# Best AI Roleplay Apps in 2026, Honestly Compared Source: https://lunafic.ai/blog/best-ai-roleplay-2026 | Published: 2026-09-03T14:25:14.502Z | Updated: 2026-10-17T05:09:51.544Z | Author: Lunafic Team | Tags: Roleplay, Comparison > Character.AI, Janitor, SillyTavern, Chub, SpicyChat, Nomi, Kindroid, and Lunafic, what each one is honestly good at and where each one breaks, by a founder who used them all. > **Update, October 13, 2026.** Character.AI filed for bankruptcy on October 12, and the company is being sold. The app still works for now, and it will close if no buyer keeps it running. We are honestly sad about this. Character.AI introduced millions of people to AI characters, many of us included. Imagine you just downloaded another roleplay app, because the last one disappointed you, and this one promises it is different. It goes well for the first hour, and then you start noticing the same things, the AI forgets what you said an hour ago, it starts talking as your character, and when a reply goes wrong there is nothing you can do except reroll it. We sell one of the apps on this list, so take everything here with that knowledge, but the reason we built ours is because we felt exactly that disappointment everywhere else first. ## The race nobody is running Every app competes on the same thing, how many characters they have. That race ended a long time ago, every platform has endless characters now, so the winning continued on nothing. Meanwhile the complaints on Reddit did not change in years, the AI forgets my story, the AI plays my character, I cannot edit the reply. The complaints stay because the cause stays, and the cause is structural. Most chat apps hand the model only the recent chunk of the conversation, the old messages quietly stop existing for the AI, and no amount of new characters fixes a memory problem. There is a longer explanation of this problem and how we think about it, [written here](https://lunafic.ai/blog/best-ai-apps-for-long-roleplay-stories-2026). Now let's just go through what each app actually is, honestly, including ours. ### Character.AI, the biggest, and it shows in both directions The most characters, the smoothest app, the free tier that basically introduced millions of people to AI roleplay. That part deserves respect. The problems are also the biggest, the memory fades in long stories, the AI keeps taking over your character, the edit button is gone this year so a bad reply can only be regenerated, and the community's satisfaction surveys came back mostly angry. The company's newest product is vertical short dramas made by their own studio. If you want casual chat for free, it is still the easy choice. If you are building a story that runs for weeks, this is the app the complaints come from. ### Janitor AI, the freedom app When people want fewer filters, this is where they go, big library, relaxed attitude, real community. The chat is free on the built-in model, its first paid plan janitor+ is $12.99 a month, and you can attach your own model key which power users respect. The free model gets weak in long scenes, the free limits are vague, and its own community reviewed the new paid tier badly for not giving enough value. If your complaint about other apps is the filter, Janitor is the honest answer for you. Just know the memory problem comes along with it, the free model only reads the recent part of your chat. ### SillyTavern, the open source answer For any kind of software, the open source version is always the escape when companies disappoint you, and SillyTavern is that for roleplay. Free, runs on your machine, connects to any model, nobody can ever take it away from you. The real price is your own time and effort to set it up and maintain it, a Reddit user famously needed one month as a total beginner. If that setup sounds like fun to you, this is the most powerful option on the whole list. If it sounds like homework before the fun, it is not for you. ### Chub, the library that is not an app Chub is the biggest character card collection in the world, and the cards work across platforms, which is genuinely valuable. But the platform around the library is rough, model proxies confuse even experienced users, and this year the free tier was cut so hard that its own users opened threads calling the site dead. A lot of people browse cards on Chub and play somewhere else, which tells you what it is. ### SpicyChat and CrushOn, the unrestricted pair SpicyChat lets free users chat through a queue instead of a hard cap, CrushOn does the same idea with daily limits, both with no filters. The documented complaint for SpicyChat is memory fading after fifteen to twenty messages even on paid plans. If you want an unrestricted evening, they deliver that. A month-long story will not survive. ### Nomi and Kindroid, the companion apps These two are praised for real memory of you as a person, Nomi around $16 a month, Kindroid from $13.99 with selfies and voice. They are built for one ongoing bond with one companion, not for playing a character inside a world with its own characters. If being known is what you want, they are good at it. If imagining yourself as a character is what you want, that's different story. ### Lunafic, ours, and why it exists The founder spent more than two years writing roleplay stories with AI without any app, managing everything manually, deciding by hand what the AI should see each turn. Lunafic is that method turned into a product. You play one character, the AI plays everyone else and [never writes your lines](https://lunafic.ai/features/mc-mode/). You play it like a chat, and every reply shows as avatar dialogue, each line beside the speaking character's portrait and name, inside an [editor](https://lunafic.ai/features/editor/) where you can fix any line, yours or the characters', and the story saves as chapters. Before every reply it holds your whole story together, the world's notes, and [who knows which secret](https://lunafic.ai/features/story-memory/). In our October 2026 memory test, on a real player's story of 1,600 long turns, more than 1.2 million words, the AI still answered all 22 direct questions about facts we hid in chapter 1, and questions that only hinted were harder, 63%. Since V4 in October 2026 you can also [play other people's worlds like co-op in a game](https://lunafic.ai/features/playable-worlds/), you press Play, choose who you are and how the story opens, and some worlds have endings to reach. The person who builds a world can [add pictures for its big moments](https://lunafic.ai/features/scene-pictures/), and the AI shows the right one when that moment happens in your story. The library is still young and anime-heavy, we say that plainly. Building your own world here is the easiest we have seen, and most of our users prefer building their own. ## The quick comparison The same questions for every app, how you play, what happens in a long story, what you get for building a world, and who it is for. - **Character.AI.** You chat with one character, the memory fades in long stories, each character has a profile, best for casual free chat. - **Janitor AI.** You chat with a big character library and can attach your own model key, the free model gets weak in long scenes, best when the filter is your main complaint. - **SillyTavern.** You chat on your own machine with any model, long stories depend on the model and your own setup, you manage everything yourself, best if setting it up sounds like fun. - **Chub.** A character card library, the cards work across platforms, most people browse there and play somewhere else. - **SpicyChat and CrushOn.** Unrestricted chat, memory fading after fifteen to twenty messages is the documented complaint, best for an unrestricted evening. - **Nomi and Kindroid.** One companion that remembers you as a person, built for one bond instead of a world with many characters. - **Lunafic.** You play one character like a chat and the AI plays everyone else as avatar dialogue you can edit line by line, layered memory that held a story of 1,600 long turns in our test, every world has a wiki the AI reads before every reply, plus rules, endings and scene pictures, built phone first, best for a long story you direct and keep. ## Which one is for you Casual free chat, Character.AI. Fewer filters, Janitor. Owning the whole machine, SillyTavern. Browsing cards, Chub. One deep bond, Nomi or Kindroid. A long story you direct, edit, and keep, that is what we built. If you are coming from Character.AI specifically, the [line by line comparison](https://lunafic.ai/compare/character-ai) is there, and the [article about the AI playing your character](https://lunafic.ai/blog/character-ai-alternative-where-the-ai-doesnt-play-your-character) covers the most hated problem in detail. People can disagree with this article, that is fine, we are just being honest about how the community sees these apps. Go test them yourself, most are free as long as AI god still giving them money. :D Or [open a world on Lunafic](https://lunafic.ai/) tonight and judge with your own story. --- Read this on Lunafic: https://lunafic.ai/blog/best-ai-roleplay-2026 More from Lunafic: https://lunafic.ai/blog What is Lunafic: https://lunafic.ai/ai-roleplay AI characters you build stories with over long memories. You play as your character, the AI plays everyone else, and stories stay private by default.