Youper is a mental wellbeing AI chatbot that has been removed from both the iOS App Store and Google Play as of May 1, 2026. There has been no public statement from the company. The marketing site at youper.ai still advertises the product, still pushes a paid trial, and still links to App Store and Google Play pages that now return 404. People with active paid subscriptions report being unable to install the app on a new device.
That is the lead concern. Everything else in this review sits beneath it.
This review is not medical advice. If you are in crisis, call or text 988 (US Suicide & Crisis Lifeline). For text support, send HOME to 741741 (Crisis Text Line). In a medical emergency, dial 911.
What is Youper, and what just happened to it?
Youper, Inc. is a San Francisco-based digital mental health company founded in 2016 by Dr. Jose Hamilton, a psychiatrist, alongside Diego Couto and Thiago Marafon. From launch through 2024, the product positioned itself as an “AI Therapy” or “AI Mental Health” assistant, marketing CBT-, ACT-, and DBT-flavored conversational support directly to consumers. The 2021 BioSpace press release ran with the line “Major Study From Stanford University and Youper Finds Artificial Intelligence Therapy Effective at Reducing Anxiety and Depression.”
By early 2025, that positioning had quietly disappeared. The privacy policy was rewritten in February 2025. The homepage was rebuilt to brand the product as a “Wellbeing AI Chatbot” and to disclaim any medical or therapeutic role. By May 2025, a major version (12.06.009) shipped that stripped out the journal, meditation library, and CBT exercises that long-time users had built routines around. By April or early May 2026, the app vanished from both stores.
Two regulatory events frame the timing. California’s Companion Chatbot Law (SB 243) took effect on January 1, 2026, creating a civil right of action of at least $1,000 per violation against operators of chatbots that maintain emotional relationships across sessions. California AB 489 prohibits AI from implying licensed-professional credentials. Both laws hit the exact center of Youper’s prior marketing posture. The current homepage now reads like a checklist of SB 243 §22602(b) compliance artifacts: an AI disclosure section, a “Not Medical Advice” section, a published Suicide & Self-Harm Prevention Protocol, and an 18+ age restriction.
The app itself, however, is gone from the stores. No press release. No founder note. No in-app deprecation message. The result is a product in distress and a company that has not told its paying users what is happening.
Safety snapshot
Youper’s CompanionWise Safety Index is C+ (48/100, Yellow). The compliance architecture is genuinely improved relative to where it sat when Mozilla’s Privacy Not Included team flagged the product in 2022. The privacy policy is much narrower in stated data categories. Mozilla called Youper its “most improved app overall” in the 2023 follow-up. Strong passwords are now required. Crisis-protocol language is published. The 18+ age gate is documented in the EULA and on the homepage.
The Safety Index does not climb higher than C+ for two reasons. First, the End User License Agreement (last updated July 21, 2023) is 21+ months stale relative to the February 24, 2025 privacy policy. Stale terms against a refreshed privacy notice is the kind of documentation drift that often precedes regulatory friction. Second, EULA Section 17.8 grants Youper “an unrestricted, unlimited, irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, royalty-free, fully-paid, worldwide right” to use Contributions, including the carve-out that explicitly permits “the use of Content for model training and fine-tuning.” In a wellbeing chatbot, that Content includes the most sensitive disclosures users make. Combined with the fact that the privacy policy names OpenAI as the AI Service Provider but does not state that a Zero Data Retention contract is in place, the data-flow posture is meaningfully weaker than peers like Wysa.
The full safety methodology is documented at How We Rate, and the dimension-by-dimension breakdown lives on the Youper Safety Rating page.
Experience snapshot
The experience score sits in the failing tier. Three patterns drive that result.
- No usable free tier. Recent users repeatedly describe being forced into a paid trial signup before they can see what the product does. One representative review from September 2025 (15 helpful) reads: “Installed it and had to uninstall right away. You can’t try it without signing up for a trial. Anything you enter leads to a choice between ‘Understand Trial’ and ‘I’m done’.” The free-tier-quality sub-dimension scores at the floor of the scale.
- Predatory monetization patterns. A widely-cited April 2025 review (19 helpful) reports “more than 45 pop-ups that praise the app” before the user can reach actual functionality. An August 2025 review (30 helpful) describes “anxiety inducing deal timers and popups” inside an onboarding flow that “puts the pressure on the buy the subscription.” Multiple users use the words “scam” and “predatory.” Deploying anxiety-inducing dark patterns inside a product whose target audience is anxious is a systemic failure of product values.
