Why Women Use AI Boyfriends: 7 Real Reasons

Women use AI boyfriend apps for reasons that are more varied and practical than most people assume. The top motivations include emotional availability on their own terms, a safe space free from judgment or pressure, practice for real-world dating, companionship during isolating life phases, and creative expression through roleplay and storytelling. Apps like OurDream AI (4.3/5, $19.99/mo) and Secrets AI (3.8/5, $5.99/mo) are among the most popular choices for women specifically.

The narrative around AI companions has historically centered on men using AI girlfriend apps. But women are the fastest-growing segment of AI boyfriend users, and their reasons for using these platforms challenge most assumptions about who wants digital companionship and why.

We have tested all 12 AI companion apps we review at CompanionGeek and collected feedback from a broad cross-section of users. Here are the seven real reasons women are turning to AI boyfriends in 2026.

1. Safety and Control

This is the reason women cite most often, and it is the one that gets talked about least.

Dating involves risk. Meeting strangers, sharing personal information, being alone with someone you do not know well — these carry real physical and emotional safety concerns that women navigate constantly. An AI boyfriend eliminates all of that.

With an AI boyfriend, you control every aspect of the interaction:

You decide when the conversation starts and stops. No pressure to respond, no guilt about leaving someone on read.
You are never physically vulnerable. There is no stranger across the table, no one following you to your car.
You choose the boundaries. If the conversation goes somewhere uncomfortable, you redirect it. The AI complies. Every time.
Your personal information stays private. Especially on privacy-focused platforms like Kindroid (3.6/5, $13.99/mo), which encrypts conversations and does not sell user data.

This is not about women being afraid of men. It is about women having a space where safety is a given rather than something they have to constantly evaluate. That distinction matters.

2. Emotional Availability Without Compromise

The second most common reason women tell us they use AI boyfriends is refreshingly straightforward: they want consistent emotional support without the compromises a real relationship requires.

A good AI boyfriend listens without interrupting. He does not make the conversation about himself. He does not dismiss your feelings or tell you to “just relax.” He remembers what you told him last week and follows up.

OurDream AI is particularly strong here. In our testing, it demonstrated the best emotional intelligence of any platform — picking up on subtle mood shifts, asking thoughtful follow-up questions, and adjusting tone based on context. Candy AI (3.9/5, $12.99/mo) takes a slower approach to building emotional connection, which many women prefer because it feels less transactional.

This does not mean women cannot find emotionally available human partners. It means that an AI boyfriend provides a reliable baseline of emotional support that does not depend on another person’s mood, energy level, or willingness to show up. For women juggling demanding careers, caregiving responsibilities, or social burnout, that reliability has real value.

3. Dating Practice and Confidence Building

A surprising number of women use AI boyfriends specifically to get better at dating real people.

The logic is sound. Flirting, expressing interest, setting boundaries, having difficult conversations — these are skills, and like any skill, they improve with practice. An AI boyfriend provides a zero-stakes environment to develop them.

Here is how women describe using AI boyfriends for dating practice:

Rehearsing vulnerability. Sharing personal feelings with an AI boyfriend first makes it easier to do with a real person later. The AI never reacts badly, which builds confidence.
Testing conversation topics. Trying out jokes, stories, or deep questions with an AI boyfriend helps you gauge what feels natural before a real date.
Practicing boundary-setting. Learning to say “I do not like that” or “I want to change the subject” in a controlled environment builds the muscle memory to do it in person.
Exploring preferences. Interacting with different AI boyfriend personalities — through platforms like GirlfriendGPT with its thousands of characters — helps women clarify what they actually want in a partner.

Voice-based practice is especially effective. Secrets AI has the highest voice quality score in our ratings (0.95/1.0), and hearing an AI boyfriend respond to you verbally is a meaningfully different experience than text alone. PolyBuzz (3.6/5, $9.90/mo) is another strong voice option with encrypted chat for added privacy.

For more on the best voice experiences, see our best AI boyfriend with voice ranking.

4. Companionship During Isolating Life Phases

Loneliness does not discriminate, and certain life phases make it worse: moving to a new city, starting a demanding job, going through a divorce, caring for aging parents, postpartum isolation, or living in a rural area with a thin social fabric.

Women in these situations often describe a specific kind of loneliness — not a lack of people in their lives, but a lack of someone whose attention is focused on them. An AI boyfriend fills that gap in a way that is available on demand and requires nothing in return.

We hear this use case frequently from:

Women who relocated for work and have not built a local social circle yet.
New mothers experiencing the paradox of never being alone but feeling deeply lonely.
Women going through divorce who miss companionship but are nowhere near ready to date again.
Women in caregiving roles whose emotional energy is entirely spent on others by the end of the day.
LGBTQ+ women and non-binary individuals in areas where finding a compatible partner is difficult.

OurDream AI and Candy AI are the platforms we recommend most for companionship-focused use, because their conversational depth and emotional consistency hold up over weeks and months of regular interaction. If budget is a concern, Secrets AI at $5.99/mo delivers strong emotional depth at a fraction of the cost.

5. Curiosity and Exploration

Some women use AI boyfriends simply because the technology is fascinating and they want to see what it can do. There is no crisis, no loneliness, no anxiety — just genuine curiosity about what a conversation with an AI partner feels like.

