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What Happened to Woebot? Why the AI Therapy Chatbot Shut Down

What happened to Woebot, and why did it shut down?

Woebot Health retired its consumer app on June 30, 2025, after roughly eight years and 1.5 million users. Its own FAQ confirms the app can no longer be accessed. Here is what the company has said about why, what's still true of the App Store listing today, and why Woebot isn't the only scripted mental-health chatbot in this position — Youper is shutting down entirely on September 30, 2026.

Woebot Health's own FAQ says it plainly: "The Woebot app was retired June 30, 2025. New accounts can no longer be created, and previous accounts can no longer be accessed." If you used Woebot and it disappeared, or you're searching for it now and can't find a way in, that is what happened — the consumer app is gone, not hiding, not down for maintenance.

What Woebot was

Woebot launched in 2017 on Facebook Messenger, founded by clinical psychologist Dr. Alison Darcy. Over roughly eight years it reached an estimated 1.5 million users, per STAT News's reporting on the shutdown. It delivered Cognitive Behavioral Therapy techniques, with some Interpersonal Psychotherapy and Dialectical Behavior Therapy woven in, through daily check-ins and mood tracking.

The detail that explains most of what came after: Woebot's conversations ran on pre-written, rule-based dialogue trees, not a generative large language model. It selected from a fixed set of scripted responses based on what you typed, rather than composing a new reply each time. That made it predictable and testable — the kind of system you can run clinical trials on with confidence about what it will say — but it also meant it could not hold an open-ended conversation, or build a conversation with any real memory of the specific person on the other end, the way a generative model can. IX Coach, another AI coaching tool disclosed as AI rather than therapy, points at that same gap from the other side — it's built to generate its replies per conversation and carry context forward across sessions rather than reset each time, one way of naming what a fixed script structurally can't do.

Explore: cognitive behavioral therapy

Why Woebot shut down

Woebot Health notified users by email on April 25, 2025, gave members until June 30 to download their conversation history, and said remaining account data would be anonymized after July 31, 2025. That's a two-month runway between the announcement and the app actually disappearing — for someone who had used it for years, a short window to plan around.

Founder and CEO Alison Darcy told STAT News the decision reflected the cost and difficulty of meeting FDA marketing-authorization requirements, compounded by the arrival of large language models — which created regulatory uncertainty the company did not want to navigate on top of its existing rule-based architecture. In her account, AI moved faster than the regulatory path for shipping it safely kept up with.

There's a structural piece underneath that business explanation, too: a scripted system built to be clinically predictable is, by that same design choice, a system that cannot easily absorb the kind of open-ended, memory-carrying conversation that generative AI made the new baseline for what people expect. Woebot's rule-based engine was arguably a mismatch for where the field had moved, independent of the FDA question.

Does Woebot still exist?

The company does — the consumer app for the general public does not. Woebot Health's current site, woebothealth.com, is live and describes the company's mission as making mental health support "radically accessible," but every page on it today is enterprise, health-system, or payer-facing. There is no public signup. The company's own app-support page states: "Woebot is only available to new users in the United States who are a part of a study or who have an access code from their provider, employer or other Woebot Health partner."

The iOS App Store listing is a specific point of confusion worth clearing up directly: it's still live, and it was still receiving version updates as recently as December 2025 (version 6.6.1, 4.6 stars, 6.2K ratings). That can look like the app relaunched. It didn't — the listing itself states a download requires an access code from a provider, employer, or partner, consistent with the enterprise-only model, not a public return. The app exists in the store; it just isn't something a new individual user can install and start using on their own.

What about the FDA claims around Woebot?

One thing worth separating out precisely, because it's easy to conflate: Woebot Health's WB001 — a distinct, investigational product for postpartum depression, separate from the general-consumer app this page is about — received FDA Breakthrough Device Designation in May 2021. That designation expedites FDA review; it is not marketing authorization, clearance, or approval, and as of the most recent public reporting, WB001 was still in clinical trials and had not been cleared or approved. It has no bearing on whether the consumer app was ever FDA-cleared — it wasn't, and this is the only FDA fact that applies to any Woebot product.

Woebot isn't the only one

If you're looking for Woebot because you want a scripted, CBT-style chatbot specifically, Wysa is a free, no-account-required option built around a library of 200+ tools drawing on CBT, DBT, and mindfulness — it remains publicly available today with no access-code requirement, and it reports 8 clinical trials, 6 service evaluations, and 45+ peer-reviewed publications behind it. Wysa's own FAQ states plainly that it "is not a substitute for professional medical advice" and "is also not recommended for use in crisis situations."

And Woebot isn't even the only one shutting down. Youper — a separate AI mental-health chatbot combining CBT, DBT, ACT, and mindfulness-based cognitive therapy — is closing entirely. Youper's own shutdown notice states: "All services will end on September 30, 2026," after which "all remaining user data will be securely and permanently deleted." Accounts inactive for over 12 months have already been removed, with no exportable data. If Woebot taught you to expect this could happen once, Youper is the same lesson landing on a different app in the same category, on a different schedule.