- Memory and context loss. A January 2026 review (7 helpful) from a user who paid a full annual subscription summarizes the AI complaint precisely: “Still, AI has no memory or context of my profile, goals or previous conversations.” Long-term memory is the single hardest thing to get right in this category, and recent Youper reviewers report it does not work.
The Google Play distribution is the clearest signal of the experience collapse. Across the 389 most recent reviews available via the internal Google Play API (the public Play page is delisted, but the review history is still accessible), the average rating is 2.54/5. Looking at only the last 12 months, the average drops to 1.72/5, with 72% of reviews at one star. Five separate months in that window had average ratings at or below 1.33. The May 2025 release that removed legacy features marks the inflection point.
Who Youper is and is not for
Even at full health, Youper would be a narrow fit. In its current state, the answer-set narrows further.
Possibly useful for:
- Adults 18 and over who want a low-stakes journaling companion and who already have an established subscription on a device they don’t plan to replace
- Curiosity browsers comparing AI mental wellbeing options who want a window into what the post-SB 243 compliance posture looks like
- Researchers and clinicians tracking how mental health chatbots have been repositioning themselves in response to 2026 regulation
Not appropriate for:
- Anyone in active mental health crisis. Youper is not a medical device. The product itself says “Do not use Youper for emergencies.” Use 988, 741741, or 911.
- Users who need reliable cross-device installation. The app is delisted. New device, no install.
- Anyone under 18. The EULA prohibits use; the company explicitly does not market to minors.
- Users with serious data sensitivities about conversation content being used for AI model training. EULA §17.8 grants that license, and there is no published Zero Data Retention contract with the LLM provider.
- Users who are sensitive to upselling pressure. The 2025-2026 onboarding flow is the most aggressive in the category by user-reported behavior.
- People looking for clinically validated treatment. The single peer-reviewed efficacy paper is observational, not a randomized controlled trial. Wysa, by contrast, holds an FDA Breakthrough Device designation, has eight RCTs, and reports more than 36 peer-reviewed publications.
What the evidence shows
App store availability. The iOS App Store URL for Youper (id 1060691513) returns 404 across US, Australia, and fallback storefronts. Apple’s own iTunes Lookup API returns resultCount: 0 with no country filter, which confirms a global iOS removal rather than a regional unpublish. The Google Play page at the package br.com.youper returns 404. Google’s Play Store data-safety endpoint serves a “Not Found” body. The website continues to display “Get it on App Store” and “Get it on Google Play” call-to-action buttons that lead to the same 404 pages.
Privacy posture. The current privacy policy enumerates a remarkably narrow set of personal-information categories (email and password are the only direct categories listed) plus device telemetry and IP. Mozilla’s 2023 follow-up review confirmed Youper had moved from a near-failing privacy grade to “most improved.” Marketing-site tracking is exceptionally clean: a Markup Blacklight scan against youper.ai found zero ad trackers, zero third-party cookies, no canvas fingerprinting, no session recording, no Facebook Pixel, no TikTok Pixel, and no Google Analytics remarketing audiences. That is the cleanest marketing-site profile recorded so far in our registry.
Where the cleanliness ends. The Exodus Privacy report on the last public Android release (version 12.06.009, May 20, 2025) found three trackers in the binary: Google Crashlytics, Google Firebase Analytics, and MixPanel. Crashlytics and Firebase are baseline. MixPanel is not enumerated by name in the privacy policy, and the policy’s general language about “third parties and service providers” using “online tracking technologies on our Services for analytics and advertising” stops short of telling users which behavioral analytics SDK is collecting their event data. That is a transparency gap, not a violation, but it is the kind of gap a privacy policy should not have when the underlying product is mental wellbeing.
Clinical evidence. The single peer-reviewed publication is Mehta et al., 2021, in JMIR (PubMed ID 34155984), titled Acceptability and Effectiveness of Artificial Intelligence Therapy for Anxiety and Depression (Youper). The design was a longitudinal observational study of 4,517 paying users with no comparator group. Effect sizes were anxiety d=0.57 (medium) and depression d=0.46 (small to medium) at two weeks; the depression effect partially regressed at week four. Four-week retention was 42.66%. Four of the six listed authors (Vargas, Niles, Marafon, Couto) were Youper employees and shareholders at the time of publication. The authors themselves wrote that an RCT was needed. No RCT has been published in the four years since. The “Stanford” branding in early press materials reflected co-author James Gross’s Stanford affiliation, not independent Stanford sponsorship.
