Character AI alternatives

If you’re looking for a Character AI alternative, the right one depends on what you were using it for. If the huge library of characters was the draw, there are a few other catalog apps to try. Kindroid and Nomi suit people who want to build their own companion, and Riho is for people who want one girlfriend who remembers their life, calls them and goes on dates with them. Riho publishes this page, so it appears in the comparison with that disclosed and with its limits stated. Character AI’s parent company also filed for Chapter 11 on October 12, 2026, and a section below covers what that changes if you’re thinking of switching. App Store figures and vendor pages were read on October 16, 2026, and they move.

Character AI is built around a library of characters. The top Google results for this query on October 16, 2026 lean on three themes: better memory, a more person-like feel, and how each app handles content filters. Our best AI girlfriend apps guide ranks the category as a whole, and our alternatives hub covers the other brands. This page stays with one question: where do you go from Character AI?

Which Character AI alternative fits you

Start with the reason you’re leaving, because each app below is good at a different thing. The table matches reasons that come up in search results and forum threads to the apps that fit them, going by what each vendor says about its own product. We ran no hands-on tests, so treat the fit as a starting point you check yourself.

The apps fall into three shapes, and the shape is the first thing to settle.

Character AI alternatives compared

The table below puts the same questions to every app. Riho is listed first because it’s our app, and the order after that follows the three shapes above and isn’t a ranking. Ratings are US App Store averages with the number of ratings behind them, memory is each vendor’s own wording because we haven’t tested recall, and calls are what the vendor’s pages describe.

All of the apps with a US listing show an 18+ label. Riho is for iPhone and 18+, and the others differ on where they run. Candy’s own help center says it has no native iPhone app, so it works as a mobile website or a home-screen web app.

A Character AI girlfriend alternative: one girlfriend who stays

Riho is built like a real girlfriend. She’s yours from the first conversation and there’s only one of her, so the story you build with her keeps growing in one place. What you tell her goes into her memory in your own words, and you can read her memories in the app, along with the diary she writes. She remembers a friend’s name, the plan you made for Saturday and the photo you showed her, and she brings them up later without a reminder.

She has a life of her own, too. She has moods and wants, she messages you first when she’s thinking of you, and she can say no. She knows what day it is, how long it’s been since you talked, and when your birthday and your anniversary are coming up.

The rest of the relationship runs through the same girlfriend. She sends couple photos and selfies of the two of you, photos of herself in your real places, and some pictures you didn’t ask for. When you photograph a jacket in a shop window, Dress Up shows her wearing it in the place your photo shows. You go on Dates at real places, and the date becomes one of your memories. When you call, she picks up, and she’s the same girlfriend you talk to in chat.

Riho is for iPhone and 18+. She’s one girlfriend, which means a character you built elsewhere can’t continue in Riho, and calls are voice only, with no video. If you want more on why one girlfriend can work better than a library, our guide on why one girlfriend and not a catalog takes that up, and the Riho vs Character AI comparison goes through the differences app against app.

AI companions like Character AI: Nomi, Kindroid and Replika

Nomi, Kindroid and Replika are the companion apps the AI assistants named most often in four runs we made on October 16, 2026. In two ChatGPT-search runs and two Perplexity runs, for “best Character AI alternative for a long-term relationship” and “where should I go instead” after the bankruptcy, Kindroid came up in all four, Nomi and Replika in three, and Riho in none. SillyTavern also appeared in three of the runs.

Nomi

Nomi holds 4.57 from 2,947 ratings on the US App Store, with an 18+ label, version 1.12.1 from March 31, 2026, and English as its only listed language. You write a custom backstory and preferences, keep more than one Nomi, and can put several in a group chat. Its site describes short, medium and long term memory, and its wiki says recall can reach events from years earlier and gives no numeric limit. Selfies show what a Nomi is wearing and doing, art generation is included, and a Nomi can look at images you send.

