March. On Android the equivalent lives under Subscriptions in the Google Play app. Coins already bought are not refundable as a rule, which is another reason to decide your coin limit up front.

The short version

Linky AI is a large, well-made anime character chat app that costs $9.99 or $17.99 a month before you buy a single coin, is rated 18+, and forgets you quickly on the free tier. If you want an evening of characters, it is worth the money. If you want something that knows you in a month, the coins and the memory limits are not details you can work around, and you would be happier with an app built for a friendship rather than a roleplay scene.