Replika's user-count claims grew from 10 million to over 40 million

The design

Twice in its public record, years apart, Replika's operator has stated a specific registered-user count in its own words rather than through a third party's estimate. In an October 2021 blog post titled 'Building a compassionate AI friend,' the company's AI team wrote: 'Right now, we have 10 million registered users who send us more than 100 million messages each week.' Retrieved 16 September 2026, the company's current manifesto page, dated 15 May 2026, states a different pair of figures for a longer span: two million people 'showed up in two months' after Replika's 2017 launch, and 'today that number is over 40 million.'

What the evidence says

Each figure is the company's own unaudited claim; neither post cites an external measurement, a platform-reported install count, or a third-party analytics verification, and no source here defines what counts as a registered user or whether the count excludes inactive or duplicate accounts. The two statements are not strictly comparable: the 2021 post gives a single snapshot alongside a weekly-message figure, while the 2026 page gives two data points years apart, two million within two months of a 2017 launch and over 40 million as of 2026, without stating any number in between, including the 10 million the company itself had reported in 2021. The press page, also retrieved 16 September 2026, separately states 'Replika is the first AI companionship app, founded in 2017,' fixing the founding claim against which both milestone statements are measured, though the page otherwise curates third-party press mentions rather than additional company-issued figures.

What it asks of people

A reader is asked to accept a growth narrative, two million, then 10 million, then over 40 million, built from two dated company statements with a large, undocumented gap between them, and to trust the company's own definition of a registered user without an independent audit standing behind either number. The figures appear in a technical blog post aimed at an engineering-literate reader in 2021 and in a mission-styled manifesto aimed at a general reader in 2026, two different registers for what is presented as the same underlying metric.

Privacy and safeguards

Neither statement discloses how registration or activity data behind these counts is collected, retained, or protected; that is addressed, separately, in Replika's privacy policy covered elsewhere on this site. The milestone claims are business and marketing statements, not privacy disclosures, and carry no safeguard commitments of their own.

• What does Replika mean by a registered user, and does that definition match how either figure was counted?
• Why is there no public company figure for the years between 2021's 10 million and 2026's over 40 million?
• Would any independent source, an app-store analytics firm or a research paper's sample description, be able to check either number?

Both figures come from Replika's own hand, years and two very different kinds of document apart, and the record as it stands offers no independent measurement against which to check either one.