Chai Ultra and Chai AI Subscription Pricing, App vs Web

Short answer: Chai sells two different subscriptions under one name, and they do not share an account. In the Chai app, Premium is $13.99 a month or $134.99 a year, and Chai Ultra is $29.99 a month or $19.99 a week. On the Chai website, Pro is $159.99 a year or $9.99 a week, with CHAI MAX on top at $90 a month or a metered $0.66 per 1,000 tokens. App prices come from Apple's in-app purchase list for CHAI, published by Chai Research Corp., and web prices from Chai's own pricing and FAQ pages. Both were read on 16 September 2026.

The detail that costs people money is in Chai's own FAQ: "Chai Web Pro and the Chai App are products of Chai Research Corp. They are separate platforms with no data sharing between the two." Pay for Ultra on your phone and the website does not know about it. Pay for Pro on the web and your app chats stay on the free tier. Decide which one you actually use before you pay for either.

How much is Chai Ultra?

Chai Ultra is $29.99 a month in the iPhone app, or $19.99 a week. Apple's listing for CHAI shows both, and it shows no annual Ultra plan among the purchases it discloses. It is the most expensive recurring plan in the app. Over a year, Ultra month to month comes to $359.88.

The weekly option is the one to be careful with. At $19.99 a week, a year of Ultra costs $1,039.48, which is 2.9 times the monthly price for the same tier. Weekly billing makes sense for exactly one person: someone who wants Ultra for a single week and will cancel before the second charge. For anyone who keeps it, it is the most expensive way to pay for anything Chai sells.

What does a Chai AI subscription cost on each platform?

Here is every Chai price we could read at source, with the yearly figure worked out so the plans can be compared on one line.

Apple's list also includes an item called "Premium Membership" at $9.99 with no billing period stated, and a consumable called "200 Pieces" at $2.79. Chai's web pages do not explain either, so we have left them out of the comparison rather than guess what they buy.

Two patterns stand out. Kept for a year, weekly billing costs about three times the longer plan on both platforms: $519.48 against $159.99 for Pro on the web, and $1,039.48 against $359.88 for Ultra in the app. And the app is cheaper than the website for the year: $134.99 for app Premium against $159.99 for web Pro. They are not the same product, though. Chai says a Web Pro reply takes about eight times the compute of an average app user's, which is its explanation for the difference.

Is Chai AI free?

Yes, both the app and the website let you start without paying. Chai's FAQ says you can chat immediately after signing in with Google, and that Pro unlocks endless conversations, faster responses and its most advanced models. The free app carries ads, which its App Store listing discloses. Neither is a trial of the paid plan in the usual sense, which matters for the next question.

Does Chai have a free trial?

The website does, and it is short. Chai's pricing page offers Pro free for 24 hours, then $159.99 a year. That is the whole annual price charged when the day ends, not a first month. If you start the trial to see whether Pro is better than the app, put a reminder on your phone for the next morning. There is no month-long middle step between free and a year.

What is CHAI MAX, and what does the metered plan really cost?

CHAI MAX is an add-on for web Pro subscribers who hit rate limits. Chai sells it two ways. MAX Monthly is $90 a month and doubles your rate limit. MAX Auto removes rate limits entirely and charges $0.66 per 1,000 tokens the AI generates. When we first read the same FAQ in July 2026, the metered rate was $0.33, so it has doubled.

Chai does not say how long a typical reply is, so here is the arithmetic at 150 tokens a reply, which is a normal length for chat roleplay and sits just under the 180-token reply cap other character platforms use on their free tiers. Each figure is on top of the Pro subscription.

The break-even is about 136,000 generated tokens a month, which is 30 replies a day at 150 tokens. If your character writes long 300-token replies, the break-even halves to 15 a day. Someone who spends an hour chatting most evenings is usually well above that, so for regular users MAX Auto is the expensive route even though it looks like the flexible one.