Crisis protocol. The Suicide & Self-Harm Prevention Protocol on youper.ai is well-built and reads like a faithful SB 243 §22602(b)(2) compliance artifact. It enumerates 988, the Crisis Text Line (text HOME to 741741), and 911. It states that the AI is configured “to avoid generating content that could encourage, validate, or reinforce suicidal thoughts or self-harm behaviors” and acknowledges the system “is not infallible.” This is genuinely solid documentation. Independent adversarial benchmarking of crisis-detection accuracy is not published, which is a gap (Wysa’s 2024 self-report and the 2025 i-Paper / Stanford adversarial test set a higher disclosure bar in the category).
Permissions. The Android manifest requested 33 permissions. After deduplicating launcher-badge entries for Samsung, Sony, and HTC integrations, the effective sensitive set is four: Camera, Read External Storage, Write External Storage, and Write Settings. The Camera permission is unusual for a CBT chatbot and unexplained by current product features. Wysa’s profile is materially leaner.
How Youper compares to peers
Five other products in this category are worth holding up next to Youper. Three are direct comparators in the wellbeing-chatbot lane; two are adjacent.
- Wysa: The strongest direct comparator. Available in both stores, holds FDA Breakthrough Device designation for clinical anxiety/depression intervention, has 8 RCTs and 36+ peer-reviewed publications, supports both an adult and a teen offering, runs in NHS deployments, and publishes more on its data-handling architecture. If you are choosing a wellbeing chatbot today and want clinical evidence plus actual app availability, Wysa is the obvious answer.
- Woebot: Discontinued for new consumer users on June 30, 2025. Historically the clinical-evidence benchmark in the category (rule-based, multiple RCTs, FDA Breakthrough Device for the WB001 postpartum depression therapeutic, SOC 2 Type 2 with zero exceptions). Useful as a baseline for what a clinically grounded chatbot looked like, but not currently a viable choice for new users.
- Replika: A different category. Replika is a companion app focused on relationship and emotional connection, not a CBT-style wellbeing tool. Comparing the two is mostly a category error, but readers do confuse them. Replika is not a substitute for therapy and was never marketed as one.
- Calm: Non-chat mental wellness. Meditation, sleep stories, and breathwork rather than AI conversation. A reasonable alternative for users who want structured mental-wellness content without the AI-conversation surface area.
- Mello: A teen-permitted mental wellbeing chatbot with a more recent product launch. Different audience profile (Mello permits teens; Youper does not), but a useful comparator for the broader compliance posture wave following SB 243.
Is Youper shutting down?
The evidence is consistent with a product in distress, but not with a confirmed shutdown. The website is fully operational and recently updated. The privacy policy was refreshed less than 15 months ago. The homepage was rebuilt this year. The Google Play internal review API was returning new user reviews as recently as April 8, 2026. None of those signals match a company actively winding the product down.
What does match a wind-down is the silence around the delisting itself. There is no blog post, no press release, no banner notice, no email to subscribers (per the Reddit and Google Play threads we reviewed), and no acknowledgment in the website’s FAQ or homepage that the apps are unavailable. That is the part that should make any prospective subscriber pause.
Three plausible explanations sit on the table, in roughly the order our analysis ranks them:
- Self-delisting in response to SB 243 civil liability exposure. California’s $1,000-per-violation private right of action against companion chatbot operators creates concentrated litigation risk. Pulling the app off both stores sharply narrows the surface area for user signup and therefore for new violations. The website’s compliance language already reads like a defensive rewrite.
- Platform enforcement under updated mental-health-app guidelines. Apple’s 2024 App Review Guideline 1.4.x updates and Google’s 2025 medical-app policy updates both elevated review requirements for mental-health-related software. A compliance gap on either platform could force a removal. This usually shows up as an unpublish action, not a takedown.
- Voluntary product wind-down toward web-only. Youper has already discontinued the telehealth offering it launched in 2021. A move to web-only delivery, possibly as a B2B or enterprise pivot, would be consistent with the rebrand language and the loss of consumer-app features.
