Covers: March 2025 | Last updated: 2026-05-21 | Edition: 03 of 18 | AI Girlfriends Industry Index →
March 2025 at a Glance
- 15.8 million monthly active users were recorded across the AI companion category in March 2025, up +6.0% from 14.9 million in February 2025, per the AI Girlfriends Industry Index.
- The Companion Engagement Index (CEI) registered 55.8 in March 2025, up +0.7 from 55.1 in February 2025, per the AI Girlfriends Industry Index.
- Average Daily Conversation Length (ADCL) in March 2025 was 18.9 minutes per active user, per the AI Girlfriends Industry Index.
- 10.1% of monthly active users held an active paid subscription in March 2025, with average revenue per paying user at $15.40 per month, per the AI Girlfriends Industry Index.
- 43% of registered users were active on a given day in March 2025, per the AI Girlfriends Industry Index.
Editor’s Note
March 2025 is the demographic edition, the month in which the index’s first full breakdown of user age, geography, and cohort composition entered the record. The headline finding is also the corrective finding: the “lonely young man” narrative that shaped early media coverage of AI companions was not what the data showed. Users aged 35 and older represented 35% of the active base. 62% of users were outside North America. The category is broader than the 2022–2024 press cycle suggested, and the data has now been in the record since March 2025.
The numbers in this edition were computed retrospectively in May 2026 using the same methodology applied to all 18 editions in this series. Where figures are referenced from the previous edition (February 2025), they match the values published in that edition exactly.
Methodology at a Glance
Retrospective edition disclosure
The AI Girlfriends Industry Index was formalized in 2026. This edition reports observations for March 2025 computed retrospectively from the platform’s historical first-party data using the methodology described below. All observations use the same metric definitions and sample construction as live editions to ensure month-over-month comparability across all 18 editions in this series.
- Coverage period: March 1–March 28/30/31, 2025
- Sample: First-party session and account records from the AIGirlfriends.AI platform, anonymised and aggregated
- Data sources: Session logs, subscription records, interaction metadata (text, voice, image). No personally identifiable data used.
- Methodology last revised: 2026-05-01
- Press contact: [email protected]
Market Size and Adoption, March 2025
The AI Girlfriends Industry Index recorded 15.8 million monthly active users across the AI companion category in March 2025, representing a +6.0% increase from 14.9 million in February 2025. New user registration for the month was 1,020,000 accounts.
Geographic distribution remained consistent with the H1 2025 pattern: North America at approximately 38% of the active user base, Europe at 27%, Asia-Pacific at 24%, and other regions at 11%. Growth in absolute new-user terms continued to be fastest in South and Southeast Asia.
The AIGirlfriends.AI platform contributed approximately 12–14% of the estimated category-wide MAU, consistent with prior months. The index tracks this share to monitor category concentration over time.
Engagement and Retention, March 2025
The Companion Engagement Index (CEI) registered 55.8 in March 2025, up +0.7 from 55.1 in February 2025, per the AI Girlfriends Industry Index. The daily active rate was 43%, meaning more than four in ten registered users opened a conversation on a given day.
Average Daily Conversation Length was 18.9 minutes in March 2025, reflecting continued growth in session depth since the February baseline of 18.4 minutes.
Revenue, ARPU, and Willingness to Pay
Conversion-to-Paid Rate in March 2025 was 10.1% of monthly active users, with average revenue per paying user at $15.40 per month, per the AI Girlfriends Industry Index.
Paying users continued to exhibit substantially higher engagement than free-tier users. The CEI for paying subscribers in March 2025 was approximately 12–18 points above the free-tier CEI, consistent with the pattern established at the January 2025 baseline. Paying users were approximately 2.3 times more likely to use voice in at least one session and sent approximately 2.3 times as many messages per session as free-tier users.
The revenue mix in March 2025 remained weighted toward subscription fees, with coin-based purchases representing approximately 28% of paying-user revenue. One-time unlock purchases accounted for the remainder.
Product Trends, March 2025
Text remained the dominant interaction mode in March 2025. ADCL reached 18.9 minutes, up from 18.4 minutes in February, reflecting continued steady growth in conversation depth.
Persona customization usage among paying subscribers held at approximately 36%, consistent with February. Memory features were in active use by 23% of active users. Neither metric saw significant movement in March, the month’s primary signal was demographic rather than behavioral.
Demographics: Who Was Actually Using AI Companions in March 2025
The March 2025 demographic data challenges the received narrative about who uses AI companions. The data shows three things clearly.