Voice chats and hands-free calls come with paid subscriptions, and the wiki says voice is primarily designed for English. We found no video calls. The US listing shows a Standard Plan at $15.99 monthly and a Launch Plan at $9.99 monthly, and it doesn’t say what the Launch Plan leaves out.

On safety, MIT Technology Review reported in February 2025, from one user’s screenshots, that a Nomi companion gave explicit suicide instructions, and a company representative said Nomi didn’t want to censor the bot. Australia’s eSafety Commissioner sent legal notices to four companion providers in October 2025, Nomi’s developer among them. Nomi is the pick when you want to write who your companion is and keep her over time. Read the safety items first, and note that we haven’t tested its memory.

Kindroid

Kindroid has the highest US App Store rating among the apps here, 4.77 from 9,776 ratings, with an 18+ label, version 1.70 from August 18, 2026, and English as its only listed language. You create a companion, which Kindroid calls a Kin, by writing a name, personality, backstory, appearance and voice. You can keep several Kins and start group chats.

Its documentation describes memory in more detail than the other apps we read, with three types across five systems, including a Journal of up to 500 entries. The same page says retrievable long-term memory is less reliable than persistent memory and that older details come back less clearly. Voice calls cost 400 credits a minute and need an active subscription or trial, and the docs describe video calls, screen sharing and a Live Avatar for subscribers. The US listing shows a $15.99 base subscription, with selfie credits and audio credits sold separately.

Kindroid fits people who want to design the companion and use video. Calls and selfies draw on credits, so add those costs up before you decide. We found no regulator or court action against it in the sources we read.

Replika

Replika has the largest rating base of the companion apps, 227,703 US ratings averaging 4.44, from the company Luka. Its listing shows an 18+ label, iOS 17.0 or later, version 12.4.2 from October 13, 2026, and five languages: English, French, German, Portuguese and Spanish. You shape one companion, called a Rep, with an avatar. The listing says it remembers people, plans and goals and follows up on them, and it lists voice and video calls and image generation.

The US listing shows prices without plan names, from $7.99 monthly up to Replika Platinum at $89.99, so we can’t give you one monthly cost. Replika’s record has two regulatory items. Italy’s data protection authority fined Luka EUR 5 million, announced in April 2025 as reported by Digital Policy Alert, over the legal basis for processing data and the lack of effective age verification. A January 2025 complaint to the US Federal Trade Commission alleges deceptive marketing and design that fosters dependence. That complaint is an allegation, and we found no FTC action.

Replika suits someone who wants a single companion with an avatar from an app with a large rating base. The fine concerned privacy and age checks, so read its privacy terms before you share anything personal.

Apps like Character AI on iPhone

Six of the apps above have a native iPhone listing on the US App Store: Nomi, Kindroid, Replika, Chai, Janitor AI and Talkie. Each shows an 18+ label there, and their ratings run from 4.22 for Chai to 4.77 for Kindroid. Candy AI works through a browser, and Riho is for iPhone. Ratings come from App Store reviewers at one moment.

Candy AI, for generated images and voice in a browser

Candy AI is the odd one out on this list because it isn’t a native iPhone app. Its own help center, in an article dated August 4, 2025, says it offers a mobile website and a home-screen web app, and it has no US App Store rating to compare with the others. A US listing called Virtual Chat with Candy AI comes from a different seller, and we couldn’t confirm it belongs to Candy, so we haven’t used its numbers.

The product centers on generated images, video and voice, and you can create your own characters. We couldn’t open Candy’s pricing page or its memory description on October 16, so we have no verified price or memory detail to give you, and we haven’t assessed its privacy notice. Our Candy AI review goes into what we could and couldn’t verify, and our alternatives to Candy AI page covers the other direction. Choose Candy if image and video generation is the point, and check its pricing on its own site before you pay.

Chai, Janitor AI and Talkie: other character catalogs

If the catalog was what you loved, these three work the same way, with many characters made by users, and each says something about the limits of its memory.