Until Youper publishes an explanation, every prospective subscriber should treat the delisting as a meaningful unknown rather than a bug.
Our bottom line
Youper has done real compliance work in the past two years. The privacy policy is much narrower than it was. The marketing site does not deploy advertising trackers. The crisis protocol is documented. The 18+ age gate exists. None of those wins compensate for an app that has been pulled from both major stores with no public explanation, marketed by a company that continues to charge for trials, evaluated by a single observational study with employee co-authors, and described by the most recent cohort of users in language ranging from “ChatGPT but worse” to “scam.”
If you are reading this because you saw Youper recommended in a 2023 article and you are wondering whether to subscribe today, the answer is no. There are better-evidenced and currently-available alternatives in the same category. If you are an existing subscriber, the most important question is what happens when you change phones. The most important number is 988 if you are in crisis. The least important number is the $80-ish per year that the website would still like you to pay for a product whose continuity is now opaque.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Youper shutting down?
As of May 1, 2026, Youper has been removed from both the iOS App Store and Google Play, but the company has issued no statement. The website remains live, the privacy policy was refreshed in February 2025, and the Google Play internal review API was still returning user reviews in April 2026. The pattern suggests distress, not a confirmed shutdown.
Is Youper safe to use?
Youper carries a CompanionWise Safety Index of C+ (48/100, Yellow). The compliance posture has improved since Mozilla flagged the product in 2022, but EULA §17.8 grants a perpetual royalty-free license to use conversation content for AI training, and no Zero Data Retention contract with the LLM provider is published. Sensitive disclosures carry meaningful exposure.
Why is Youper not on the App Store anymore?
The cause is not public. Plausible explanations include voluntary delisting in response to California’s SB 243 (the Companion Chatbot Law that took effect January 1, 2026), platform enforcement under Apple’s 2024 or Google’s 2025 mental-health-app guideline updates, or a quiet wind-down toward web-only delivery. Until Youper publishes an explanation, all three remain hypotheses.
Can Youper replace therapy?
No. Youper’s own EULA, Section 17.3, states that the product “is not intended to and do not provide clinical psychotherapy, counseling, medical advice, diagnosis, or medical treatment.” If you are in active mental health crisis, call or text 988 (US Suicide & Crisis Lifeline). If you need therapy, consult a licensed clinician. Youper is not a clinical substitute.
Does Youper use AI to train on my conversations?
Yes. EULA Section 17.8 grants Youper a license to use conversation content for “model training and fine-tuning.” According to the Mehta et al. 2021 JMIR study, conversation content has historically been analyzed at scale. The privacy policy names OpenAI as the AI Service Provider but does not confirm a Zero Data Retention contract, which is a meaningful gap relative to Wysa.
How does Youper compare to Wysa?
Wysa is a stronger choice on every clinically meaningful axis. Wysa is currently available in both stores, holds an FDA Breakthrough Device designation, has eight randomized controlled trials, runs in NHS deployments, and publishes more detail on its data-handling. Youper has one observational study (N=4,517, with four of six authors being employees) and is no longer available for new installs.
Is Youper free?
Effectively, no. Recent users report being unable to evaluate features without first entering a paid trial. A representative September 2025 Google Play review reads: “You can’t try it without signing up for a trial. Anything you enter leads to a choice between ‘Understand Trial’ and ‘I’m done’.” Pricing is subscription-only, around $70 to $80 per year.
How we reviewed Youper
This review uses CompanionWise’s standardized AI-assisted methodology applied to a structured evidence file. Sources include the live youper.ai privacy policy and EULA, the publicly retrievable Google Play review history (389 reviews scraped via google-play-scraper), iTunes Lookup API data, Exodus Privacy’s January 2025 report on the last public Android release, a Markup Blacklight scan of the marketing site, Mozilla’s 2022 and 2023 Privacy Not Included reviews, the Mehta et al. 2021 JMIR publication, ChoosingTherapy’s editorial review, and primary regulatory texts (California SB 243, AB 489, FTC press materials, FDA advisory documents). We do not perform product evaluation on apps that are unavailable for installation.
The full methodology is documented at How We Review and the safety scoring rubric at How We Rate. The dimension-by-dimension safety score for Youper lives on the Youper Safety Rating page.