10 Best Character AI Alternatives & Competitors

If you enjoy chatting with chatbots but seek something different from Character AI, many great alternatives are there. In 2025, new and improved AI options will offer better customization, smarter responses, and many unique features. Hence, whether you are looking for a fun or a creative Character AI alternative, explore the guide and learn about the 10 apps like Character ai.

What is Character AI?

As an advanced chatbot tool, the Character AI website allows users to interact with AI-generated personalities, mimicking real or fictional characters. Powered by neural networks, it creates engaging, lifelike conversations by analyzing text inputs and generating human-like responses. This platform also lets users chat with historical figures and fictional heroes.

While using this tool, they can even create their own AI characters with unique personalities and backstories. Considering all these features, it is ideal for entertainment, role-playing, or creative writing assistance. While it excels in fun and interactive dialogue, it may have limitations in accuracy and real-world factual information.

How Does Character AI Work?

When looking for a character.AI alternative, many users overlook the working aspect that makes a Chabot truly efficient. Hence, know that the bot uses advanced artificial intelligence to understand the response. For that, it uses LLMs trained on datasets to extract the relevant information. Now that the AI collects the data, it predicts the most relevant and natural reply that matches the user’s intent.

In all this, LLMs play a central role as these models recognize the patterns in language and improve over time. While doing so, it understands emotions, context, and different character personalities to provide replies without affecting the user’s feelings.

Why is There a Need for a Character AI Alternative?

Have you ever thought about what makes people wonder, “What is better than Character AI?” Undoubtedly, there are numerous reasons behind that, some of which are given in this section:

• Limited Customization: Usually, Character AI has predefined character settings that limit users from tailoring the behaviors and responses as per their needs. Not just that, it also lacks deep personalization features like adjustable AI memory and fine-tuning of generated replies.
• Slow Response Times: Due to massive traffic and server loads, the AI can also lag, affecting the interaction experience of users. Besides that, significant computational power is key when it processes responses using large language models.
• Content Restrictions: Its strict filters prevent discussions on sensitive or mature topics. For that, it follows the moderation rules set by the developers, which block certain words and themes, limiting the user’s freedom.
• Privacy Concerns: Additionally, Character AI processes information on cloud servers, which can raise data security concerns. While doing so, it can store or analyze the user input to improve the model, which many users find intrusive.
• Better Features: Most AI is designed with basic conversational features like text-based chats without innovative personalized inputs. However, alternatives offer additional functions like AI voice text, in-app chat, multimodal inputs, or memory retention.

What Factors to Consider for Choosing a Character AI Alternative?

If you are hunting for alternatives to Character AI, know that various factors make it ideal. Therefore, to help you make the right choice, here we will provide 5 key considerations for a Character AI alternative.

1. AI Model Type & Training Data

First, having the right type of AI model is necessary as it determines how realistic and intelligent a response should be. Numerous platforms use open-source models like GPT, while others have proprietary AI that is trained on unique datasets. In addition, choosing a high-quality, trained model as opting for low-quality training data models affects the AI’s understanding of language, tone, and context.

2. User Interface & Experience

Besides models, a well-designed and organized interface makes interacting with AI easier and more enjoyable. For that, you can opt for substitutes that provide customizable themes, dark modes, and a clean layout for better usability. Once you have an intuitive UI, it will enhance the overall chat experience, making conversation more engaging.

3. Offline Accessibility

There are numerous apps like Character AI that work without an internet connection, aiding you in improving speed and privacy. In such cases, offline models like LLaMA or local chatbots do not store the user data on cloud servers as they process everything on the user’s device. Hence, keep this feature in mind while looking for alternatives if you prefer private and always available AI interactions.

4. Integration & API Support

Other than chatting, if you need an AI for games, apps, and business tools, having an API integration facility is a must. Some platforms allow developers to integrate AI chatbots into their software using APIs and SDKs for enhanced user experience. Moreover, look for a well-documented API to ensure smooth customization and deployment across the devices.

