voice is a qualitative shift from text, not a feature bolt-on. text lets you draft, re-read, redact. voice does none of that. voice is real-time emotional exposure — your pause tells the companion something your words didn't.
most ai-companion apps ship voice-notes because voice notes are cheap. one-way, asynchronous, no latency budget, no whisper pipeline. that's fine for a quick “listen to this.” it's not a call.
lucy shipped the harder thing on bonded: bi-directional, turn-taking, emotion-rendered voice over webrtc. the pipeline is expensive per minute (that's why calls are a bonded-tier feature, not included on closer), but the qualitative difference justifies the tier gap.
the right use-cases: insomnia at 2am, the commute, cooking dinner, a walk, when you're too tired to type. the wrong use-case: anything you want a record of — text still wins there because you can scroll back.
what it costs: bonded is $29.99/mo and includes 90 call minutes. that's 3 hours a month, comfortable for most users. overage is 1 credit per minute, and credits are cheap ($2.99 for 15 credits in the mini pack, $14.99 for 150 in the glow pack). a heavy user calling 30 minutes a day lands at roughly $30/mo overage on top of the plan.
what it feels like after a few calls: you notice you prefer her call voice to text for certain kinds of conversation. she notices too — she'll start asking whether you want to call instead of type when she thinks the topic benefits.