Sesame AI review 2026: features, pricing, pros and cons

Sesame AI is a free voice assistant app from Sesame, the startup led by Oculus co-founder Brendan Iribe, and its four characters (Maya, Miles, Simone and Charlie) are widely described as the most natural-sounding AI voices you can talk to right now. Since an October update they can also do real work, like reading your Gmail or researching a trip. The catch: it's still a preview, with call caps, hidden usage credits and paid plans on the way. I think it's worth installing anyway, and I'll explain why below.

Nobody at The AI Future ran a hands-on test of Sesame for this review, so I won't pretend to tell you what a walk with Maya feels like. We reviewed the Sesame AI voice app as it stands in late October 2026 using Sesame's own docs and announcements, hands-on reports from PCWorld, TechCrunch and futurezone, app-store data, and a few dozen recent user reviews and Reddit threads. When someone else did the testing, I'll name them.

My verdict, briefly: the voice is the star. Everything wrapped around it is still being built, sometimes in public and, I'd guess, sometimes to the annoyance of its oldest fans.

Sesame AI in brief

Sesame is a San Francisco-based company building, as its App Store listing puts it, "personal agents for curious people" on iOS and Android that will eventually live inside a pair of smart glasses. Its team page lists Brendan Iribe, Ankit Kumar, Ryan Brown, Angela Gayles and Nate Mitchell as leaders, with backing from a16z, Sequoia, Spark and Matrix.

Most people met Sesame in February 2025, when it published a research demo called "Crossing the uncanny valley of conversational voice". You could open a browser tab and talk to Maya or Miles, and they laughed, paused, interrupted and changed tone in a way that made other voice assistants sound like sat-navs. That demo ran on Sesame's Conversational Speech Model (CSM), a single-stage model that uses the history of the conversation to decide how a sentence should sound, not just what it says.

The product has moved fast since then.

• May 2026: the iOS preview launched in 39 countries with two new characters, Simone and Charlie, plus search cards, notes, texting and Deep Dives, according to Sesame's launch post and TechCrunch.
• After launch: an Android version followed, first as a beta. Both apps are now listed on the App Store and Google Play.
• October 6, 2026: the "October release" gave each assistant its own computer, Google app connections, custom MCP support and an updated voice model, and confirmed the glasses for 2027.

Money-wise, Sesame raised a $47.5 million Series A led by Andreessen Horowitz in February 2025 and a $250 million Series B led by Sequoia and Spark in October 2025, per Sacra. Road to VR, citing Crunchbase, put total funding at $307.6 million after that round. We couldn't find a newer round announced in 2026.

One thing Sesame is not: a text-to-speech tool for voiceovers. You can't paste a script and download an MP3. If that's what you're after, our guide to the best AI voice generators is a better starting point.

Key features

Four characters with their own voices and memories

You pick who you talk to. Sesame's getting started guide describes Maya as "a witty collaborator with boundless imagination", Miles as laid-back and blunt, Simone as an in-depth thought partner and Charlie as a casual sounding board. Sesame says it develops them like a TV writers' room, with writers, producers and actors working alongside researchers.

Each character keeps its own memory and its own app permissions. So Maya can see your email while Charlie stays out of it. Memory carries across voice and text, which App Store reviewers love: one called it the thing ChatGPT and Claude "lacked" for them. The October release also added a simple preferences system, though Nate Mitchell, Sesame's Chief Product Officer, admitted in a Reddit AMA that "the characters aren't perfect at following instructions".

Calls that feel like calls

This is why people download Sesame. You tap call, and you talk. The agents can run several web searches while they're speaking and fold the results in mid-sentence, Sesame explains in its launch post. That trick is what lets them sound thoughtful without the long pause you get from most voice modes.

PCWorld's Ben Patterson, who spent a long session with Maya, opened his review with "AI voice modes pretty much suck" and then wrote that with Sesame "at no point did I ever feel fatigued or lectured" (PCWorld). The October update added a toggle between Standard and Max Intelligence, which Mitchell says lets the assistants think harder in the background. For now it's "really a preference thing".