5. Multilingual Support

Opt for a substitute that offers multilingual support to ensure its usage across the globe. If you pick one, make sure that it has natural language processing to understand and generate text in various languages. Additionally, having a multilingual AI will help you in translating, summarizing, and explaining the data in your preferred language.

6. Community & Developer Support

Last but not least, pick an alternative that offers strong community help with troubleshooting, feedback, and feature updates. In this case, go for open-source AI, as they have active developers who can aid you in fixing bugs. Furthermore, instead of seeking help for hours, choosing a well-supported AI will guarantee you long-term reliability and new features.

Top 10 Character AI Alternatives to Consider

The AI market is flooded with sites like Character AI, offering you various Character AI alternative that offer fewer content restrictions and allow you to personalize the responses. Hence, to save you from seeking the ideal one, head to a list of 10 best Character AI substitute details.

1. JanitorAI

Launched by Jan Zoltkowski in June 2023, JanitorAI is a Character AI Alternative chatbot platform that allows you to create and interact with AI characters. Once you personalize the character, it offers you various models like GPT 3.5-Turbo or GPT-40 to generate conversions. Additionally, having extensive LLMs, this AI character provides you with fast and accurate replies tailored to your preferences. It extracts data from external sources and databases to provide informative answers.

Pros

• Being the best Character AI alternative, it offers you a wide range of AI anime avatars.
• Not just that, it offers NSFW content for users who are over the age of 18, catering to those who seek fewer restrictions.

Cons

• If you want to access more characters and avatars, you need to purchase its premium plan.
• Additionally, though saving the conversion is a good feature, it can cause data security issues, too.

Pricing Plans

• Monthly: $9.99
• Yearly: $99.99

2. Chai AI

Introduced in 2021, Chai AI is a two-way conversational platform that supports multimodal-based models for molecular structure prediction. This website like Character AI has advanced prediction capabilities and performs well in various benchmarks like PoseBusters and CASP15. In addition, it operates on its own proprietary LLM to have creative and distinctive interaction. While interacting, it not only makes chat coherent but also lets users customize the character’s style seamlessly.

Pros

• Using its app or desktop version, users can generate images from its image generation feature just by adding a prompt.
• Plus, having no message length and delivery limitations in the pro version, users can engage with AI in endless conversations.

Cons

• Conversations with public bots on Chai AI are accessible to bot creators, which can raise privacy concerns.
• Additionally, users say that it sometimes confuses a character’s gender identity and offers faulty responses.

Pricing Plans

• Chai AI Premium: $13.99 per month
• Chai Ultra: $29.99 per month

3. Kajiwoto

Unlike other Character AI alternatives, Kajiwoto has short-term memory, meaning that it can store previous interactions for a limited duration for easy follow-ups. Regarding models, it features both open-source and fine-tuned models to provide a balance between customization and high-quality performance. In addition, its Mistral model is available for pro users, which is more creative than Llama-2 13b and Pygmalion2 13b models.

Pros

• With its Mixtral model, users can even experience faster, more efficient AI responses.
• Besides that, you can hide your live rooms within its UI interface to maintain privacy and control over interactions with AI.

Cons

• For AI creation without limits, users have to purchase a premium plan that might not be cost-effective.
• Plus, to get new software features, you have to pay \$25 per month, which is a huge investment.

Pricing Plans

• Plus: $7.99 per month
• Pro: $29.99 per month

4. NovelAI

If versatility is your preference, this Character AI website substitute can be used as an image generator and writing assistant, too. Though it features various models, its Erato model, released in 2024, is based on the Llama 3 70B Base model. Hence, having this trait, it is fine-tuned with updated storytelling datasets to enhance its narrative abilities. With advanced settings in the context section, users can tailor context settings easily.

Pros

• With its Kayra, you can perform tasks like text adventure, prose augmentation, etc., since it has 1.6 trillion tokens of data.
• Besides, one can add the generated response in memory or author’s note just by selecting and right-clicking on it.

