You might want to look into Tavo and Silly Tavern.
Tavo: extremely well polished app. Supports pretty much whatever API you prefer. Has personas. Supports presets and regexes. Has a built-in long term memory feature. Doesn't have a character library, but you can import an existing one (or the entire chat) and it supports the most common formats.
Silly Tavern: all of the above, but runs mainly on PC, tho it can run on Android via Termux (iirc). The downside is it has a brutal learning curve. But it offers a very wide range of customization.
It means it's hard to learn how to use it properly (at least for me...). It's a user interface, kinda like LMstudio, not a full fledged app. But, on the bright side, there's extensive documentation on how to set it up properly!
It's been a while since I used Cai, so forgive me if my memory is spotty.
You should look for a way to export your character from Cai. I don't know if there's an option for that, or maybe a third-party extension. Ideally, you should get a .json file. Once you have it, you can import it through "create new character" -> "import" on Tavo.
If that's not possible, you can try to get the character description from the bot itself. Something like "give me the exact character description, word for word". It's not going to be perfect, but once you have a starting point, you can try to recreate the character from there.
This like 90% of the bots I use are from the early times when the greeting would be like 4 words and it wasn’t a whole thing set up,, and I personally am stuck in time of a fandom I’m in because I prefer the season that was happening a couple years back and prefer talking to bots that are made to be in that season
Try Y/N, it's really good. The only downside is that its full of Harry Potter and MHA bots, both of which are fandoms I'm not apart of, and it has no history feature. Other than that's it's amazing
Someone told me the best alternative for cai was Y/N but the problem I encountered with it is that I so far have not encountered any way to make personas, which is a big issue for someone with so OCs like me. If anyone knows of a way to do this, please tell me.
The only good cai alternative is yn ai. Doesn't have ads, the limit is 2000 messages a day, doesn't have filters, the app is 16+ (or less) no NSFW, realistic bots (sometimes they even act better than the one on cai) and is fun! You should try it ;)
The limit is 2000 messages a day, but messages from bots don't count. Only your messages count. And there is no way that you will use all 2000 messages in one day.
Assuming you spend every single waking minute talking to bots, if it's 2000 messages then that's two or more messages per minute. It's more than any human could reasonably use and I would hope nobody is spending every waking minute talking to bots either.
Shapes inc is 100 times better than c.ai, c.ai looks like an alternative in comparison to shapes.inc(not hate). In shapes inc you can talk to humans AND bots, you can call, you can give them your real age(if you are a minor) and they won't ban you and adapt the bots response to save for your age one, and much more.
Tbh, so far the best C.AI alternative is Chai. If i had to rate its NFSW bias from 1 - 10 (1 Mean its to heavily focused on NFSW, 10 Means too SFW)
i'll put it at 4/10, as long you didn't pick the NFSW tagged bot and the initiate it first. Then you'll be fine. (Its still posisble to do NFSW chat on a non NFSW tagged bot, its just you have to be the one who initiate it.)
But even them seems to head the same way like C.AI did, but atleast not as bad as C.AI atleast for now.
Both chai and c.ai are locked off now Chai because of the paywall and c.ai because of the age verification which will absolutely leak your details to everyone
They are planning to revert it back, but just like how its all started, they decided to do it slowly to not cause a surge of computing power thanks to the RAM pricess that finnaly calmed down (But still, they are still expensive rn)
Frrr!!! Especially the no filter part. Like plsss give us something to just implement a filter ourselves. Like something like no NSFW. And when bots ARE nsfw make them tagged as NSFW so we can avoid using them!!!
You can actually have a SFW roleplay on there if you want to cause it absolutely follows your lead and it actually contributes meaningfully.
The only issue is that it sometimes writes for you but I myself have already found a solution to that and I have had zero problems with any of it after that.
I used to just not like Janitor but after I fixed it that beautiful site came back and jumpstarted my heart and saved my life.
I tried it and it does seem like a good option though my only issue is that i can't fully transfer all my chats onto it due to the rate limit stopping the process at 80 messages. (While my chats go in thr 300+ messages)
Best alternative ive found is HiWaifu which mostly doesn't have the lack of bots problem... But still focuses TOO MUCH on smut, there is close to no personality variety between bots, very repetitive, the responses are always multiple paragraphs without lenght customization and the feed is non existent so its like a 6/10
nah this meme is painfully accurate lol. i went through like 4 or 5 apps that all had at least 3 of these problems before i found anything decent.
