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Grok Ani alternative after Grok companions were retired, and the Grok AI companion to switch to

Short answer: xAI said on July 24, 2026 that the 3D avatar Companions feature was "an experiment" and that it was retiring it to focus on core Grok, and the companion tab is now gone. Ani, Rudi and Valentine were in scope. What went is the companion tab, the animated avatar, the outfit customization and the real-time voice layer. What is reported to stay is the personality itself, your chat history and your saved memories, which you can reach by prompting the character by name inside an ordinary Grok chat.

Meet her

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18+, tasteful, private. No real photos, and no explicit imagery.

The removal is visible in the shipping app. Apple's App Store listing for Grok AI version 1.4.31, dated 2026-08-31, still carried a Grok AI Companions section naming Ani, Rudi and Valentine. The current listing, version 1.4.44 dated 2026-09-25, no longer mentions companions at all. Forums gave September 1, 2026 as the switch-off date, rolled out account by account. The animated Ani did resurface elsewhere: Animates, a separate app from Animation Inc, the studio reported to have built the Grok avatars, added Ani after its August launch, with its own subscription and a token meter, and nothing carries over from Grok.

The money question is separate and it catches people. Companion access was never sold on its own. It rides on a paid Grok subscription, and Apple's in-app purchase disclosure for the Grok AI app lists the live price points as SuperGrok Lite at $10.00, SuperGrok at $30.00, SuperGrok Plus at $100.00 and SuperGrok Heavy at $300.00, plus extra usage credit packs at $5, $20, $50 and $100. Apple discloses the amounts but not the billing period for each one, so read the period in the app before you assume. If Ani was the reason you were paying, the feature you were paying for is the one that was removed.

Beauties.ai is the other shape of answer. Six girlfriends written in house, each with a fixed personality that does not get retired when a roadmap changes, unlimited texting with nothing metered, and a browser tab instead of an app. No bond score to grind, no outfit unlocks, no companion tab that can be taken away in a version bump. Adults 18 and over.

What makes her feel real

Grok Ani alternative, the way it should feel

She cannot be retired in a version bump

Ani lived in a tab inside a general assistant, which is why a roadmap decision could remove her. A companion product has nothing else to focus on, so the characters are the roadmap rather than an experiment sitting next to it.

No bond score, no outfit unlocks

Apple's own listing describes Ani as a charmer who blushes and sends hearts as your bond grows. Nothing here is gated behind a relationship level or a streak. Every girlfriend is open on the plan from the first message.

A browser tab on any device, including Android

Companion mode reached Android late and plenty of accounts never saw it at all. This opens in Chrome, Safari, Edge or Firefox on a phone, a laptop or a locked-down work desktop, with the same conversation on all of them.

What you get with her

Six girlfriends written in house, not three shared characters
Flat price published up front: $12 a month, or $9 billed yearly
Nothing locked behind a bond level or an unlock ladder
Works in any browser, Android included, nothing to install
She texts first and remembers you across sessions
No photos and no real faces, adults 18 and over

She's already typing.

Pick her, say hi, and start texting in about ten seconds. The demo is your free taste.

Honest comparison

What survives the Grok companion retirement, and where each piece ends up

What you had with Ani	Grok companion mode as it shipped	After the retirement (reported)	Beauties.ai (from $9 a month billed yearly)
The animated character	A 3D avatar that moves and reacts while you talk	Removed. The avatar and the companion tab were the parts retired	No avatar at all. Each girlfriend is written for texting, not animated
Live voice	Real-time spoken replies inside companion mode	The companion voice layer goes. Grok Voice Mode itself stays as an assistant feature	Voice notes, not live calls. We say so plainly rather than implying otherwise
The personality	Ani, Rudi and Valentine, written by xAI	Reported to survive. You prompt the character by name in an ordinary Grok chat	Six fixed personalities, each authored in house, consistent every session
Chat history and memories	Held on your xAI account	Reported to survive the change	Held with your account, carried across devices
Progression	A bond that grows, with hearts and blushing as it does	Reported to survive, with no companion tab left to display it in	None. Nothing is gated behind a level, a streak or a score
Outfits and customization	Unlocked as the bond grew	Goes with the avatar	No unlock ladder. What you see in the gallery is what you get
Android	Arrived late, and many accounts never received it	Moot once the tab is gone	Any Android browser, immediately, nothing to install
What it costs	Bundled into a paid Grok plan. Apple lists SuperGrok Lite $10.00, SuperGrok $30.00, Plus $100.00, Heavy $300.00	The same subscription, minus the feature you subscribed for	Flat $12 a month, or $9 billed yearly, published before you sign up
Who it suits	Anyone who wanted a voiced 3D companion inside an assistant they already paid for	Anyone who wants Grok as an assistant and is fine losing the avatar	Anyone who wants a written girlfriend who stays put