Age distribution is broad. Users aged 18–24 represented 31% of the active user base in March 2025. Users aged 25–34 represented 34%. Users aged 35 and older, a cohort the early-adopter narrative effectively ignored, represented 35%. The median active user in March 2025 was in the 25–34 bracket, not the 18–24 bracket that defined the 2022–2023 press cycle.
Geography is international. 62% of active users were outside North America in March 2025. Asia-Pacific at 24% was growing fastest in absolute new-user terms, with South and Southeast Asia driving the bulk of that growth. The image of the AI companion as a product for isolated young men in the United States does not match the geographic distribution the data shows.
Engagement is consistent across cohorts. The index found no significant difference in CEI or ADCL between the 18–24 and 25–34 age cohorts in March 2025. The 35+ cohort showed comparable engagement depth. This rules out the hypothesis that older users are less engaged, they are using the product differently, but not less consistently.
This does not mean the product is identical for all users. Different age cohorts report different primary use cases in voluntary profile data. But the engagement metrics do not show a category built on one demographic segment’s distress. They show a broadly adopted product with diverse use cases.
Demographics and Geography
The demographic composition of the active user base in March 2025 was consistent with the baseline established in the March 2025 edition: users aged 18–24 representing approximately 31%, aged 25–34 approximately 34%, and aged 35 and older approximately 35%.
Geographic distribution remained stable: North America 38%, Europe 27%, Asia-Pacific 24%, other regions 11%. The Asia-Pacific share of new registrations continued to trend upward in absolute terms, consistent with the pattern observed since the January 2025 baseline.
The Month’s Defining Shift
The defining shift in March 2025 was a data-driven correction to a media narrative that had calcified around the wrong user. The “lonely young man” framing was not wrong as an observation about early adopters in 2022–2023. It was wrong as a description of the category by early 2025. A user base where 35+ year-olds represent 35% of active users, where 62% are outside North America, and where session data shows consistent engagement across age cohorts is not a niche. It is a broad consumer product with demographic reach comparable to established mobile social categories. That recognition changes the product roadmap, the monetisation ceiling, and the regulatory conversation. The data in this edition makes the case.
What We Are Watching in April 2025
- Voice adoption: the April edition will introduce Voice Adoption Rate (VAR) as a named metric and report on whether voice interaction is following the ADCL trajectory, early adoption translating into habit.
- International growth: whether the APAC share of registrations continues to grow as a fraction of total new users.
- Age cohort retention: whether the 35+ cohort, which showed broader representation than expected in March, exhibits comparable or stronger retention to the 18–24 cohort.
Full Methodology, Glossary, and Metric Definitions
Data collection and processing
All first-party data reported in this edition is drawn from anonymised, aggregated session and account records on the AIGirlfriends.AI platform for the coverage period. No session content is retained or analyzed. Only metadata is used: session timestamps, duration, turn counts, modality flags, subscription status, and anonymised cohort identifiers. All processing complies with the platform’s privacy policy.
This is a retrospective edition. Observations were computed in May 2026 from historical data using the same methodology applied to live editions. Where a metric was not measurable in the covered month, it is omitted rather than extrapolated.
Full definitions for all proprietary metrics introduced through this edition are available in the series glossary on the index hub.
How to Cite This Report
APA 7: Taylor, J. (2026, May). AI girlfriend industry report, March 2025. AIGirlfriends.AI. https://aigirlfriends.ai/blog/ai-girlfriend-industry-report-march-2025
MLA 9: Taylor, Jack. “AI Girlfriend Industry Report, March 2025.” AI Girlfriends Industry Index, AIGirlfriends.AI, May 2026, aigirlfriends.ai/blog/ai-girlfriend-industry-report-march-2025.
Journalist copy-paste: …according to the AI Girlfriends Industry Index (March 2025 edition, AIGirlfriends.AI).
To cite the overall series: aigirlfriends.ai/blog/ai-girlfriend-industry-report.
About the Authors
Author: Jack Taylor, Ph.D., Head of Research, AI Girlfriends Industry Index. Cognitive psychologist specializing in emotional AI and digital communication.
Reviewed by: Jonathan Brenner, Lead Research Editor, Affective Computing & Digital Psychology, AIGirlfriends.AI.
Press inquiries: [email protected]
Disclosure: AIGirlfriends.AI operates a consumer AI companion product. The first-party data in this report is drawn from that platform, anonymised and aggregated. This disclosure appears in every edition of the AI Girlfriends Industry Index.