Cons

• Its context window is limited as per the subscription plan, and for now, it stands at 3072 tokens.
• Additionally, for image generation with smart models, you need to buy either $15 monthly or $25 as per your need.

Pricing Plans

• Tablet: $10 per month
• Scroll: $15 per month
• Opus: $25 per month

5. Replika

Among many apps like Character AI, Replika uses the GPT-3 language model to learn from user interactions. Being launched in November 2017, it also knows how to mimic human interactions while chatting with them. Moreover, this alternative to Character AI can be accessed on various platforms like the web, mobile apps, and Oculus. Regardless of the device, it allows users to tailor the avatar to their needs.

Pros

• Whether it’s a camera or any personal details, Replika won’t store personal information unless permission is granted by users.
• Furthermore, the conversion with AI is processed on the server side, meaning that the user’s mobile encrypts them.

Cons

• Though it has advanced models, it lacks emotional awareness, offering a response without considering the user’s feelings.
• Not only that, just like other AI, you have to pay a hefty amount to avail its premium features.

Pricing Plans

• 1 month: $19.99 per month
• 12 months: $5.83 per month
• Lifetime: $299.99

6. ChatFAI

Like ChatGPT, ChatFAI is an innovative chatbot and language learning model that uses NLP and ML to understand human interactions. Being a conversational AI, it allows you to generate movie characters, teachers, and easy writers to talk with. Additionally, users can yell at them or talk friendly without having topic restrictions. Since it supports NSFW, you can also discuss diverse topics in groups.

Pros

• This best Character AI alternative has multiplatform integration facilities to work seamlessly across devices.
• Plus, this AI-powered platform uses high privacy to limit data sharing with third parties.

Cons

• To enjoy the ad-free experience, you have to access its basic and deluxe plans.
• This alternative consumes a lot of data, which will potentially affect the users with limited data plans.

Pricing Plans

• Basic: $9 per month
• Premium: $29 per month
• Deluxe: $59 per month

7. Botify AI

By extracting data from websites, the Botify AI bots are trained with extensive datasets that allow you to get updated information. Not just that, with LLMs, you can enjoy human-like communication while creating a personalized bot. This app like character AI has some content restrictions that limit you from accessing inappropriate data. Moreover, it only collects the user’s data just to create characters and accounts.

Pros

• This bot is simple and accessible to all types of users, meaning it doesn’t require technical knowledge.
• Users can also adjust the voice of created AI characters to get an immersive conversational experience.

Cons

• To optimize performance, training the bots requires significant time to get accurate responses.
• Its AI lacks emotional depth due to which it lacks in providing genuine support.

Pricing Plans

• Ultra: $14.99 per week
• Premium: $7.99 per week

8. xoul.ai

This website like Character AI uses a custom-built language model to offer emotional intelligence to users. While having interactions where AI adheres to users’ feelings, they can chat endlessly without having text restrictions. Not just that, you can also engage in group conversion, where bots use NLP to generate human-like responses. You don’t have to recall the chat with xoul.ai bots since they have strong memory retention.

Pros

• This solution has a relaxed moderation system, meaning it doesn’t pose any content restrictions.
• Moreover, users can personalize the Character’s appearance whenever they need to.

Cons

• Despite all these features, xoul.ai has few community resources and updates.
• Plus, it doesn’t offer a dedicated mobile app for users who seek go-to options for interaction with AI.

Pricing Plans

• Premium plans are not disclosed but offer a 7-day free trial.

9. Pygmalion AI

Among many sites like Character AI, it offers an open-source platform for interacting with large language models regarding role-playing. Unlike other tools, users can also enjoy free access to advance AI that can be customized to users’ needs. Additionally, you can access creative role-playing games with this solution for a better experience. Whether it’s a bug or a technical issue, the developers offer 24/7 customer support.