For comparison, $0.66 per 1,000 tokens is $660 per million. Pay-per-token model providers list output for popular roleplay models at between a few cents and $15 per million, so Chai's metered price is a premium for the convenience of never hitting a wall. A meter with no ceiling is exactly the kind of charge that surprises people at the end of the month, so if you switch it on, it is worth setting a spending alert on the card it bills before the first long weekend of chatting.

Is Chai Ultra worth it?

It is worth it if the app is where you already spend your evenings and the free tier's limits are what stops you. Paid monthly, Ultra costs $16 more than Premium, $29.99 against $13.99, and Chai's App Store listing does not spell out what the extra $16 buys over Premium. If you are unsure, the honest test is one month of Premium at $13.99. Buy Ultra weekly only if you are certain you will cancel within seven days.

It is poor value in three situations. First, if you chat on the website, because an app subscription does nothing there. Second, if you would pay weekly for more than a month, because four weekly charges come to $79.96, close to three months of Ultra paid monthly at $89.97. Third, if what you want is not a library of 25 million user-made bots but one companion you keep coming back to, because you are paying for a catalog you will not use.

Chai Premium vs Ultra: which should you buy?

Buy Premium annual at $134.99 if you use the app daily and want the lowest effective price anywhere in Chai's lineup, about $11.25 a month. Buy Ultra monthly at $29.99 if you have tried Premium and the replies are still not good enough. Skip Ultra weekly and web Pro weekly entirely unless the plan is a single week. And do not buy anything on the website to fix a problem you have in the app, since the two do not talk to each other.

How do you cancel a Chai subscription?

Cancel it where you bought it. An app subscription bought on an iPhone is billed by Apple, so it is cancelled in the Settings app under your Apple Account and Subscriptions, and a refund request for it goes through Apple rather than Chai. A web subscription is billed by Chai directly, and its pricing page says every web plan can be cancelled anytime. Deleting the app does not cancel either one. We have a longer guide on how to cancel an AI girlfriend subscription and keep your chats if you are leaving a companion app altogether.

Why people compare Chai with a flat plan

Most of what makes Chai expensive is billing shape rather than headline price: weekly plans that triple the annual cost, a 24-hour trial that converts into a full year, two subscriptions that do not share an account, and a metered add-on whose rate doubled in two months. If you have been through how token and credit meters price a chat, the pattern will look familiar.

Beauties.ai is built the other way round. There are six AI girlfriends, each written and illustrated in house, tasteful by design and not a nude generator. You pick one and start texting. Plans are $12 a month, or $9 a month billed yearly at $108, with Flame at $24 a month adding voice notes and a girlfriend who texts you first. There is no weekly plan, no metered add-on and no second platform to pay for separately, so the price on the pricing page is the bill. Our CHAI alternative comparison sets the two side by side, and if you are weighing other character platforms after recent price changes, the SpicyChat alternative breakdown covers the September 2026 increase there.

Chai genuinely wins on some things, and it is fair to say so. Its library is enormous, its free tier is usable, it has native iOS and Android apps, and its annual app plan at $134.99 is cheaper per year than our mid tier. If you want endless variety, Chai is the better fit. If you want one companion and a predictable bill, see what an AI girlfriend really costs per month across the category before you choose.

How these numbers were worked out

App prices come from the In-App Purchases disclosure on Apple's US App Store page for CHAI: Social AI Platform, app id 1544750895, seller Chai Research Corp., read on 16 September 2026, when the app was on version 2.192 with a 4.3 star average from about 278,000 US ratings. Apple lists the most popular purchases only, so a plan that does not appear there may still exist, and we do not quote any plan we could not see. Web prices, the 24-hour trial, both CHAI MAX options and the statement that web and app are separate platforms come from Chai's pricing and FAQ pages on chai-ai.com, whose terms name Chai Research Corp. of Newark, California as the licensor. Yearly totals multiply weekly prices by 52 and monthly prices by 12. The MAX Auto table assumes 150 generated tokens per reply and 30 days per month.