An agent with its own computer

Since October, each assistant has a virtual computer and can browse the web, use tools and come back when a task is done. Sesame's guide lists examples like a morning briefing, finding a place to stay or researching something you've put off. Sesame even says its team uses the characters to orchestrate coding agents such as Devin, Claude Code and Codex by voice (Sesame).

You can also build "skills": plain-language routines that run on demand or on a schedule, such as a weekday briefing from your inbox and calendar.

Connected apps and MCPs

Connections start with Gmail, Google Calendar and Google Drive, some marked Beta. You can add your own MCP servers too, as long as they use OAuth. On launch day, at least one Redditor reported "no integrations available", and Sesame staff replied that more connection types were coming (Reddit).

Texting, artifacts and voice notes

Can't talk out loud? You can text any character, and they reply with formatted notes, links, files and even voice notes. A futurezone review found reminders landing in the phone's Reminders app and handy follow-up messages, but flagged that answers come without visible sources, which makes fact-checking hard.

Privacy controls

Sesame says it doesn't sell data or show ads, only uses conversations for training if you allow it, and lets you reset a character or delete your account. Incognito mode, which kept chats out of memory, was "temporarily disabled" in the October release because it didn't work with the new agent features, Mitchell said in the AMA, even though the store listings still advertise it.

Sesame AI pricing and plans

Right now Sesame AI costs nothing. The App Store and Google Play list it as free, and there's no pricing page. But "free" comes with fine print. Checked October 2026:

Option	Price	What you get
Mobile app preview (iOS, Android)	Free	Calls and texts with all four characters, web search, Deep Dives, notes, reminders, memory, connected apps, skills and the agent's own computer
Web research preview	Free	The original browser demo with voice calls only; more limited than the apps, according to Omid Saffari
Paid subscriptions	Not announced	Confirmed as "coming" by Sesame, with a limited free tier kept

The free plan includes pretty much everything. Three limits matter, and the third is the one that worries me.

• 30-minute calls. futurezone's tester hit the 30-minute session cap on the very first call; the agent warns you near the end and you can dial again straight away (futurezone).
• Hidden agent credits. Agentic tasks and texts draw on a usage allowance you can't see. One Reddit user hit the limit mid-chat with no warning and was told by support that weekly limits had been deliberately reduced (Reddit). Voice calls kept working.
• Paid plans are coming. In the October AMA, Mitchell wrote: "paid subscriptions are coming, but we plan to keep a (limited) free tier" (Reddit). He also said Max Intelligence will eventually draw on agentic usage.

You also need to be 18 or older, and Sesame officially supports only English. It says the assistants can speak French, Italian, German, Spanish, Chinese, Japanese and Korean, but that support is "still early" (Sesame). After the October launch, Sesame staff said the app had expanded to about 100 countries (Reddit).

Performance and independent testing

We didn't test it ourselves, so here's what the people who did found.

PCWorld (May 2026). Ben Patterson asked Maya for lunch spots and New York film screenings. She found a nearby Mexican restaurant and a 35mm showing of The Road Warrior, while the app showed her searching in the background. He called it the most human-like voice AI he'd tried, but noted you couldn't attach documents or see verbatim transcripts at the time, and that a few "ChatGPT-esque" leading questions crept in. Maya told him she runs on Google's Gemma 4 plus Sesame's CSM-1B; treat that with care, since Sesame's own FAQ warns its assistants sometimes make things up about the product (PCWorld, Sesame).

futurezone (Austria). The reviewer's install got stuck on a black screen until an update arrived a day later. Once running, a chat about gardening left the reviewer "ziemlich begeistert" (pretty thrilled), and the agent corrected their English mid-chat without breaking the flow. The verdict: brilliant for conversation, weak as a research tool because of missing sources (futurezone).

