Siri Alternatives For Android Users

There is no Siri for Android, and there probably never will be. But that doesn’t mean that Android users can’t have virtual assistants that are similar, and sometimes even better than, Siri. 

Why Siri Only Runs on Apple Devices

Siri will probably always only work on Apple devices because it’s a major competitive difference for Apple. If you want all the cool things Siri does, you have to buy an iPhone or other Apple device. 

Apple makes the largest part of its money on hardware sales, so allowing such a compelling feature to run on its competitor’s hardware would hurt its bottom line. And that’s not something Apple, or any smart business, usually does.

Even though there’s no Siri for Android, Android has its own built-in, voice-activated intelligent assistants. In fact, there are actually multiple options for you to choose from.

Alternatives to Siri for Android

Android has several options for voice assistants like Siri. Here are some of the most popular ones:

• Alexa: Amazon’s Alexa, which is the voice of its Echo series of products, comes with Amazon’s Fire tablets and other products. The Alexa app for Android can be downloaded and run on modern phones.
• Bixby: Bixby is Samsung’s virtual assistant, built to challenge Android’s built-in Google Assistant. It is built into many Samsung phones.
• Google Assistant: Unlike Siri, which basically does what you ask it, Google Assistant tries to learn your habits and adapt to them. For instance, once Google Assistant gets to know your commuting patterns, it can provide traffic details or subway schedules before you leave the house. Pretty handy. It comes built into most Android phones.​
• Perplexity: You can change your default assistant on Android to be the Perplexity app if you like the hands-free voice mode you get with Siri. Perplexity is free from the Play Store and is smart enough to accept follow-up questions, generate images, and more.
• SoundHound: If all you want is a voice-activated search tool, you can’t do much better than the SoundHound Android app. Able to understand very complex questions and multi-part questions, better than almost anything else, it’s tough to stump.

Beware: There Are Lots of Fake Siri Apps

If you search the Google Play store for “Siri,” you’ll find a bunch of apps with Siri in their names. But watch out: those aren’t Siri.

Those are apps with voice features that compare themselves to Siri (for a short time, one even claimed to be the official Siri for Android) to piggyback on its popularity and name recognition, and to entice Android users looking for Siri-type features.

No matter what they say, they’re definitely not Siri, and they’re not made by Apple. Apple has not released Siri for Android.

Alternatives to Siri on iPhone

Siri was the first major voice assistant to hit the market, so in some ways, it hasn’t been able to take advantage of technological advances that are available to its competitors. Because of that, you could argue that Google Assistant is better than Siri.

Owners of iPhones are in luck, though: both Google Assistant (download from the App Store) and Alexa (download for iPhone), the intelligent assistant built into Amazon’s line of Echo devices (among many other devices), are available on iPhone.

In fact, many of the same assistants that you get on Android are also available on Android—a quick search in the App Store will show you all your options.