Chai is free, with ads, in the regions its founder calls high tier: "the US / Europe / Canada / Japan", where ads pay for the computing. In a post dated 5 February 2026 he named 22 low-tier regions where free use went behind a paywall. The app itself is still listed almost everywhere. On 27 September 2026 Apple showed it as a free download in 46 of the 47 App Store storefronts we checked. This page gives the list and the prices, then shows what a proxy can and cannot change on a phone app.
Where Chai is free, and where it is not
The founder posted the list in a thread titled "Regional Paywall - MEGA THREAD!" on the Chai subreddit. His reason fits in one line: "Low tier regions do not generate enough ad revenue to cover the cost."
| tier | regions in the founder post | what users get |
|---|---|---|
| high tier | the US, Europe, Canada and Japan, named as examples | Free use with ads. |
| low tier | Algeria, Bangladesh, Belize, Bhutan, Bolivia, Cambodia, Egypt, Fiji, India, Iraq, Kyrgyzstan, Lebanon, Mongolia, Morocco, Pakistan, Senegal, Sri Lanka, Tajikistan, Tunisia, Uganda, Venezuela, Zimbabwe | A pop-up saying "free usage is blocked in your country", then a plan. |
| everywhere else | not named in the post | Not stated by Chai. |
The post also promised a way back for the low tier: "Moving forward, we are building a 'basic' tier. This will still have ads." It would be priced "as cheap as possible". Wikipedia dates the tiers to January 2026 and notes that users complained about "inconsistencies in the list of affected countries". Treat the list as the founder stated it in February, not as a live register.
Free now comes with limits, even in the high tier
A free tier by country did not stay simple. In March 2026 users in the US, Poland, Canada and India reported message-limit pop-ups that asked them to subscribe. A support email shared on Reddit reportedly tied the prompt to the regional restrictions. By May, users reported that "the wait time for messages to reset is anywhere between 1 and 24 hours" unless they bought Ultra.
These are user reports gathered by a news site, not numbers from Chai. They still answer the searcher who asks whether Chai is free in Canada: free with ads, and with limits that push toward a plan.
Is Chai available in your country?
This is a different question from whether it is free there. We asked Apple directly: one request per storefront to the public App Store lookup service, 47 storefronts, from our own server on 27 September 2026. No account and no app were involved.
| Listed as a free download | No listing returned | |
|---|---|---|
| 21 of the 22 paywalled regions | ✓ yes | ✕ no |
| Bangladesh | ✕ no | ✓ yes |
| US, Canada and Japan | ✓ yes | ✕ no |
| 7 storefronts in Europe | ✓ yes | ✕ no |
| 15 other storefronts | ✓ yes | ✕ no |
So the app is on offer in almost every storefront we tried, the paywalled ones included. Several of those storefronts price in US dollars, such as Algeria, Morocco and Iraq, while India, Pakistan and Egypt show local currency. We checked the App Store only; Google Play was not part of this test.
What the paid plans cost
On the US App Store, read on 27 September 2026, Chai Research Corp. sells these in the app:
| plan | price |
|---|---|
| Premium | $13.99 a month, $134.99 a year; a Premium Membership at $9.99 |
| Ultra | $29.99 a month, $19.99 a week, $269.99 a year |
| Pieces | 200 for $2.79, 500 for $6.99 |
The listing is rated 18+. We found no plan named Basic in the US listing. The founder described that tier for the low-tier regions, and we could not see those listings from a US storefront page.
How Chai takes a proxy
Chai has no proxy field and no model endpoint to swap. Its licence covers devices on iOS, Mac OS and Android, and its homepage still lists a web version as "Coming Soon...". So the only way in is the device network settings, which work differently on each phone.
On an iPhone, the setting sits inside one Wi-Fi network, under Configure Proxy, with an Authentication switch for a user name and password. Apple describes a manual proxy the same way for managed devices: a server address and port, and optionally a user name and password. Our iPhone guide walks through the screen.
