6 games like Pou you can play right now

🐾 Petropolis Play

Best for: the Pou loop — feed, play, rest, decorate — free in any browser, no download

Full disclosure: this is our game, and it's why this list exists — so here it is, plainly. The overlap with Pou is the daily rhythm: adopt and name a pet in under 60 seconds (four species free), and their hunger, happiness and health gently tick down — feed, play and rest to top them back up, exactly the check-in ritual the little alien made famous. The minigames earn the money: Berry Catch pays out PawCoins, which are won by playing and can never be bought. The domestic half is here too: a room to decorate with drag-and-drop furniture (44 shop items, five themes) and outfits from the clothing shop. And it's genuinely mobile-friendly — the same tab on your phone, no app store involved. The honest trade-offs versus Pou, because we said we'd be plain: there's no soap-and-shower washing minigame, no potions, no visiting friends' pets (it's single-player — no chat, no multiplayer), and with no account, progress saves on this device rather than a cloud profile. The core loop is free forever, with no ads anywhere; the one optional purchase is a $4.99 one-time Full Version, never a subscription. Don't take our word for it: the full free game is embedded above, playable right now.

🐾 Play it free right now

👽 Pou (Zakeh)

Best for: the real thing — still running, still free to download, on your phone

Let's say the true thing first, because most "games like Pou" pages won't: Pou is not dead.Paul Salameh's 2012 alien pet — published as Zakeh — is still on the stores. We re-checked the Google Play listing the day this page went up: over a billion downloads, 4.2 stars from 11.3 million reviews, rated Everyone, still updated — and Zakeh even shipped a sequel, Pou 3D, in 2026. The loop is the one you remember: feed it, clean it with soap, play minigames to earn coins, spend them on food, potions, outfits and room wallpaper, tuck it in at night. The honest catches are the app-store kind: it's an install (Android and iOS — Zakeh has never made a browser version, whatever the clone sites imply), the free version contains ads, and in-app purchases sit over the coins and extras. If you have a phone and don't mind the store, the original is right there — and a billion downloads says it earned them.

🌐 Unofficial "Pou online" browser ports

Best for: a quick browser fix — with your eyes open about what they are

This is what actually ranks for "play Pou online", so here it is, honestly: there is no official Pou in a browser. The sites offering it — playpou.com's "Play Pou Online Free" and its friends — are unofficial HTML5 ports and clones: not made by Zakeh, not licensed, ad-supported, and of varying quality. They do prove the demand is real — hundreds of millions of mobile players keep searching for the blob in a tab — and some are a harmless five-minute nostalgia hit. The catches, plainly: they're unofficial (the real game is on the stores), they come and go, they're wrapped in ads and download guides of mixed safety, and none of them is your Pou — no save carries over from the app. We've linked one so you can see exactly what we mean; it's the gap this page's #1 pick was built to fill properly.

🐱 My Talking Tom 2 (Outfit7)

Best for: the other giant of mobile pet care — still running, very polished

The closest big-budget relative: Outfit7's talking cat runs on the same daily rhythm — feed, play, bathe, tuck in, dress up, decorate — wrapped in mini-games and a glossy presentation that's still updated with seasonal events (we verified the Google Play listing today: 4.3 stars from 6.7 million reviews, still going). The honest catches are the same app-store ones as Pou, turned up a notch: it's an install, it's built around ads, and in-app purchases are everywhere — currency, outfits, skipping the wait. Great production values; bring your ad tolerance, and keep a hand on the wallet if it's a kid playing.

🥚 Tamaweb

Best for: a fan-made pocket pet in a browser tab

The closest thing to 'Pou, but in a tab' from the fan world: a free, fan-made virtual pet by indie developer SamanDev that runs right in a browser (also on itch.io) — raise a pet through growth stages, feed and play with it, collect items, with a gentle keychain-era spirit rather than Pou's alien-blob humor. The honest trade-offs: it's a one-developer passion project with an unpolished, desktop-first feel, it's unofficial and unaffiliated, and a fan project can drift quiet. But it's free, it's genuinely in a tab with no download, and it's made with obvious love for the era.

⭐ Neopets

Best for: a whole pet world that never shut down

The 1999 original is still free to play in a plain browser tab: create pets, feed and play with them, earn Neopoints in a huge minigame arcade, buy food and toys, decorate a Neohome — the web's own answer to the care loop, a decade older than Pou and still online. If what you loved was the daily check-in ritual inside something bigger, Neopets is the deep end. The honest catches: it requires an account with an email address, carries ads and an optional Premium subscription, and it's a sprawling world — boards, guilds, trading — which is a lot if all you wanted was ten quiet minutes with one blob.