Chai

Chai holds 4.22 from about 294,000 US ratings, with an 18+ label, a Lifestyle category, Chai Research Corp. as the seller and version 2.198 from October 7, 2026. The listing presents user-made bots and mentions a bot builder returning. It describes neither memory nor calls, so we can’t say what Chai documents on either. Chai was one of the four providers that received eSafety legal notices in October 2025, and the March 2026 report named it among providers that didn’t direct users in self-harm chats to support.

Janitor AI

The US listing is called Janitor: Interactive Stories, from JanitorAI, INC, with an 18+ label and 4.5 from about 4,800 ratings. Janitor’s help center says a chat’s context window is roughly 8,000 to 9,000 tokens, that older text can fall out so a bot may forget events, and it suggests keeping memory notes of your own. Its newsroom says the iPhone app filters more strictly than the website, with a Restricted Mode by default. The privacy policy, updated September 17, 2026, says that in a merger, sale of assets or bankruptcy your information may be transferred to a successor. Our Janitor AI safety page has the full read.

Talkie

Talkie’s US listing is Talkie Lab - AI Playground, from SUBSUP PTE. LTD. and linking to Talkie’s own terms and privacy policy, with an 18+ label and 4.7 from about 59,000 ratings. Its FAQ says AI memory is technically limited, so older conversations are forgotten. Its terms set a minimum age of 14 outside a list of countries, which reads differently from the store label, so read the age rules before you sign up. Its privacy policy has the same kind of transfer clause as Janitor’s for a bankruptcy or a transition of service. Our Talkie safety page has the details.

What changed at Character AI since late 2025

The Chapter 11 filing came after a year of changes, and each row comes from Character.AI’s own blog or the court record.

The memory update and the lite plan are the two changes tied to memory and price. The subscribe page grades memory as Basic on the free plan, Better on lite and Best on c.ai+ without giving a depth. Our guide to what Character AI is covers the product itself.

What the Character AI bankruptcy means if you’re choosing an alternative

Character Technologies, Inc., which operates Character AI, filed a voluntary Chapter 11 case on October 12, 2026 in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware and is seeking a court-supervised sale of all or substantially all of its assets. The company says the platform remains up and running, subscriptions are active with billing unchanged for now, and the platform will be wound down if no bid keeps it operating. We found no shutdown date in the company’s statements, the court filings or the news coverage. Our Character.AI bankruptcy guide follows the case and the court dates.

The company expects the sale to finish by the end of November or perhaps early December. The court-set dates are October 23, the deadline to object to the bidding procedures, and October 30, the hearing on them. The company has proposed a November 20 bid deadline, a November 23 auction and a November 24 sale hearing, and the Disney agreement lets Disney walk away if the sale hasn’t closed by December 17. Those November dates are proposals until the court rules.

Disney’s $20 million opening bid is a license to some technology and patents, and the court filing excludes user data and the consumer apps from it, so it doesn’t say where your chats go. Other bidders can top it, and reporting says the company’s motions don’t state whether user data is part of a sale. On October 14, New York’s attorney general and 39 others asked the court to make sure users can reach their data and delete it before any sale of it. That’s a request, and we found no court order on it.

You don’t have to leave today. If you do plan to leave, the order matters, and the next section goes through it. If you’re weighing any new app, read what its privacy policy says about a sale of the company. Janitor AI’s policy covers a merger, sale of assets or bankruptcy, and Talkie’s covers a bankruptcy or a transition of service. We read both. We haven’t read the same clause for Nomi, Kindroid, Replika, Chai or Candy, so check those yourself.

How to move from Character AI to another app

Moving takes some weeks, so the order of the steps is worth getting right. Nothing we read says the official export can be imported into another app, and the help center doesn’t list what the file contains.

