YanMate
People started looking for alternatives in earnest after November 2025, when Character.AI removed open-ended chat for under-18s, and again through early 2026 as mid-chat ads and metered swipes arrived on the free tier. Those are real changes with dates on them, and they moved a lot of people.
What follows is a comparison of the products they moved to. It is written by the team behind one of them, which you should factor in — so the table is built on things you can check yourself rather than on adjectives, every row carries its sources, and there is a section further down about where this product is the wrong choice.
Characters move between all of these as character cards, and a card that will not import is the most common reason a move stalls. You can inspect a character card here — it reads the file in your browser and shows every field inside it, including the ones an app has quietly dropped. Leaving Character.AI specifically, you can also read your Character.AI data export — the ZIP they email you is a folder of JSON no ordinary app opens, and that page turns it into your characters and your chat history.
How a character is written matters as much as what it remembers, and it is easier to check. You can check a character for dependency patterns — paste a persona or something it actually said, and that page names the guilt, jealousy and loss-framing patterns it matched, against a rule list published in full.
Checked on 2026-09-18. Prices in this category move; the structural columns move more slowly, but they do move.
| Platform | Free tier | Memory | Voice on free | Characters | Paid from |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Character.AI | Free with mid-chat ads, and swipes metered by an in-app currency | Kept by the model; not presented as a list you can open and edit | Voice calls are a paid feature | User-generated, tens of millions, heavy on licensed characters | c.ai+ around $94.99/yr |
| PolyBuzz | Unlimited text on the free tier, with ads | Cross-session memory; the longer-retention tier is paid | Voice available; character-matched voices | User-generated, around 20 million characters | Around $9.90/mo |
| Janitor AI | JLLM, the built-in model, is free; other models need a proxy key or janitor+ | Depends on the model you connect | Not the focus; text-first | User-generated | janitor+ from $12.99/mo; or you pay the model you connect |
| Talkie | Roughly 50 messages a day with ads, and older chats close after about 60 days | Per-character, within the chat retention window | Voice calls are part of the product | User-generated, companion-app framing | Talkie+ from $9.99/mo (App Store) |
| Replika | Limited Free Use tier; Pro and Ultra are sold in-app | Not presented as a list you can export; the product was rebuilt in 2026 | Voice is a paid feature | One companion you build, not a catalogue | Pro and Ultra, priced in-app |
| Nomi | Effectively none beyond a short trial | A graph-based memory widely reported as the best in the category | No meaningful free tier to speak of | Up to ten companions you create | Around $15.99/mo |
| Kindroid | Limited | Multi-layer; better than Replika, drifts on very long sessions | Voice is part of the paid product | Companions you create | Paid Lite and Standard plans on the web |
| YanMate(us) | Permanent free tier; sign in with Google or a six-digit code, no card | A ledger you can open, edit, delete from and export | Spoken replies and live calls are both on the free tier | Around 100 characters — original and public domain only | Plus around $9.99/mo; Deep, around $19.99/mo, adds six-character scenes with a Narrator |
Every product here claims memory. Almost none of them let you open it. For raw long-term recall, Nomi is the one most consistently reported as best, using a graph-based memory that holds up over months. For memory you can actually read and correct, YanMate keeps an editable ledger you can open, change, delete from and export. Those are two different things.
YanMate is SFW on purpose: original and public-domain characters only, no licensed IP, and no romantic or sexual roleplay with anyone under 18. Janitor AI is in this table because it has the fewest content restrictions of the set — if that is what you want, it is the right row and this product is the wrong one. Character.AI moved under-18s off open-ended chat into a structured Stories mode in November 2025. We have not lab-tested every other filter; the honest split is that this product is SFW by policy, and some of the others are not.
The largest library and the most familiar interface. Still the default, and still the one everything else is measured against.
c.ai+ pricing on Character.AI (checked 18 Sep 2026) · Open-ended chat for under-18s is still gone (Character.AI, checked 18 Sep 2026)
Sheer variety, and the most usable free tier for unlimited text. If you want the biggest catalogue that is free to read, this is it.
A PolyBuzz-specific comparison, on a licensed-looking library, ads, and paid Long Memory.
PolyBuzz Standard Plan on the App Store (checked 18 Sep 2026)
Fewest content restrictions, and full control if you are willing to plug in your own model. The most technical of these.
A Janitor-specific comparison, on API keys, model shopping and who should stay.
janitor+ pricing page: $12.99/mo (checked 19 Sep 2026) · Janitor help: JLLM is the free built-in default (checked 19 Sep 2026)
The most polished phone app in the category, and a strong casual browsing experience.
A Talkie-specific comparison, on bans, refunds and whether chats stay.
Talkie free tier limits · Talkie Lab on the App Store: Talkie+ 1 Month $9.99 (checked 19 Sep 2026)
A single long-term companion rather than a cast. The oldest and most established product here.
A Replika-specific comparison, on memory you can take with you.
Replika homepage: rebuilt from the ground up (checked 18 Sep 2026) · Terms: Free Use, Pro and Ultra; prices in-app (checked 18 Sep 2026)
Memory, straightforwardly. If long-term recall over months is the thing you care about most, this is the one to try.
A Nomi-specific comparison, on recall you cannot delete versus a ledger you can open.
Deep customisation of a small number of companions, with strong voice.
A Kindroid-specific comparison, on a companion you write and an export that is an email.
Kindroid subscriptions help centre (checked 18 Sep 2026; prices sit in the page UI)
Knowing exactly what a character remembers about you, and hearing it speak or calling it without paying.
The thing it does that nothing else in this table does: you can open the memory and edit what a character believes about you. Spoken replies and live calls are on the free tier rather than behind the subscription. Signing in is Google or a six-digit code, with no password and no card.
We wrote this page, so here is the case against us, plainly.
How YanMate itself handles accounts, memory, voice and ads is in the YanMate FAQ. What Character.AI and other operators publish about training on chats is the training guide, sourced 19 Sep 2026. PolyBuzz's licensed-looking library and Chai's ranking feed have their own pages: PolyBuzz alternative and Chai AI alternative.
Every row was verified against published pricing pages on 2026-09-18, and the sources are linked beside each platform above. Where a figure could not be read on a first-party page it is left unquoted rather than guessed. Claims about YanMate are checked against our own code and Polar's live offers, and the strongest of them — that live calls are on the free tier — is enforced by a test rather than by memory.
If something here is out of date or wrong about your product, tell us at support@yanmate.com and we will correct it.
An AI character on YanMate.
YanMate
