PolyBuzz vs Chai Pricing and Which One to Pay For

Short answer: PolyBuzz is the cheaper subscription and Chai is the simpler one. PolyBuzz Standard was $9.90 a month in the last price list Apple published for the US App Store, and its top tier, Ultimate, was $29.90. Chai sells its web Pro plan only by the year at $159.99 (about $13.33 a month) or by the week at $9.99, with no monthly option, and CHAI MAX on top costs $90 a month or $0.66 per 1,000 generated tokens. Over a year that is $118.80 for the cheapest PolyBuzz plan against $159.99 for Chai.

The bigger news for an American iPhone owner is that neither app can be downloaded from the US App Store right now. On 23 October 2026 the US listing for PolyBuzz: Chat with Characters returned a 404, and Apple's lookup returned no result for CHAI in the US, Canada, Australia, Germany or France, while it was still listed in the UK. Both apps were still live on Google Play in the US. So if you are choosing between them this week on an iPhone, you are choosing between two websites.

Every figure below comes from the vendors' own pages, read on 23 October 2026: PolyBuzz's FAQ, membership, coin pages and Terms of Use, and Chai's pricing page and FAQ. App Store prices are from Apple's US in-app purchase lists, read on 12 October 2026 for PolyBuzz and 16 September 2026 for Chai, before both listings went dark. Yearly totals are our arithmetic.

PolyBuzz vs Chai price, plan by plan

PolyBuzz's website sets prices by country, and from our server it showed Polish zloty, so the dollar figures for PolyBuzz plans are the ones Apple last published for the US store. Chai's web prices are printed in dollars on its own pricing page. For every PolyBuzz plan, coin pack and Opals bundle with its yearly total, see our PolyBuzz subscription cost per plan; the Chai equivalent is Chai AI subscription cost, web Pro and app Ultra.

Is PolyBuzz cheaper than Chai?

Yes, at every level we can compare in dollars. The cheapest PolyBuzz plan paid monthly costs $118.80 a year, $41.19 less than Chai Pro on its annual plan. Paid weekly, PolyBuzz Standard costs $259.48 a year and Chai Pro $519.48, exactly twice as much. Only at the top does the gap become absurd: Ultimate is $358.80 a year, while Chai Pro with MAX Monthly is $1,239.99.

The weekly rows are the ones to watch. Both vendors make the weekly price the smallest number on the screen, and both weekly plans cost more than double their own cheapest yearly route. Chai's weekly plan is also the only way to pay for Pro without committing to a year, because Chai's web pricing page has no monthly option at all.

How does Chai AI compare to PolyBuzz?

Chai answers this in its own FAQ, and the answer is about ownership rather than price. Chai describes PolyBuzz as "an app-focused platform" and itself as a US-based company that runs its own GPU cluster, trains its own models and does not share user data with third parties. Those are Chai's claims, not tested results, but the corporate facts behind them check out on both sides.

PolyBuzz's web terms say the service is operated by Singularity Mutual Entertainment Culture Media Limited in Hong Kong, and a web payment can show up on a card statement under that name or as AWX*CLOUD WHALE. Our page on the Singularity Mutual Entertainment charge matches those amounts to plans. Chai's terms name Chai Research Corp. For a US buyer who cares where chats are stored and which jurisdiction a dispute lands in, that difference matters more than three dollars a month.

On product, PolyBuzz is the one with tiers you can see. Its membership page lists exactly which chat models each plan unlocks (Standard; Premium adds Passion and Tale; Ultimate adds Overture, Lumina, Conqueror and Saga) and puts Permanent Memory only in Ultimate. Chai sells one Pro plan and says a Pro request gets roughly eight times the compute of an average app user, then sells rate limits on top through MAX.

What does CHAI MAX Auto cost in a month?

It depends on how much the characters write back, and that is the problem. MAX Auto removes rate limits and charges $0.66 for every 1,000 tokens Chai generates. If a typical reply runs about 150 tokens (our assumption, roughly a short paragraph) and you get 100 replies a day, that is 15,000 tokens a day, $9.90 a day and about $297 a month, on top of the $159.99 Pro plan. At 30 replies a day it is closer to $89 a month, almost the price of MAX Monthly.

PolyBuzz has its own meter, just a different shape. Coins pay for extra voice time, regenerated replies, inspiration replies and memory scenes, and Opals are a second currency again. In the last Apple list a 1,000 coin pack cost $2.49 and 8,000 coins $9.99, so the small pack you buy in the middle of a conversation costs about twice as much per coin as the big one.

Can I use Chai AI on my phone?

Yes, in the browser. Chai's FAQ says Chai AI works in any mobile browser at chai-ai.com with a Google sign-in and that no app download is needed. That matters now that the CHAI app is missing from the US App Store. Keep in mind that Chai's FAQ also says web Pro and the Chai app are separate platforms with no data sharing, so a subscription bought in the app does not unlock Pro on the website.

Is PolyBuzz still on the App Store?

Not in the US as of 23 October 2026. The App Store page returned a 404 and Apple's lookup returned nothing in six storefronts we tried. Neither Apple nor PolyBuzz has published a reason. Searching the store now turns up lookalike apps from other developers with similar names, so check the seller before you pay anyone. If you already subscribed through Apple, the subscription still lives in iPhone Settings, under your name, then Subscriptions, and deleting the app does not cancel it. Our guide to cancelling PolyBuzz and getting a refund covers the web route too.

Running on the web alone puts more weight on the website staying up. Neither vendor links a public status page from its FAQ; PolyBuzz tells users to check its Discord when the site seems down. A product that is only reachable through a browser is exactly the kind of service where a public status page would save its customers a lot of guessing.

Are there PolyBuzz or Chai promo codes?

Neither vendor publishes one, and neither checkout we loaded has a code field. What both do is print their own discount banners. Chai shows its weekly plan as 60% off a struck $24.99. PolyBuzz's membership page showed a "Today Only" 85% OFF countdown, measured against a struck price about 6.6 times what anyone pays, and its terms say it does not recognize products bought outside its official channel. We checked every PolyBuzz discount against its own pages on our PolyBuzz promo code page.

Can you get a refund from PolyBuzz or Chai?

Do not count on it from PolyBuzz. Its Terms of Use say payments made under its rates will not be refunded, even if the subscription is cancelled afterwards. Chai's FAQ says you can cancel from account settings at any time and keep Pro until the end of the period you paid for; it does not promise refunds of the period itself. Either way, the trial is the cheap moment to decide: Chai's 24 hour Pro trial turns into a $159.99 annual charge if you do not cancel it.

Which should you pay for?

Pay for PolyBuzz if you want the lowest monthly price and like browsing many user-made characters, and pick Standard billed monthly rather than weekly. Pay for Chai if you are sure you will use it all year and want its in-house models, and take the annual plan, never the weekly one. Skip MAX unless you have measured how much you chat, because its meter is the only line on either price list without a ceiling.

If what you actually do on either app is come back to the same one or two characters every night, a large library is not what you are paying for. Beauties.ai has six girlfriends, each written in house with her own look and personality, who remember what you told them. It is $12 a month or $108 a year on the pricing page, with unlimited texting, no coins and no meter. That is more than PolyBuzz Standard's $9.90 a month, and we would rather say so; it is less than either Chai Pro plan. Our PolyBuzz alternative and Chai alternative pages compare the two in more detail, and if Character AI is also on your list, start with PolyBuzz vs Character AI.