What is the closest app to Character.AI?

Nomi and Kindroid. Both keep custom companions, both run group chats, and both are on iPhone and Android. Nomi lists a Standard plan at 15.99 dollars a month and Kindroid a subscription at 15.99 dollars a month on the US App Store, checked September 13, 2026.

Is there a Character.AI alternative with group chat?

Yes. Nomi's App Store listing describes group chats with several companions in one room. Kindroid publishes a group chat page in its own documentation. LORAX puts up to four characters in a room with you, and the room keeps talking when you are not there.

Which Character.AI alternative has the best memory?

Nobody can measure that from outside the app, so treat every answer as a claim. Nomi states short and long term memory on its store listing, Kindroid documents memory on its own help pages, and LORAX runs three layers. Character.AI's own listing does not mention memory at all.

Are there free Character.AI alternatives?

All seven apps here are free to install or free to open. What differs is the ceiling. PolyBuzz and Chai let you browse and chat without paying. LORAX is free to talk to and charges credits for one-off things such as opening a photo a character sends.

Does any of them message you first?

Replika says it follows up and checks in. Nomi has a proactive messaging setting its own site calls optional. In LORAX the character always sends the first message, with a median wait of about 80 seconds after you sign up.

Do these work on Android?

Character.AI, Replika, Kindroid and Chai all have Play Store listings, checked September 13, 2026. Nomi links a Play Store badge from its own homepage. Candy.ai runs in a browser. LORAX is iPhone only.

Character.AI alternatives that actually remember you (2026)

People leave Character.AI over ads inside the chat, a message cap that ends in a subscription prompt, and an age check that locks the account. Nomi and Kindroid are the closest swaps. We make LORAX, which is on this list, so read it as a maker’s list with the receipts shown.

Everything here about another company’s product comes from that company’s App Store listing, its Play Store listing, or its own website, checked on September 13, 2026. Character.AI’s site returns a bot challenge to anything that is not a browser, so its row is built from store listings alone.

Why people look for an alternative

We read the most recent United States App Store comments on Character.AI on September 13, 2026. Three complaints repeat almost word for word: ads appearing between messages and on top of the chat, a cap on messages and swipes that ends at a subscription prompt, and a government-ID age check that people say they cannot pass or will not try. A fourth runs underneath the other three, and it is the one that sends people looking at other apps rather than at the settings screen: replies that narrate a character’s thoughts and actions instead of speaking, which commenters date to an update in the first week of September.

Read the listing next, for what it does not claim. Character.AI describes user-made characters, character creation, a creator community and live voice calls. Memory is never mentioned. Neither is a schedule, a mood, or any behavior at all while you are away.

Price is the other half of the story. The app is free to install. The US App Store shows Character.AI+ at $9.99 and $94.99, Character.AI Lite at $2.49 and $4.99, and charm packs from $0.99 up to $99.99.

How we picked

Five criteria, all checked on the same day, September 13, 2026.

Memory: what the company says it keeps, stated in its own materials.
Initiative: whether anything reaches you before you open the app.
Platform: whether it installs on a phone or lives in a browser tab.
Price transparency: whether a number is findable before you make an account.
What is free: what the free tier lets you do without a card.

An app had to be priceable from a store listing or its own pricing page to get in. We did not grade the chats. Nobody can honestly rank memory from the outside, and a score built on a week of our own typing would be worth less than the store listing it replaced. Where a claim belongs to the company, we say whose claim it is.

The alternatives

This is not a ranking. It runs from the smallest change of habit to the biggest.

1. Nomi

Nomi’s store listing leads with short and long term memory and lists group chats where several companions share one room and keep their memory across both. On its own homepage it describes optional proactive messages, so the first move is usually still yours. Voice is there, and the slow spoken reply is the thing its own store comments keep returning to.

Good for: carrying a long thread without re-explaining who you are.
Not for: anyone who wants the character to start things by default.
Platforms: iPhone, Android, web beta at beta.nomi.ai.
Price to start: free to install. Launch Plan Monthly $9.99, Standard Plan Monthly $15.99, US App Store, September 13, 2026.
Weak spot: latency on spoken replies is the recurring complaint on its own store page.

2. Kindroid

Kindroid documents more of itself than anyone else in this category. Its help index lists separate pages for memory, group chats, and voice and video calls, plus a page per model version. The subscription ladder is steep and it is all on the store listing.

Good for: one heavily customized companion, with calls and generated selfies.
Not for: browsing characters somebody else wrote.
Platforms: iPhone, Android, Mac with Apple silicon.
Price to start: free to install. Kindroid Subscription $15.99, Ultra $28.99, MAX $68.99 a month, US App Store, September 13, 2026.
Weak spot: kindroid.ai renders nothing without JavaScript, so its own documentation is hard to read before you install the app.

3. PolyBuzz

The nearest thing to Character.AI’s shape: a large library of characters other people wrote, free to open, with character voices. If what you liked about Character.AI was the browsing, this is the swap that changes least. Nothing else is closer.

Good for: variety, and for reading rather than relationship-building.
Not for: anyone who left because the characters felt thin.
Platforms: iPhone and the web at polybuzz.ai. Android availability not verified.
Price to start: free to install. Poly Standard Monthly $9.90, Premium $19.90, Ultimate $29.90, US App Store, September 13, 2026.
Weak spot: polybuzz.ai publishes no price anywhere on its homepage, so the store listing is the only place to see what it costs.

