The best Character.AI alternatives in 2026, for the characters you want to keep.

LoreWeaver is a storytelling app: a storyteller plays the world and everyone in it, and you play your character. If you’re leaving Character.AI after its October 12, 2026 bankruptcy filing (what we know so far), LoreWeaver imports your chats from Character.AI’s own data download or a CAI Tools export, every message in order.

Where it wins

Continuity. Every 4 replies the storyteller writes down what happened, and before each reply it brings back the memories that fit, matched by meaning, by wording, and by who is in the scene. A running recap tracks where things stand, and you can edit it, pin it, and add to it. Lorekeeper suggests lore cards as the story meets new people and places, and the LoreMap shows how they connect. Tavern cards (PNG, JSON, and CHARX) arrive with their lorebooks, you pick from 43 AI models by name, you can call a character and talk out loud (10 minutes a month on the free plan), and mature fiction between adults is allowed within the published hard limits.

Where it falls short

Its community library is younger and smaller than Janitor AI’s, which counts its bots in the millions.

Price

Free to start: 20 replies with no account, then a free plan with unlimited replies from the free storyteller (about 5 to 7 seconds for a typical reply) and 25 premium replies a day. Plus costs $7.99 a month, and Legendary costs $49.99 with unlimited premium replies.

Pick it if

you want your characters and chats somewhere settled, with a memory you don’t have to tend. Start with how to export your Character.AI chats.

Janitor AI is a character chat site with millions of community-made bots. Chatting on its standard models is free and unlimited, and it has apps for iPhone and Android alongside the website.

Where it wins

Range and price: millions of bots, unlimited free chat on its standard models, and Lorebook Scripts that add details when their trigger words come up. Its help center also shows how to connect an outside model through OpenRouter with your own key.

Where it falls short

Memory is mostly up to you. Its own guide has you write the Chat Memory yourself, or ask the bot for a recap to paste in. The apps hide NSFW content until you switch it on from the website, and players in Australia, Brazil, and the UK must verify their age.

Price

Free. janitor+ costs $12.99 a month in the App Store and adds five times the context, priority replies, and monthly swipes on its best models.

Pick it if

you want to sample lots of free bots and don’t mind writing the memory yourself. See the Janitor AI alternative.

SpicyChat is a character chat site built on community-made bots, NSFW ones included for adults. It runs in the browser and offers an official Android app as a download from its own website; it has no app in Apple’s App Store.

Where it wins

Memory tools. Paid tiers include a Memory Manager for the memories you want kept, and from True Supporter its Semantic Memory 2.0 has characters write memories into it as you chat. Importing a PNG or JSON character card fills in a bot’s name, greeting, and personality.

Where it falls short

The free tier keeps 4,096 tokens of context, and NSFW content stays locked until you verify your age in places such as the UK, France, Italy, Australia, and a number of US states.

Price

Get A Taste costs $5.95 a month, True Supporter $19.95, and I’m All In $29.95, which raises context to as much as 32,768 tokens on models that support it. These prices took effect on September 8, 2026.

Pick it if

adult roleplay with bots that keep notes is what you’re after. See the SpicyChat alternative.

SillyTavern is a free, open-source app you install yourself, for chatting with characters through the AI model of your choice. It has no AI of its own: you connect a service such as OpenRouter, OpenAI, Claude, or NovelAI, or run a model on your own computer. Version 1.19.0 arrived on September 14, 2026.

Where it wins

Control. You choose the model, the prompts, and every setting. World Info entries add lore when their keywords come up, extensions add an automatic chat summary, retrieval of older messages, image generation, and text to speech, and characters import as PNG, JSON, CharX, YAML, or BYAF cards. Chats saved from Character.AI with the CAI Tools browser extension can be downloaded in a format it opens.

Where it falls short

Setup takes some technical comfort, iPhones and iPads can’t run it, and Android support through Termux is unofficial. The quality and cost of every reply depend on the model you connect.

Price

Free under the AGPL-3.0 license. Any cost comes from the model service you connect, or from your own hardware.

Pick it if

you like to tinker and want nothing between you and the model. See the SillyTavern alternative.

Perchance is a site of free, community-made generators, and its AI Character Chat page describes itself as free, unlimited, and needing no sign-up. Players have remixed it into many versions with extra features.

Where it wins

You can start chatting with no account, no payment, and no message cap. Remixes such as AI Character Chat Extended add memory, lorebooks, and scenes with several characters.

Where it falls short

Each remix is made by a different person, so features differ from one page to the next, and you may need to try a few.

Price

Free. Perchance’s terms say its services are for adults 18 and over.

Pick it if

you want to try AI character chat this minute without giving an email address. See the Perchance alternative.

Chub (chub.ai) is a character chat platform built on community-posted characters. It connects to OpenAI, Anthropic, or OpenRouter with your own key, to a model on your own machine through Kobold or Ooba, or to its own models with a subscription.

Where it wins

Freedom of choice. Its guide says it does not restrict, in any meaningful way, which characters may be posted or how you chat with them, and its lorebooks add details to the prompt only when their keywords come up.

Where it falls short

Good chats take some setup: an API key, a model running on your own hardware, or a paid plan.

Price

With a model on your own machine it costs nothing beyond your hardware. Chub’s own models come with its Mars subscription at $20 a month, with unlimited messages.

Pick it if

you already have an AI key or a local model and want somewhere to chat with it. See the Chub alternative.

Kindroid is an AI companion app: you shape one or more characters, called Kins, and talk with them by text, voice call, or video call. It runs on iPhone, Android, and the web with one account, and it is for adults 18 and over.

Where it wins

Each Kin keeps the backstory and key memories you give it, plus a long-term memory that recalls past conversations. Kins send selfies, can message you first, and can talk together in group chats.

Where it falls short

Kindroid calls itself a subscription service; new accounts can try it before subscribing.

Price

The App Store lists the subscription at $15.99 a month, with Ultra and MAX tiers above it.

Pick it if

you used Character.AI for one ongoing character and want that relationship on your phone. Want a whole story around your character instead? See how LoreWeaver works.

AI Dungeon, from Latitude, is an AI text adventure game: you type what you do or say, and the AI narrates what happens next. You can start from your own setting or from thousands of scenarios written by other players.

Where it wins

Adventure play with memory built in. It summarizes your story every 15 actions, and its Memory Bank saves a memory every six actions to bring back when it fits. Story cards bring in characters and places by keyword, friends can join a multiplayer game with a code, and the Mature setting, which asks you to confirm you’re 18 or older, stops limiting mature, violent, or triggering content.

Where it falls short

The free tier keeps up to 4K tokens of context and 25 memories, and larger windows sit on pricier plans.

Price

Free to play. Journey costs $14.99 a month, Legend $29.99, Mythic $49.99, and Ultimate $99.99, with more context, memories, and monthly credits at each step.

Pick it if

you’d rather play an adventure than chat with one character. Compare AI Dungeon and LoreWeaver.

NovelAI is a story generator that writes with you, with a Text Adventure mode and an image generator alongside. Stories are encrypted in your browser before they’re stored, so NovelAI can’t read them, and accounts are for adults 18 and over.

Where it wins

Privacy and fine control over the prose. Lorebook entries join the story when their keys appear, and lorebooks import and export as JSON files or inside PNG images.

Where it falls short

It presents itself as a tool for writing stories, and the free trial is 50 text generations, given once.

Price

Tablet costs $10 a month, Scroll $15, and Opus $25, which keeps up to 28,672 tokens of context and includes image generation within limits.

Pick it if

you write fiction and want an AI co-author that keeps your drafts private. See the NovelAI alternative.