AI Companion Subscription & Privacy Checklist

Updated 2026-09-28 · Tools

A five-minute audit to run before you pay for an AI companion app — and once more before you cancel one. Tick the items as you check them. Progress is kept in your browser only, and the page prints cleanly if you want a paper copy.

Nothing here is sent anywhere. Your ticks are stored in your own browser's local storage and never uploaded. This is a checklist, not legal advice: it tells you what to go and look for on the vendor's own pages.

1 · Before you pay

• The renewal price is stated, not just a discounted first month or first year The most common pattern: a cheap introductory period that renews at full price. Find the sentence that says what happens next. If you can't find it, don't pay yet.
• You know whether it is a subscription or a one-off purchase, and the billing period (monthly / quarterly / annual) Annual looks cheaper, but if the product changes its rules in three months you are locked in for a year.
• You found the refund policy in writing, with its conditions and time limit "Contact support if you have an issue" is not a policy. No written policy means no refund.
• You know whether credits or tokens expire, and whether they reset at the end of the month This is where most of the hidden cost in credit-based products lives: unused balance disappears.
• You know which features cost extra on top of the subscription (image generation, voice, video, longer context) When the subscription only covers text chat, every interesting feature ends up being billed separately.

2 · Payment method

• Prefer a card or PayPal over crypto or a bank transfer Card networks offer chargeback. Crypto payments have almost no recovery path and often no invoice at all.
• If you use a virtual or prepaid card, the limit covers the renewal A card that fails at renewal can trigger retry attempts, and some services downgrade or suspend rather than cancel.
• The payment page is HTTPS and the domain matches the product you think you are buying If checkout hands you off to an unrelated domain, stop and look up who operates it.
• You saved the receipt and order number In a dispute it is the only proof of what you paid and when.

3 · Privacy

• You read how long chat history is stored and how deletion works "We care about your privacy" is not an answer. Look for a retention period and a deletion mechanism.
• You know whether your conversations are used to train models, and whether you can switch that off Some products opt you in by default and bury the switch in settings.
• You know whether deleting your account also deletes your data — they are frequently different operations After account deletion, chats may persist for a period in "anonymised" form or in backups.
• You can identify who actually runs the site (company name, jurisdiction, a real contact address) A service whose only support channel is a Telegram handle gives you nothing to escalate to.

4 · Before you cancel

• Cancel where the subscription actually lives — App Store subscriptions must be cancelled in the App Store, web subscriptions on the web The two systems are separate. Cancelling in one does nothing to the other.
• You saved the cancellation confirmation (email or screenshot) "I cancelled it" is worth nothing in a dispute; the confirmation is worth everything.
• You know whether cancelling takes effect immediately or at the end of the period, and noted the date End-of-period is normal. If the page still says "renews on", the cancellation did not go through.
• If you are leaving for good: submit a separate account deletion request as well Cancel subscription ≠ delete account ≠ delete data. Leaving completely takes three separate actions.

5 · Red flags worth stopping for

• There is no refund policy anywhere on the site
• Crypto is the only payment method and no invoice is offered
• "Free and unlimited" turns into a payment wall minutes after signup
• The domain is very new and the operator cannot be identified
• The review you are reading does not disclose an affiliate relationship Our own linking rules are published on the about page. Everyone else's should be too.

Why this checklist exists

The recurring complaints in this category are not about conversation quality — they are about billing and data. Subscriptions that renew at full price after a cheap first period, credits that expire, cancel buttons that are hard to find, and chat histories that outlive the account. None of that is visible on a marketing page, and all of it is visible if you know where to look.

Background reading: subscription traps in AI companion apps, what these apps collect, and red flags and how to check them. For what the billing models themselves are called, see pricing models explained.

About this site: HottyWiki is operated by the team behind HottyChat, an 18+ AI character chat platform. This checklist is written to be applied to any platform, including ours — see About & disclosure.