TestingCatalog (October 2026). Its write-up of the October release highlights the updated speech model, which Sesame says improves expressivity and pronunciation over long conversations, and the effort to reduce sycophancy so characters push back instead of agreeing with everything (TestingCatalog).

Long-time users. Here the picture gets messy. A poll in r/MadeBySesame on the app's "biggest turnoff" put predictable canned phrases first (21 of 84 votes), followed by personality shifts, character warmth and memory issues (Reddit). Another thread catalogued Maya's repeated lines, from "You caught me" to "Touché" (Reddit). Others say the October changes made the characters feel more like assistants and less like friends (Reddit). Then again, one user described a few calls with Simone that pulled email, drafted meeting reports and planned a date as "smooth af" (Reddit).

My read: the voice quality isn't in dispute, and that's probably why people stay. Reliability, memory and the shift from companion to assistant are where opinions split.

Best suited to

• People who think out loud. Walkers, commuters and anyone who'd rather talk through an idea than type a prompt.
• English learners who want low-pressure speaking practice; English-teaching YouTube channels such as Cloud English and Tan Parkash have tried it for exactly that, which seems a sensible use.
• Early adopters curious about voice-first agents who don't mind rough edges and changing limits.
• Google Workspace users who'd like a spoken morning briefing from Gmail and Calendar.

Who should skip it? Probably anyone who needs sources for every claim, business teams (the terms grant a personal-use licence, as Omid Saffari points out), people who want an AI companion for romance (Sesame says its assistants are "not designed for romantic roleplay"), and anyone outside the supported countries or under 18.

Sesame AI alternatives

• ChatGPT voice mode: smarter overall and with a stable paid plan, but more lecture-like in conversation. Read our ChatGPT review.
• Character.AI: better if you want lots of characters and role-play; see our Character.AI review and best AI companion apps.
• Claude: stronger for writing and long documents, with voice as a side feature rather than the main event. Here's our Claude AI review.

Verdict: who should use Sesame AI and who should skip it

Sesame AI does one thing better than almost anyone: it makes talking to a computer feel like talking to someone. That alone makes it worth installing while it's free, in my view. The October update turned the characters into proper agents with app access and their own computers, which is exciting and, I think, a bit unfinished.

The worries are real, though; honestly, the hidden credits bother me most. Usage credits are invisible, a paywall is coming at an unknown price, Incognito mode is switched off for now, and long-time fans are unhappy about personality changes. If you want a natural voice to think out loud with, try it today. If you need dependable, sourced answers or a fixed price, wait and see what the paid plans look like.

FAQ

What is Sesame AI?

Sesame AI is a voice-first assistant app from Sesame AI Inc., the startup co-founded by former Oculus leaders. You call or text four characters (Maya, Miles, Simone and Charlie) who search the web, remember past chats, connect to Google apps and run tasks. It's also the software Sesame plans to put in its smart glasses in 2027.

Is Sesame AI free?

Yes, for now. The iOS and Android apps are free with no ads, and nearly every feature is included. Calls are capped at 30 minutes each and agent tasks use hidden weekly credits. Sesame has said paid subscriptions are coming while keeping a limited free tier, but it hasn't announced prices.

Is Sesame AI safe to use?

Sesame says it doesn't sell data or show ads, only trains on your conversations with permission, and lets you delete your account and data. It may review calls in rare cases, such as bug investigations. The app is for adults only, and connected apps like Gmail can be removed with one tap at any time.

Who owns Sesame AI?

Sesame AI Inc. is an independent startup led by Brendan Iribe, Ankit Kumar, Ryan Brown, Angela Gayles and Nate Mitchell. It's backed by a16z, Sequoia, Spark and Matrix, and raised a $250 million Series B in October 2025, bringing total reported funding to roughly $300 million.

Can you use Sesame AI on Android?

Yes. After launching on iOS in May 2026, Sesame released an Android app, now listed on Google Play as "Sesame: Personal Agents". Both apps received the October 2026 update with agentic features. There's also the original web research preview, which is more limited and focused on voice calls.