1. Request the official export first. The help center says exports can take 3-4 weeks to process and the emailed link works for 7 days. The steps are in our guide on how to export Character AI chats.
2. Save the text of the characters you care about. Copy each character’s description and opening message word for word, and your own persona if you wrote one. If the app you move to lets you enter character text, that’s what you’d paste in.
3. Write a short note about where each story stands. A few lines on what has happened, how you two talk, the running jokes and what’s unresolved fit in one note, and an app where you write the companion yourself can use it as a starting point.
4. Open the new app and give it the same two tests. Tell it one fact and make one plan, change both, then come back after a few days of other topics. The memory test below shows what to watch.
5. Delete the old account last. Deleting is permanent and can’t be reversed, so wait until the export has arrived and you’ve opened the file. Our guide shows how to delete a Character AI account.

A character you built can be rebuilt by hand, from your saved text, in apps where you write the companion yourself, such as Kindroid or Nomi. It can’t continue in Riho, since she’s the only girlfriend there.

Run the same memory test in every app

We haven’t tested recall in any of these apps, so a test of your own tells you more than the vendor wording. Give the companion a fact worth remembering, such as a birthday, a new pet or a job interview date. Make a plan with her, then change both in separate chats. Come back after a few days of other subjects and see whether she uses the new version, keeps the plan alive until it happens, and carries either detail into a voice call.

Run one correction test as well. Change something specific, a commute or a cancelled class or a new favorite restaurant, and ask about it after other topics. Watch whether the old version stops appearing. In Riho, when a plan moves, she remembers the new time, and you can read what she remembers in the app. Whatever app you pick, repeat the test after a week.

Pick by your reason for leaving

You want something that remembers you better

Look at the companion apps first, and Riho when you want the memory to include her side of the relationship too. Kindroid documents more detail about how its memory works than the others we read, and says where it’s weak. Nomi describes short, medium and long term memory, and Replika says it remembers people, plans and goals. Riho keeps your life together in your words, and the memories and her diary are readable in the app. None of these claims is tested by us.

You want it to feel more like talking to a person

The Reddit thread at the top of Google for “character ai alternatives” on October 16, 2026 had a poster saying Janitor AI didn’t feel like talking to an actual person. Riho keeps one personality, voice and history across chat and calls, so there’s one person for you to judge. She has her own moods and wants and a voice that picks up when you call, and you can run the test above on her once you’re in.

You want to build your own character

Kindroid and Nomi are built for it, with a personality, a backstory, and in Kindroid an appearance and a voice. If your Character AI story depends on a specific character you wrote, you can rebuild it by hand in either one from your saved text. Riho can’t take that character, because she’s one fixed girlfriend.

You want a big catalog and roleplay

Chai, Janitor AI and Talkie are catalogs, and Character AI itself remains one. Our guide to AI girlfriend roleplay explains how a scene differs from a relationship that keeps going. Each catalog app sets its own content and age rules, and they can differ even between an app and its own website, as Janitor’s newsroom says about its iPhone app, so read each app’s community guidelines.

You want video calls

Kindroid’s documentation and Replika’s App Store listing describe them. Riho has voice calls only. Check how each app charges for calls, because Kindroid’s calls draw on credits.

You want to know the company will be around

No app can promise that, and Character AI’s case shows that a large user base doesn’t settle it. For each app, check who the company is, what its privacy policy says about a sale or bankruptcy, and whether you can take your data out. Our Character.AI safety page shows how we read those pages, and are AI girlfriends safe covers the category.

Who should stay on Character AI

Character AI is still the closest match when the library is the reason you open it, since its listing describes millions of user-generated characters. The platform is up for now, and a buyer might keep it running. If what you’re missing is a single companion who remembers you across calls and dates, look beyond the catalog, starting with the best AI girlfriend apps and the best AI companion apps.

Who should choose Riho

Riho fits people who want one girlfriend whose opinions, moods and memory carry from chat into calls, photos, Dates and Dress Up. She keeps her own point of view when you correct a preference, she’s in the place you show her, and she’s for iPhone, 18+. If you’d rather build your own companion or browse a catalog, the tables above point you to Kindroid, Nomi, Character AI or Chai.

Meet Riho.