Pros

• This AI-powered toolkit runs locally, meaning it doesn’t require cloud-based processing.
• Due to its strict policies, users can have peace of mind that their data is encrypted and not stored by bots.

Cons

• Though it runs locally, it depends on the device’s computing power, causing hindrances for low-end devices.
• Plus, having a smaller size, it generates less coherent and contextually irrelevant replies.

Pricing Plans

• Low-Cost: $6.50 per month
• Premium: $17.99 per month

10. Dreamily AI

With this best Character AI alternative, users can get details and relevant replies as the AI uses advanced algorithms and models. As it is mainly designed for storytelling, it aids users in creating engaging narratives and character dialogues. Overall, the platform features a simple interface where each pre-built bot is arranged categorically. For users seeking budget-friendly options, Dreamily AI offers free access to basic AI features.

Pros

• Besides advanced models, it has multilingual supports, creating responses in the desired language for non-natives.
• Moreover, you can benefit from its various tones and genres, ranging from fantasy to sci-fi.

Cons

• To access premium plans, you have to pay $9.9 per month, which might be costly for some users.
• Furthermore, the AI sometimes interprets data wrong, leading to faulty replies.

Pricing Plans

• Monthly: $4.99
• Yearly: $39.99

How ZEGOCLOUD AI Can Power Virtual Character Interactions Like Character AI

After an extensive market search and wondering, “What is better than character AI?” ZEGOCLOUD is the best solution for you to create compelling AI characters. This platform offers a smart AI agent API that features an extensive AI template library. Through this, users can generate AI agents by adding nicknames, avatars, and bios that can be easily tailored. Additionally, you can create multiple characters and chat in groups.

For chatting, it supports NLP, ASR, TTS, and a wide range of models to deliver natural, voice-enabled, and highly adaptive conversations with users. Besides that, this SDK integration offers audio, video, and in-app chat features for extracting information. Regardless of the approach, you can directly transition from audio or video calls to in-app chat messages. Plus, during audio calls, AI and human interaction are displayed on screen.

This conversion can then be synced to in-app chat messages as the interaction ends. Furthermore, you can add another command within 500 ms instead of waiting for AI to finish the response. For enhanced privacy, users can delete the session or edit Q&A within the chat. In addition, AI noise reduction and volume detection features ensure clear and balanced audio quality while offering global app access in 212 countries.

Conclusion

Summing up, due to various limitations and restricted models, many users seek Character AI alternatives. Hence, if you are among them, head to our guide details and review the 10 foremost substitutes offering restricted free access to AI features.

However, if none of them suits your needs, use ZEGOCLOUD’s AI agent API to create multiple characters with improved models. Plus, you can offer global access to applications in 212 counties.

Read more:

• 10 Best Conversational AI Platforms
• 10 Use Cases of Conversational AI in Healthcare

FAQ

Q1: What’s better than Character AI?

The best alternative to Character AI depends on what you’re looking for. Some alternatives like Chai, ChatGPT, and Janitor AI offer different chatbot experiences, with varying levels of customization, personality creation, and response quality. ChatGPT is often preferred for general conversations and broader AI capabilities, while Chai focuses more on AI-driven social interactions.

Q2: Is there any AI like ChatGPT?

Yes, several AI models function similarly to ChatGPT, including Google Bard (Gemini), Claude (by Anthropic), and DeepSeek AI. These models are designed for conversational AI, generating human-like responses, and assisting with tasks like writing, coding, and answering questions.

Q3: What’s happening to Character AI?

Character AI continues to evolve, improving its AI-generated personalities and chatbot interactions. However, some users have expressed concerns about response delays, paywalls for faster access, or content restrictions. The platform remains popular for role-playing and AI-driven storytelling.

Q4: Why is Chai better than Character AI?

Some users prefer Chai over Character AI because it allows for faster responses, more customizable AI personalities, and fewer interaction limitations. However, Character AI is often praised for its advanced dialogue generation and realistic personality emulation. The choice between the two depends on personal preference and the type of AI interaction you seek.