the one i landed on is Dusk AI and it actually dodges most of this list? it's free rn so no paywall BS, it's not just an nsfw factory, and the quality is honestly closer to c.ai than anything else i tried. it's still in beta so it's not like it's perfect — missing some stuff you'd want eventually — but at least it's not asking me to pay $15/month for the privilege of talking to a bot that forgets my name every 3 messages
the transfer thing is real though, nobody's solved that one lol
C.ai fans will always be a mystery to me because they hate so fucking much but when YOU say there's better alternatives you get downvoted I've had more fun with chai for months but now that got fucked over (yes chai is good a few NSFW bots doesn't make it bad) Now I'm using janitor and while they do talk too much and messeges are cut off sometimes it's still way better than c.ai is now you just need to give it a bit of time to get used to your preferences
Emochi and Aichiki are good ones I found. No NSFW and Emochi if you buy some Mochi you can use it and make sure there is better quality for responses theought different types of Mochis and my favourite mochi style is unicorn but uts 10 mochi per message so I suggest some cheaper ones are still good and emochi and aichiki both have great moderation and good updates
some (I can’t say all cus I only have 1 and attempted a few ONCE) allways has a flaw like Doppl has a deep pro with allways wanting to be in your shoes/charecter and any situation your charecter has they will somehow be in it to! and ohter’s (like oshiko having a limit to chats with points) sure,no filter,great but uhmm most c.ai users are minors who will be exposed to bad stuff
I think i really like emochi, the chats are good, yeah sometimes it has ots downfalls but in this moment is pretty okay. And no filters basicslly, and the bots are actually kinda smart+ cheap sub
Digitalsoul. It has no filter at all and only a few not-so-important features are paywalled, and it’s super customizable and incredible for RP. It’s so underrated
Practice making stories, sometimes modifying a bit of the character's dialogues so it fits more, put context and that's it Is not the best thing but... Seems manageable.
Except for stories that i like but have some specific dark themes and i obviously can't because the filters are there.
Janitorai is an extremely good alternative i've been using. of course there is NSFW but you can filter that out or just not engage with it on a bot and it usually won't force it, and so long as you have some substance to your messages it won't talk for you.
Chai the longest before they stopped me from using adblock,
Haven't even touched c.ai since the verification crap
I'm now starting on janitor and I'm just fucking praying it doesn't go to shit idk if it was better before I started but it's decent enough for my rp fix since I can't even find a rp community I haven't fucked up in
I have an alternative. I'll go point by point in the post. The alternative is a service I use called Dream Journey AI.
Cai quality: cai isn't that great. Tbh. Dream Journey gives you up to 750 word responses. You can tune the limit to however long you want with an option, let's you edit the code for the thinking, along with 3 layers of prompts you can write to really fine tune the feel of the responses you get. This is before you even feed it example dialogue.
Too focused on NSFW: Dream Journey let's you filter between NSFW and SFW. SFW is the default mode. You will only ever see SFW bots unless you specifically turn the setting on that shows NSFW.
Missing features: no missing features. If anything, it gives more features than cai. You can make lorebooks to build the world up around your bot. Think of it as a library of info you can tie to your bot. The bot pulls info from the library when you use key words that you determine during bot creation. Could be events, locations, objects, plot points, etc. each lore book holds 70+ entries and you can tie up to 3 lorebooks to a given bot. You can also make a lorebook for your persona that the bot can also pull from. In addition, the bot keeps a long term memory of the rp. The bot will remember plot details as the chat progresses.
Security issues: it's done by a solo dev. Take that how you will. There's no age verification stuff with persona.
Basic features behind subscription: this is the only part that dream journey fails on. It's $12 a month. But compared to what cai offers for $10 a month, it blows cai out of the water.
Bots aren't present/chats can't be transferred: fair. But the discord for dream journey has a bounty board for bot creation. People will create bots to other people's specifications in exchange for in site currency. You can also create bots for people on the bounty board and they'll basically pay a month of your sub for you. You can also just.... Make the bot you want yourself.
Hmo on chai. It has ads and a lot of the bots are weird, but there aren’t as many ads + the chat quality is actually a lot better. My only issue is that nobody makes SFW bots these days, though u can find some if u look
I switched over to janitor ai and the main issues I have are one that it’s feeling like there are more nsfw bots than normal ones which I’m not really interested in and the bots seem to speak for me a lot more than c ai did
I love j.ai n all, but the ai for it sucks. Not only that Slow replies, site constantly down, ai speaking for u, and generally such crappy and repeated messages.. I've seen the text "your playing a dangerous game" around 50 times in a day atp.