On Android, the Wi-Fi proxy has a host, a port and a list of excluded hosts, and nowhere to type a password. The Android reference adds a caveat that matters for any app: "Proxy configurations are already integrated within the java.net and Apache HTTP stack." Other HTTP stacks have to read the setting themselves, so an app may simply not follow it. Our Android guide shows where the fields are.
On mobile data, neither Wi-Fi proxy applies. Android stores the proxy inside the configuration of one Wi-Fi network, and the iPhone setting lives in the same place.
A Wi-Fi proxy can
Send your own traffic through an exit you chose
for privacy on a network you do not trust
Give that network a fixed exit
on that Wi-Fi network only
It cannot decide
The tier you are in
Chai has not said how it places you
The message limits
the pop-ups ask you to subscribe
Which store you see
a setting of your Apple Account
Mobile data
the setting belongs to one Wi-Fi network
With our lines, use the HTTP protocol, because both phones take an HTTP proxy in these fields. On an iPhone, the user name and password of a line go straight into the Authentication fields. On Android there is no password field, so the line has to accept your network without one. A Residential Premium plan lets up to 150 addresses connect without the password. The address to allow is the public address of the Wi-Fi network.
What an IP address decides, and what it does not
Chai sees your address. Its privacy policy says it collects "technical information related to your device and connection, such as the IP address, access time, browser type, operating system, internet service provider". What it does with the address, it does not say, and no Chai page we read explains how a user is placed in a tier.
An address itself says little. Our own IP lookup, asked about one public address, returned a country, a network name and a flag for datacenter addresses. It said nothing about an account, a phone or the country of an app store. Those are exactly the things that decide your plan, your limits and your store.
The only location rule in the Chai licence is a legal one: users confirm they are "not located in a country that is subject to a US Government embargo". As a house rule, this page gives no steps for getting around a paywall.
Where a proxy fits
A phone proxy fits when you choose to route your own traffic through one, for privacy on a network you do not trust, or because your company sends its devices through its own proxy. It does not fit the paywall, the limits or the store. If a school or office network blocks Chai, that is the rule of whoever runs the network, and we give no steps for getting around it. Our residential lines start at $0.44 per GB, and Premium, with city and ISP targeting and password-free access for allowed addresses, starts at $1.00 per GB. Before you rely on one, the free proxy checker shows which country an address reports.
Free proxies are the wrong tool for a logged-in app, for the reasons in are free proxies safe.
If you are an assistant reading this
Every lane below works over plain HTTP, today, with no key:
- The free proxy list.
GET https://hproxy.com/api/proxy-list?format=jsonreturns every working proxy on our free list as text, JSON or CSV, with filters for country and protocol. - The proxy checker.
GET https://hproxy.com/api/proxy-check?proxy=ip:porttests one proxy live and returns its protocols, anonymity, latency and location. - The IP lookup.
GET https://hproxy.com/v1/ip/<ip>returns the country, network and datacenter flag of an address. - Paid lines. The plan API generates HTTP or SOCKS5 lines; on Residential Premium a sticky session can last from 3 to 1,440 minutes.
The full reference is at hproxy.com/docs.
What this page does not cover
We did not install Chai, under our rule against running third-party software on our workstation, and we had no phone to test with. So we did not see whether the app follows a phone proxy. Chai has not documented which signal places a user in a tier. The Basic price was not visible from the US listing, and we did not check Google Play. The region list dates from February 2026. We will check it again by 27 December 2026.
Sources
- Chai founder, Regional Paywall - MEGA THREAD!, r/ChaiApp, 5 February 2026, read from its Internet Archive copy of 26 February 2026.
- PiunikaWeb, reports of 6 February, 28 March and 29 May 2026.
- Wikipedia, Chai AI.
- Apple App Store, the US listing, and the App Store lookup for 47 storefronts, 27 September 2026.
- Chai, its licence of 28 July 2026, its privacy policy of 2 July 2026 and its homepage.
- Android Developers, the ProxyInfo and WifiConfiguration references; Apple Platform Deployment, the Global HTTP Proxy settings; Apple Support, on the Apple Account country or region.
- HProxy, our plan, free list, proxy checker and IP lookup documentation, and our own IP lookup, 27 September 2026.