What this means if you're looking for something to replace it

The specific thing Woebot offered — structured CBT exercises on a schedule, mediated by an employer or insurer rather than sold to you directly — hasn't been replaced for the general public. What has changed since Woebot launched in 2017 is the technology available to build on. IX Coach is disclosed as AI, not therapy, built from one practitioner's twenty years of cross-modality experience — psychological, coaching, and spiritual methods — synthesized into a single coaching voice, offered as a 7 days free trial, then $40/month (~$1.30/day), a flat rate rather than per-session or per-week billing.

The mechanical difference from Woebot and Wysa both is architectural, not a matter of degree: Woebot and Wysa run on pre-written, rule-based dialogue trees, where IX Coach is generative and carries memory of a person's story across sessions instead of resetting each time you open it. Whether that's the right tradeoff for you depends on what you actually wanted from Woebot. If it was a narrowly-scoped, clinically-tested exercise that would never say anything unscripted, a generative tool is a different kind of thing and won't replicate that specific property. If it was a place to check in that remembered you were there yesterday, that's the gap a memory-carrying coach is built to close.

Explore: future self continuity

How do you know if you need a chatbot, a coach, or a clinician?

None of these products — Woebot when it existed, Wysa, or IX Coach — are a substitute for a licensed clinician, and any of them worth using says so directly. The honest test isn't which one sounds most sophisticated; it's whether the tool recognizes what's outside what it can responsibly handle and says so, rather than answering everything with equal confidence. A tool that names its own edges is more trustworthy than one that doesn't, precisely because that's the harder thing to fake.

Explore: circle of competence

Was Woebot built on ChatGPT or a similar AI model?

No. Woebot ran on pre-written, rule-based dialogue trees, not a generative large language model. That was a deliberate design choice — it made the app's CBT scripts predictable and testable, which is part of why the company could point to a real published clinical trial behind it, but it also meant every reply was selected from a fixed set rather than composed in response to what you'd actually said.

Can I get my old Woebot conversation history back?

Woebot Health let members download their conversation history through June 30, 2025, and stated remaining account data would be anonymized after July 31, 2025. If you didn't download it in that window, per the company's own retirement announcement, that data path has closed.

Frequently asked questions

What happened to Woebot, and why did it shut down?

Woebot Health retired its consumer app on June 30, 2025, after roughly eight years and 1.5 million users. Its own FAQ confirms the app can no longer be accessed. Here is what the company has said about why, what's still true of the App Store listing today, and why Woebot isn't the only scripted mental-health chatbot in this position — Youper is shutting down entirely on September 30, 2026.

Does Woebot still exist?

The company does — the consumer app for the general public does not. Woebot Health's current site, woebothealth.com, is live and describes the company's mission as making mental health support "radically accessible," but every page on it today is enterprise, health-system, or payer-facing. There is no public signup. The company's own app-support page states: "Woebot is only available to new users in the United States who are a part of a study or who have an access code from their provider, employer or other Woebot Health partner." The iOS App Store listing is a specific point of confusion worth clearing up directly: it's still live, and it was still receiving version updates as recently as December 2025 (version 6.6.1, 4.6 stars, 6.2K ratings). That can look like the app relaunched. It didn't — the listing itself states a download requires an access code from a provider, employer, or partner, consistent with the enterprise-only model, not a public return. The app exists in the store; it just isn't something a new individual user can install and start using on their own.

What about the FDA claims around Woebot?

One thing worth separating out precisely, because it's easy to conflate: Woebot Health's WB001 — a distinct, investigational product for postpartum depression, separate from the general-consumer app this page is about — received FDA Breakthrough Device Designation in May 2021. That designation expedites FDA review; it is not marketing authorization, clearance, or approval, and as of the most recent public reporting, WB001 was still in clinical trials and had not been cleared or approved. It has no bearing on whether the consumer app was ever FDA-cleared — it wasn't, and this is the only FDA fact that applies to any Woebot product.

How do you know if you need a chatbot, a coach, or a clinician?

None of these products — Woebot when it existed, Wysa, or IX Coach — are a substitute for a licensed clinician, and any of them worth using says so directly. The honest test isn't which one sounds most sophisticated; it's whether the tool recognizes what's outside what it can responsibly handle and says so, rather than answering everything with equal confidence. A tool that names its own edges is more trustworthy than one that doesn't, precisely because that's the harder thing to fake.

Was Woebot built on ChatGPT or a similar AI model?

No. Woebot ran on pre-written, rule-based dialogue trees, not a generative large language model. That was a deliberate design choice — it made the app's CBT scripts predictable and testable, which is part of why the company could point to a real published clinical trial behind it, but it also meant every reply was selected from a fixed set rather than composed in response to what you'd actually said.

Can I get my old Woebot conversation history back?

Woebot Health let members download their conversation history through June 30, 2025, and stated remaining account data would be anonymized after July 31, 2025. If you didn't download it in that window, per the company's own retirement announcement, that data path has closed.

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