Npcs

Seven Confidants in Persona 5 never join your party. They run shops, clinics, cafés and fortune stalls around Tokyo, and their ranks do not give you combat abilities. They give you services, and one of those services is worth more than any weapon in the game.

Like the party members, no two of them share an Arcana, so every rank here also pays into fusion through Arcana Boost. Sorted by what they sell rather than where they stand:

The one that buys back your evenings

Kawakami is the most valuable Confidant in the game and the reason has nothing to do with her rank abilities being unusually strong. Persona 5 is a game where the binding constraint is the number of evenings in a year, and her maid service hands some of them back by doing your chores while you do something else.

That compounds. An evening returned is an evening you can spend on a book, which our mechanics guide shows is the only activity that raises all five social stats by three points, which unlocks the next Confidant, which produces more Arcana Boost. If you are choosing where to spend early ranks, spend them on the person who gives you more turns.

Sojiro is the same idea in a smaller package. Coffee and curry restore SP, and SP is what limits how deep into a Palace you can push in a single day. A stocked thermos is the difference between clearing a Palace in two trips and three, and a saved trip is another evening.

The ones that make fights shorter

Tae Takemi's clinic sells the medicine that keeps a party standing, and her Confidant is unlocked by volunteering for her clinical trials, which is also one of the ways our Guts page says you raise that stat. Two birds, one uncomfortable afternoon.

Iwai and Shinya are a matched pair worth ranking together, because one sells the guns and the other teaches you what to do with them. Guns in Persona 5 are ammunition-limited rather than SP-limited, which makes them the answer to a long dungeon where your casters have run dry, and both halves of that answer live in this bucket.

Hifumi's tactics are the least visible of the seven and the most useful in an ambush, since being able to move the party or leave a fight cleanly is worth more than a few points of damage when a Shadow has caught you from behind.

The one that changes other Confidants

Chihaya is the odd one out because what she sells is leverage over the rest of this list. Her readings act on your other relationships rather than on you, which makes her a multiplier on everything else in the bucket rather than a standalone benefit.

The catch, as with all seven, is availability. These people keep their own hours and are not in their usual spots every day, so the efficient approach is to know who is out before you leave Leblanc. Our confidants guide lists the ranks and the dates for all fifteen relationships, and confidant gifts covers what to bring when you do find them.

One difference from the party members is worth remembering at the end. Their ranks are almost all still worth chasing on a second run through New Game Plus, since maxing the town Confidants is where most of a completionist run's remaining time goes.