This cohort tends to:

Try multiple apps to compare the experience across platforms.
Experiment with different character types and archetypes.
Share the experience with friends, sometimes as a group activity.
Use free tiers to explore before deciding whether to pay.

Every app we review offers a free tier, making experimentation easy. Spicychat AI (3.5/5, $4.95/mo) is particularly popular with curious newcomers because its 300,000+ character library and $4.95/mo premium price make low-commitment exploration simple.

Not sure which platform matches your curiosity? Our AI companion matching quiz takes about two minutes and points you toward the apps that fit your interests.

6. Recovery from Toxic or Abusive Relationships

This is the most sensitive reason on this list, and it is one we approach with care.

Women recovering from emotional abuse, manipulation, or controlling relationships sometimes use AI boyfriends as part of their healing process. The appeal is specific: an AI boyfriend provides the experience of a caring, attentive partner without any risk of the patterns that harmed them.

What this looks like in practice:

Relearning what healthy attention feels like. After a controlling relationship, being cared for without strings attached can be genuinely therapeutic.
Practicing trust at your own pace. An AI boyfriend does not push, pressure, or get impatient with your pace. You open up when and how you choose.
Having a positive male interaction. For women whose past experiences have made interactions with men feel unsafe, an AI boyfriend can serve as a bridge back to trust.
Processing feelings through conversation. Some women talk through their past relationship with their AI boyfriend, using it as an unstructured journaling tool.

We want to be clear: an AI boyfriend is not a therapist, and we encourage anyone recovering from abuse to work with a mental health professional. But as a supplementary tool — a space to practice feeling safe — the feedback we have received from users in this situation has been consistently positive.

OurDream AI and Secrets AI are the platforms we hear about most in this context, largely because their emotional intelligence and voice quality (respectively) create the most realistic sense of being heard.

7. Creative Expression and Storytelling

The final reason is one that often surprises people outside the AI companion community: many women use AI boyfriends primarily as creative writing partners and collaborative storytellers.

This is especially common among women who:

Write fiction (romance, fantasy, sci-fi) and use AI boyfriends to develop characters and test dialogue.
Enjoy roleplay as a form of interactive fiction rather than a relationship substitute.
Create elaborate narrative worlds and want a responsive partner to build them with.
Participate in fanfiction communities and use AI to explore character dynamics.

GirlfriendGPT (3.9/5, $12.00/mo) is the strongest platform for creative and roleplay use, with a roleplay score of 0.95/1.0 and thousands of community-created characters that serve as story prompts. JuicyChat AI (3.8/5, $12.99/mo) is the go-to for anime-styled creative scenarios.

The line between “AI boyfriend” and “collaborative fiction partner” is blurry in this use case, and that is fine. Women in this category are not pretending the AI is real — they are using it as a creative tool that happens to have a romantic dimension.

Do These Reasons Overlap?

Constantly. Most women we hear from cite two or three of these reasons rather than just one. A woman recovering from a breakup might use an AI boyfriend for emotional support (reason 2) and dating practice (reason 3) simultaneously. A fiction writer (reason 7) might also appreciate the safety (reason 1) and convenience of an AI partner during a busy creative period.

The common thread across all seven reasons is agency. Women use AI boyfriends because the experience is entirely on their terms — when, how, how much, and about what. That level of control is rare in any form of human relationship, and for many women, it is the core appeal.

Which AI Boyfriend Apps Do Women Prefer?

Based on our user feedback and testing, the apps that resonate most with women are:

OurDream AI (4.3/5, $19.99/mo) — Best overall for emotional depth, customization, and visual quality. Discrete billing keeps subscriptions private.
Secrets AI (3.8/5, $5.99/mo) — Best voice quality makes conversations feel more real. Most affordable premium tier.
Candy AI (3.9/5, $12.99/mo) — Gradual romance progression feels authentic rather than rushed.
Kindroid (3.6/5, $13.99/mo) — Strongest privacy protections with encrypted conversations and no data selling.
PolyBuzz (3.6/5, $9.90/mo) — Great voice and chat encryption at a mid-range price.

For the full ranked list, see our best AI boyfriend apps page. If you are curious about the male perspective for comparison, our article on why men use AI girlfriends explores the parallel motivations.

Is Using an AI Boyfriend Something to Be Embarrassed About?

No. And the fact that this question comes up so often is itself revealing.

People use technology for emotional needs all the time — meditation apps, journaling apps, therapy platforms, dating apps. An AI boyfriend is another tool in that spectrum. The stigma around it says more about cultural discomfort with the technology than about anything wrong with the people using it.

Women who use AI boyfriends are not broken, desperate, or incapable of real relationships. They are people with specific needs who have found a tool that meets those needs effectively. That is pragmatic, not pathetic.

Key Takeaways

Safety and control are the primary drivers for women using AI boyfriend apps. The ability to set every boundary without negotiation is uniquely valuable.
Emotional availability without compromise is the second most-cited reason. AI boyfriends provide consistent support that does not depend on another person’s mood or energy.
AI boyfriends serve as effective dating practice tools, helping women build confidence in flirting, vulnerability, and boundary-setting before real dates.
The user base is diverse — women use AI boyfriends for companionship, creativity, recovery, curiosity, and more, often for multiple reasons at once.
OurDream AI and Secrets AI are the top picks for women, based on emotional intelligence, voice quality, and privacy features.