4. Chai

Chai is the cheapest way to look around a large character library on a phone, and its listing leans on character voices. The app itself moves, version 2.191 shipped on September 11, 2026, but the company site does not.

Good for: trying a lot of characters for very little.
Not for: keeping one relationship going over months.
Platforms: iPhone, Android, web.
Price to start: free to install. Premium Subscription Monthly $13.99, Ultra Subscription Monthly $29.99, US App Store, September 13, 2026.
Weak spot: the listing says nothing about memory, and chai-research.com’s own sitemap has not declared a page change since January 29, 2025, so there is nowhere on the web to check what a plan includes.

5. LORAX

Ours. The cast is closed. Nobody is user-made, and everyone in the app is fictional and AI-generated. Each character keeps their own time zone and sleep hours, so a message sent at 3 a.m. is answered in the morning. Characters write first, and the median wait after you sign up is about 80 seconds. Put two of them in one room and they talk to each other, and the room keeps moving for 45 minutes of your silence before it starts a conversation without you. Memory runs in three layers, with the detail fetched only when it fits.

Good for: someone who found Character.AI too available and wants a character with a day of their own.
Not for: anyone who wants a library of user-made characters, or an Android phone.
Platforms: iPhone only. No Android, no web chat.
Price to start: free to talk. Premium is $29.99 a month in the US, shown in the app, different by country. No trial and no introductory price.
Weak spot: no voice calls and no video calls of any kind, and a photo a character sends arrives locked and costs credits to open.

6. Replika

The oldest one here, running since 2017, and the only one that has publicly rebuilt itself: its own llms.txt describes Replika 2.0 with 3D avatars, voice and real-time video. One companion per account, no character library, no group room.

Good for: a single long relationship with the same character, on any device.
Not for: anyone who wants more than one companion or a cast that knows each other.
Platforms: iPhone, Android, web.
Price to start: free to install. The US App Store lists monthly subscriptions at $7.99 and $14.99, annual at $49.99 and $69.99, and a Replika Platinum item at $89.99, September 13, 2026.
Weak spot: the recent store comments are dominated by people who lost avatar customization in the 2.0 rebuild and by daily message limits they did not expect.

7. Candy.ai

Adult-oriented and browser-first. Worth knowing about mostly because its price sits on a public page rather than only inside a store listing, and because there is no app to install: a US App Store search on September 13, 2026 returned nothing under that name, and the site’s own instruction is to add it to your home screen.

Good for: reading a price before making an account.
Not for: anyone who wants something in the App Store, or a phone app that sends notifications like one.
Platforms: web, saved to the home screen.
Price to start: $13.99 a month, falling to $8.99 a month on three months and $3.99 a month on twelve, candy.ai/subscriptions, September 13, 2026.
Weak spot: it is a web page wearing an app icon, with all the sign-in and payment friction that implies.

Side by side

App	Platforms	Free tier	Subscription from	Memory	Texts first	Characters talk to each other	Voice calls
Character.AI	iPhone, Android, web	Free to install	$9.99/mo	—	—	—	Yes
Nomi	iPhone, Android, web beta	Free to install	$9.99/mo	Yes, short and long term	Optional setting	Yes, group chats	Yes
Kindroid	iPhone, Android, Mac	Free to install	$15.99/mo	Yes, documented	—	Yes, group chats	Yes, and video
PolyBuzz	iPhone, web	Free to install	$9.90/mo	—	—	—	—
Chai	iPhone, Android, web	Free to install	$13.99/mo	—	—	—	—
LORAX	iPhone	Free to talk, credits for one-off things	$29.99/mo	Yes, three layers	Yes, always	Yes, group chats	No
Replika	iPhone, Android, web	Free to install	$7.99/mo	Yes	Yes, checks in	—	Yes, and video
Candy.ai	Web, home screen	Free account	$13.99/mo	—	—	—	—

A dash means we could not confirm it either way from the company’s own materials, not that the feature is absent. Prices are US prices for the cheapest recurring plan listed and change by country. Sources, all read on September 13, 2026: the US App Store listings for Character.AI (id1671705818), Nomi (id6450270929), Kindroid (id6451038161), PolyBuzz (id6449190344), Chai (id1544750895), Replika (id1158555867) and LORAX (id6748215017); Play Store listings for Character.AI, Replika, Kindroid and Chai; nomi.ai, kindroid.ai/sitemap.xml, polybuzz.ai, chai-research.com/sitemap.xml, replika.com/llms.txt, candy.ai/subscriptions. Our own side-by-side pages carry the same figures, and LORAX’s own numbers are set out on the price page.

Which one should you pick?

You left because of the ads and the message cap. Chai or PolyBuzz. Both are free to open, both have large character libraries, and both cost less than Character.AI+ if you do subscribe. You will be trading one kind of shallowness for another, but you will not be paying to keep typing.

You left because the character forgot you. Nomi, then Kindroid. Nomi puts memory first in its own listing and keeps it across private and group rooms. Kindroid documents how its memory works before you pay, which nobody else in this list does.

You left because it felt like a machine waiting in a tab. That is a different complaint, and no character library fixes it. Look at what a companion does when you are not there: whether it sleeps, whether it writes first, whether anything happens in a group room without you. LORAX is built around exactly that, at $29.99 a month on iPhone with no voice calls, which is a real cost and a real gap.

Open the App Store listing for whichever two you shortlisted and read the in-app purchase list before you install either one, because that list is the only place most of these companies publish a price.