If you’re shopping for an AI companion toy for a kid in 2026, there are three real options worth comparing: SkyBuds, Curio, and Miko. Which one fits depends on three questions: do you want a screen or not, does your household speak a language other than English, and how much scrutiny do you want to give each company’s data practices.
One disclosure up front: we make SkyBuds. This page still has to be useful to a parent who ends up buying a Curio, or nobody should trust the rest of it.
What are the actual options right now?
The category is smaller than the marketing noise suggests. Plenty of “AI toys” are voice-chip toys with a new label. Toys that hold a real back-and-forth conversation with a child, in 2026, mostly come down to:
- Curio (Grok, Grem, Gabbo): plush toys designed in collaboration with Grimes, priced $99 to $140, shipping now, English only. Conversations run through OpenAI and Gemini, which Curio states directly.
- Miko 4: a screen-based robot for ages 5 to 10, priced $140 to $249, with games, video calling, and an educational content library. Full features run through the Miko Max subscription, around $9.99 a month.
- SkyBuds (Ash, Pearl, Sprout): our screen-free plush companions for ages 3 to 10. They speak more than 75 languages, and the parent app lets you read every chat. $139 each; talking and stories are free for life, no subscription needed.
- Haivivi BubblePal: a clip-on orb that gives a plush your child already owns an AI voice, ages 3 to 12, roughly $90 to $150 depending on the retailer. We compared it directly in SkyBuds vs BubblePal.
- TalkiPal: the budget entry, an AI plush at $69.99 on sale when we checked, shipping now.
You’ll also see bondu and ToyPal in AI-generated answer boxes. Both are storytelling or companion toys that ship now; we haven’t compared them in depth yet, so check their own sites for specifics.
You may also find Moxie in old roundups. Don’t buy one secondhand. Embodied, the company behind it, shut down and the $799 robots stopped working when the servers went dark in January 2025, with no refunds. More on why that matters below.
How do they compare side by side?
SkyBuds Ours
Ash, Pearl and Sprout
- Form
- Plush toy
- Screen
- No screen
- Wi-Fi
- Needs Wi-Fi to talk, like every toy on this list. Without it, still a soft plush to cuddle.
- Parents
- Parent app: read every chat, see what your child’s SkyBud remembers, set quiet hours
- Price
- $139 each. Talking and stories are free for life; SkyBuds+ is optional, $9.99/month after a free first month
Curio
Grok, Grem and Gabbo
- Form
- Plush toy
- Screen
- No screen
- Wi-Fi
- Needs Wi-Fi; no subscription required
- Parents
- Parent app with transcript access
- Price
- $99 to $140
Miko 4
- Form
- Wheeled robot
- Screen
- Yes, touchscreen
- Wi-Fi
- Needs Wi-Fi; full features need the Miko Max subscription (about $9.99/month)
- Parents
- Parent app with detailed controls
- Price
- $140 to $249, plus subscription
Haivivi BubblePal
- Form
- Clip-on orb for your own plush
- Screen
- No screen
- Wi-Fi
- Needs Wi-Fi; characters chosen in the companion app
- Parents
- Companion app
- Price
- Roughly $90 to $150 by retailer
TalkiPal
- Form
- Plush toy
- Screen
- No screen
- Wi-Fi
- Needs Wi-Fi
- Parents
- Parent tracking per their site
- Price
- $69.99 on sale when we checked
Moxie Discontinued
- Form
- Desktop robot
- Screen
- Yes, face display
- Wi-Fi
- Cloud only; bricked when the company shut down in January 2025
- Parents
- No longer supported
- Price
- Was $799; do not buy secondhand
Which AI toy is best if you want no screen?
SkyBuds or Curio if you want the companion built into the toy. BubblePal if your kid is already bonded to one specific stuffed animal and you’d rather add a voice to it than replace it. All three are voice only, and two of them aren’t ours.
Curio is the pick if your family speaks English at home, you want the toy in hand this week, and you like that there’s no subscription. The parent app shows transcripts, so you can read back what your kid actually said. The tradeoff to weigh: conversations run through OpenAI and Gemini, so your child’s chats pass through third-party AI providers. Curio is upfront about this. Read their privacy policy and decide if you’re comfortable with it.
SkyBuds is the pick for a bilingual household, since it speaks more than 75 languages against Curio’s English only. It’s kidSAFE Listed, a seal earned from the independent kidSAFE Seal Program. Check the SkyBuds page for current availability before you count on a delivery date.
Which AI toy is best if you want a screen and games?
Miko 4, easily. It’s the only one on this list built that way. It has a touchscreen, educational games, video calling, and a content library, and it physically rolls around. For a kid in the 5 to 10 range who wants a gadget more than a cuddle, it’s the strongest option.
Three tradeoffs to know going in. It’s the most expensive once you add the subscription most families end up paying for. It doesn’t cover ages 3 to 5 at all. And Miko was named in a 2024 Senate letter from Senators Blackburn and Blumenthal raising concerns about audio data exposure. Miko responded publicly. Read both and judge for yourself; the letter and the response are public record.
What about the AI toys that no longer exist?
Moxie is the cautionary tale of this category. It was an $800 robot whose intelligence lived entirely on the company’s servers. When Embodied ran out of money in late 2024, the robots stopped working on January 30, 2025. Families got no refunds and kids lost a companion overnight.
The takeaway is a question to ask any company in this category, ours included: what happens to this toy if you shut down? No cloud-connected toy can promise immortality. At minimum, favor companies that answer the question instead of dodging it, and be careful about spending robot money on a startup’s first product. Our answer is in our privacy policy.
What should you check before buying any of these?
The same five questions apply to every toy on this list, including ours:
- Is the microphone always listening, or does my child press a button to talk?
- Where is my child’s voice data stored, and can I delete it?
- Can I actually review the conversations, through a dashboard or transcripts?
- What content filtering is in place? No generative AI toy filters perfectly, so what happens when it slips?
- Is there a subscription, and what does the toy still do if I stop paying?
If a company can’t answer these clearly, that tells you something before you spend the money.
Where SkyBuds fits
SkyBuds is three plush characters: Ash the fire dragon, Pearl the unicorn, and Sprout the bear. No screen, voice only, made for kids ages 3 to 10. It speaks more than 75 languages, the parent app lets you read every chat, and it’s kidSAFE Listed, a seal earned from the independent kidSAFE Seal Program. We don’t sell children’s data, you can delete your account and all of your child’s data anytime, and the privacy policy is the up-to-date source on exactly how data is handled.
If a screen-free, multilingual companion is what you’re after, meet the three SkyBuds, or take the quiz and let Ash, Pearl, and Sprout figure out which one fits your kid. If Curio or Miko fits your family better, buy that one instead. We’d rather you pick right than pick us.
Want the head-to-heads? We wrote them: SkyBuds vs Curio, SkyBuds vs Miko, SkyBuds vs BubblePal, SkyBuds vs Tonies, SkyBuds vs Yoto, and the best talking plush overall.