Grok companion mode was the most technically impressive thing in this category and it is fair to be annoyed that it is going. Two honest caveats on this table. Everything in the third column is reported rather than first-party: xAI published one statement on July 24, 2026 and has not followed it with a dated page we can read, and x.ai serves us a Cloudflare block. And the prices in the fourth row come from Apple's in-app purchase disclosure for the Grok AI app, which lists amounts without labelling the billing period, so confirm the period in the app.

Good to know

Questions about your grok ani alternative

From Grok, yes. xAI said on July 24, 2026 that it was retiring the 3D avatar Companions, the tab was switched off account by account from early September, and Apple's listing for Grok version 1.4.44, dated 2026-09-25, no longer mentions companions. The animated Ani now lives in a separate paid app, Animates.

xAI called the 3D avatar Companions feature an experiment and retired it to focus on core Grok. The animated avatar, the companion tab, the outfit customization and the real-time voice layer are what disappeared. The written personality, your chat history and your saved memories are reported to remain on your account.

Not as an animated companion inside Grok. The tab was removed in waves from early September 2026. The written personality is reported to answer in an ordinary Grok chat if you prompt her by name, and the animated Ani appears in Animates, a separate app whose plans run $7.99 to $39.99 a month on the App Store.

No. Companion access was tied to a paid Grok subscription rather than sold separately. Apple's in-app purchase disclosure for the Grok AI app lists SuperGrok Lite at $10.00, SuperGrok at $30.00, SuperGrok Plus at $100.00 and SuperGrok Heavy at $300.00. Apple does not label the billing period, so check it in the app.

Grok companions are animated 3D characters xAI added inside the Grok app. Apple's listing names three: Ani, a charmer who blushes and sends hearts as your bond grows, Rudi, a cheeky red panda you banter with, and Valentine, a romantic male with poetic charm. They live in the assistant, not in a separate product.

Patchily, and that was true before the retirement was announced. Companion mode reached Android well after iOS and plenty of Android accounts never received the tab at all, which is why the Android question dominates the search suggestions. A browser-based companion sidesteps the problem entirely because there is no app rollout to wait for.

Companion mode was built around the mobile app, so desktop access has always been the weaker path and searches for Grok Ani on PC mostly end in workarounds. Anything that runs in a browser has no such gap: it opens the same on a desktop, a laptop and a phone, with one conversation across all three.

Image generation in the Grok app sits in Grok Imagine, which is a separate feature from companion mode, so pictures did not come from Ani as a companion behavior. This matters for the comparison: if photos were the reason you used the app, the retirement does not touch that part.

Not through companion mode. Grok's Voice Mode has a Live Camera option that lets the assistant see what your camera sees, per Apple's own listing, and that is an assistant feature rather than a companion one. Beauties.ai never asks for camera access at all.

A busy or unavailable companion is almost always capacity rather than an account problem. Voiced 3D characters are expensive to serve at peak hours, which is the same pressure that pushes other platforms toward queues and slow modes. Text-first companions are far cheaper to run, so they rarely turn people away.

xAI has not published a source for the design, and the frequently repeated comparisons are speculation rather than anything the company has confirmed. We are not going to repeat an unsourced claim about a real person. Apple's listing describes her only as a charmer who blushes and sends hearts as your bond grows.

While the feature is still live on your account, companions sit in their own tab inside the Grok app on a paid plan. If the tab is already gone, xAI's position is that you can still call the personality by name inside a normal Grok chat, though you get the text without the avatar or the voice layer.

Cancelling a subscription and deleting an account are different actions on almost every platform in this category, and it is the second one that destroys data. Cancel first, confirm your history is still readable, and only then decide about the account. Do it in that order rather than the reverse.

It depends what you are replacing. If the animated 3D avatar was the point, Animates is the closest match, since it carries Ani and animates her, at $7.99 to $39.99 a month plus tokens, and we do not animate anyone. If the character and the conversation were the point, a written companion on a flat plan gives you the part that mattered without a companion tab that can be withdrawn.

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Where Ani users go now that xAI has retired the 3D companions, and what actually survived the change. Meet her above and see for yourself.

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