AI companion business profit calculator

Calculate monthly profit and break-even

How the calculator works

Site revenue is paying members times average revenue per member. From there the two routes split.

• Done for you: your share of site revenue (up to 60%), minus the $299 monthly membership, minus your traffic spend. Hosting, AI, content and payment processing are already covered.
• Run it yourself: all of the revenue, minus your payment processor's fee, minus your running costs (hosting, AI, images, age checks, content and tools), minus your traffic spend.

Break-even is the number of paying members at which monthly profit reaches zero for each route. The one-time build cost (and, for DIY, card registration and software) comes on top; use the startup cost calculator for those.

Where the default numbers come from

• $13.99 per member is Candy AI's published monthly Premium price, used only as a familiar reference point (Candy AI pricing). Your own price and upsells will differ.
• 15.5% processing is Verotel's published Basic rate for adult-friendly card processing (Verotel price chart, checked October 26, 2026). Other processors publish 13% to 15%, and some do not publish rates at all.
• $500 running costs is a placeholder, not an estimate. Build your real figure in the startup cost calculator.
• Up to 60% share and $299 a month are WLF University's published terms. Your share may be lower than 60%.

A worked example with the default numbers

With the defaults (50 paying members at $13.99, no traffic spend, a 60% share, 15.5% processing and $500 of running costs), site revenue is $699.50 a month.

• Done for you: 60% of $699.50 is $419.70; minus the $299 membership leaves about $121 a month. Break-even is 36 paying members.
• Run it yourself: $699.50 minus 15.5% processing is about $591; minus $500 of running costs leaves about $91 a month. Break-even is 43 paying members.

Now raise members to 200. Done for you earns about $1,380 a month and DIY about $1,864, because the DIY route keeps more of each extra member once its fixed costs are covered. At small member counts fixed costs dominate; at large counts the revenue split does. That is why the right route depends on how much traffic you can realistically drive, not on which share sounds bigger.

What to change first

• Traffic spend. Add your planned budget and watch break-even move. Paid traffic only makes sense if each paying member it brings is worth more than it costs.
• Revenue per member. Tokens, tips and unlocks raise it without more traffic, so test a higher figure only if you have a plan to earn it.
• Running costs. Replace the $500 placeholder with your real figure from the startup cost calculator.
• Your share. 60% is the maximum on done for you, not a promise. Try a lower share to see how much room your plan has before it stops working.
• Processing fee. Use the rate from your processor's contract; published adult-friendly rates run from about 13% to 15.5%.

How to use the result

Run three scenarios: a slow month, the month you expect, and a strong month. If the slow month loses more than you can afford, lower your fixed costs or your traffic spend before launch. Watch the break-even line more than the profit line: it tells you how many paying members your traffic has to produce before the business pays for itself.

Remember that revenue per member is not only the subscription. Companion sites also earn from tokens, tips, unlocks and custom photo requests, so a real average can be higher or lower than the plan price. See how much you can make with an AI companion site for how those streams add up, and the AI girlfriend business model guide for where the money comes from.

Frequently asked questions