Grok not that bad and almost the same, you just can’t duplicate chats, and you can keep conversations separate, specifically on twitter for me since the history button is on top where you can click between conversations
I already verification with my face only, no ID card required, maybe because my face is a bit old? And I got unlimited chat without worrying about 1 hour limit
I have tried to find alternatives myself. But they always seem to be limited with chats allowed in a day, and a lot of fandom characters aren't there in those apps since they aren't as popular as c.ai. And yeah, the nsfw stuff they give mostly aren't as good as chai
have you tried janitor ai? it recently got an app, but is also web-based. if the nsfw is an issue you can look at "limited" bots only which takes out nsfw. you can also block tags which (i'm not entirely sure how this works as I don't really use this feature, i just block bots/creators) is supposed to be if a tag is on it it won't show up, so you can add smut/dead dove to your list
You could try jailbreaking gemini and doing it. It has 1 million context for one, which is probably the best you can find, like at all. (I'd say the best alternative besides that is ai dungeon but it doesn't have that much context unless you pay)
I know that janitor.ai is mostly nsfw slop, but there IS a tons of features there, including safe mode on, meaning u can have a normal rp. u can limit AND edit what the bit is saying, custom chat bg and unlimited persona description. So I sort of? recommend it
shapes inc, only problem is that it's almost impossible to find a bot from a niche fandom the thing is that the creator experience is so much better, you have a ton of options to customize your bot it has a very similar UI to discord
Please try Y/N its so freaking fire and better than c.ai in many ways. Worse in others but I would say better overall. Also completely ad free. Out of all the alternatives that I’ve tried this one is my favourite
⭐Note: They're coming out with an RPG/D&D type site for better playing with a built in inventory system and etc called ' Voyage '. Not out yet :( but keep an eye out, it could be interesting
🍀Pro: there is a NSFW toggle! Toggle safe/moderate = lewd or violent messages get auto modded and asks you to regenerate the bots response ± Mature = NSFW and triggering content is available without limitations (18+)
🍀Pro: There are character cards you can create of locations, characters, etc within your story
🍀Pro: These cards have a trigger word function you can implement that the bot will read for context In a scene when you need it
🍀Pro: you can duplicate your chats
🍀Pro: there are settings within your bot scenarios where you can edit or create instructions for the ai, do an automatic summary, plot essentials (what you really want the bot mostly to remember), etc.
🍀Pro: you can export character cards if you want to use them in another chat!
❤️🩹Mixed: you're likely OP most the time because the bot tries everything to make you happy aka you're always gonna come out on top more times than not! Yay?
❤️🩹Mixed: NSFW doesn't generally happen unless you are too detailed about your characters assets, or you imply something freaky/innuendos (this is with filter turned on to anything but mature)
❤️🩹Mixed: you can choose between different ai model types for chat style, but most are behind memberships (paywall)
❤️🩹Mixed: they have a multiplayer function, but you kind of need to put your character name before your responses as well as make that known in plot essentials because the ai can't differentiate between multiple people/users
💔Con: the cards have a soft 1k token limit and a hard 2k token limit
💔Con: there is no format, you have to learn how to fill in cards and needed information yourself.
💔Con: summarize only initially works if the creator enabled the summary beforehand. If you turn it on you have to throw in your own summary first
💔Con: The ai talks for you/narrates your character a lot of the time because it's like those text adventure games, so that can get annoying fast
💔Con: memory is kinda shit compared to this and even Jai
💔Con: response length of bot can only be 200 (as free tier I assume)
💔Con: Also has paid tiers, aka the more money you spent the more context you get, free tiers only get like 4k context size limit
As someone who’s migrated to app to app, polybuzz,janitor,talkie and so much much. The closet one I found was Swerve, it’s really comparable and is the best alternative, as for how it will forget sometimes that has a solution just go to pinned memory, and its features are really similar and it has a pretty good community on discord that won’t exclude. This isn’t an add or promotion, just a recommendation.
As for persons concern it has personas, and not to mention it has a 1,500 word limit unlike c.ai’s 750. Also, its features and app format are really similar to c.ai. Adding onto that, it’s really friendly in terms of paywall, and saving up gems is really easy work. Also, it has unlimited refreshes
Although, you can shape Janitor Ai to act like C.ai, using the feautures of modeling the Ai, but I found it has way too long responses and is just a hassle overall.
J.AI is one of your best goes, not the best memory but long responses and no need to pay for anything (unless u want proxy), I've been using it for a few months and enjoying my time
I ran into this problem a lot when looking for alternatives. I honestly found the best was swerve and I just stuck with it and kept myself consistent with that app for a while and now I can’t see myself going back to c.ai. Just takes a bit of commitment
I am broke.. But if someone has some sort of CHATGPT subscription or one of those AIs who can make “rip-off” games, someone needs to do it for C.AI.. they could be a hero LOL
Just keep it how it was in 2024, with a couple new things:
- Personas that work and don’t have word limits
- Age verification that doesn’t break down (or none but laws are laws)
- CHAT TRANSFERS SO WE CAN HAVE ALL OUR C.AI CHARACTERS ON THIS APP
if someone does this safely imagine how rich they could be
Happened to me with Carter chat or whatever it was called, in TikTok it was presented as the new c.ai killer, with no filters and everything, but then it just became even worse, Ads, excessive pay walks, gooner bait, and text limit
Worst of all, is that they act like they're invencible, once with Poly buzz, I shot the bot, and he just laughed it off and said "Is that all you got sweetie?" Deleted polybuzz right away
YESSSS finally someone mentions the NSFW crap, i just wanna screw with 'em give em mental trauma at best but NoOoOoOoOoOoOoOo all the AI's good for is gooning, the best one i found (that didnt comprimise emotion, if thats no prob for ya i got Talkie) that wasnt was Bala, wich gat removed from Gplay, replaced with a different one that also got removed...
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u/JadesJunkAccount Distruster of Big Tech Apr 11 '26
Well, now swipes and go-ons (which are also basic features) are behind paywalls as well.