· reAPI Team
Character AI Alternatives: Open-Source and Build-Your-Own Options
Character AI alternatives: what Character.AI offers now, the open-source SillyTavern front end, local models, and building a character chatbot on an LLM API.
The right Character AI alternatives depend on why you are looking. Character.AI still offers more than 10 million user-made characters, but it removed open-ended chat for users under 18 in November 2025 and verifies ages with an in-house model plus third-party tools such as Persona.[1][2] Adults who want more control usually end up in one of two places: an open-source front end such as SillyTavern connected to a model of their choice, or a character chatbot they build themselves on an LLM API.
This guide explains what Character.AI provides now, how those two alternatives work and what they cost, using official sources checked on November 4, 2026.
What Character.AI offers now
Character.AI's sign-up page advertises access to "10M+ Characters".[1] Its October 29, 2025 announcement set out the main change for teenagers: open-ended chat for under-18 users would end, rolling out from November 24 and complete no later than November 25, with daily chat time for minors limited first to two hours and then reduced. Similar changes were planned for other countries over the following months.[2]
Under-18 users keep creation features, such as making characters, scenes, videos and voices, and tools like AvatarFX and Imagine Chat. The company also announced an independent non-profit, the AI Safety Lab, focused on safety for AI entertainment.[2] A paid tier, c.ai+, exists; its price is shown only after sign-in.[2]
Character AI alternatives by type
| Type | Example | What you control | What it costs |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hosted character app | Character.AI | Little: the app sets the models, rules and data handling | Free sign-up; c.ai+ subscription |
| Open-source front end | SillyTavern | Interface, prompts, characters and which model API you connect | Free software; you pay for the model API or your own GPU |
| Build your own | Any chat model API | Everything, including storage and moderation | Per-token API fees |
Sources: Character.AI and SillyTavern documentation; API pricing below.[1][3]
SillyTavern: the open-source front end
SillyTavern describes itself as an "LLM Frontend for Power Users". It is a locally installed interface under the AGPL-3.0 license, with more than 35,000 GitHub stars.[3] Its README lists a single interface for many model APIs, including OpenAI, Claude, Mistral and OpenRouter as well as local back ends, plus a mobile-friendly layout, a visual-novel mode, lorebooks it calls WorldInfo, text-to-speech, and image generation through Automatic1111 and ComfyUI.[3]
The software itself is light: it "will run on anything that can run NodeJS 20 or higher". Running the model locally is a different matter, and for that the project recommends an NVIDIA RTX 3000-series card with at least 6 GB of VRAM, noting that real requirements depend on the model and back end.[3] Most users connect it to a hosted API instead, which turns the cost into a per-token bill.
Building a character chatbot on an LLM API
A character chatbot is, at its core, a system prompt that defines the persona, the conversation history, and a model. Writing it yourself means you decide what is stored, how long, and what the character will refuse. A few practices help:
- Keep the persona in the system prompt and short; long character sheets cost tokens on every turn.
- Summarize older turns into a running memory instead of resending the whole history.
- Add your own moderation and age checks if anyone else will use the app.
Cost is lower than most people expect. Take a chat turn with 3,000 input tokens of persona, memory and history, and a 300-token reply. On reAPI, GPT-6 Luna costs $0.08 per million input tokens and $0.40 per million output tokens, so that turn costs about $0.00036, or $0.36 per 1,000 turns. DeepSeek V4.1 Flash, at $0.40 and $1.30, comes to about $0.0016 per turn, or $1.59 per 1,000.[4] These are list-price arithmetic for an assumed turn size, not measured costs.
Running the character model locally
SillyTavern also connects to local back ends, and its README lists KoboldAI and KoboldCPP, Oobabooga and Tabby among them.[3] A local model keeps every conversation on your own machine, which is the strongest privacy option on this list.
Context length is the catch for long role-play. Ollama, a common local runner, defaults to a 4K-token context on GPUs with less than 24 GiB of memory unless you raise it, which is short enough that a character starts forgetting earlier scenes quickly.[5] Raise the setting and check that the model still fits in memory. Our comparison of Ollama vs LM Studio covers both runners, and which local models fit your memory lists sizes and context windows.
What to check in any alternative
Whichever route you choose, look at four things before you put real conversations into it: the age policy and how it is enforced, how long conversations are kept and whether they are used for training, what content rules apply, and whether you can export your characters and history. Hosted apps decide all four for you, usually in terms you cannot change. With SillyTavern or your own build, they are your responsibility.
FAQ
Can teenagers still use Character.AI?
Users under 18 can no longer have open-ended chats, but they can still use creation features such as making characters, scenes, videos and voices.[2]
Is SillyTavern free?
The software is free and open source under AGPL-3.0. You pay for whatever model you connect it to, either an API billed per token or your own hardware.[3]
What is the cheapest way to run a character chatbot?
A small, inexpensive model through an API is usually cheapest for light use: about $0.36 per 1,000 turns with GPT-6 Luna on reAPI under the assumptions above.[4] Heavy, continuous use can make a local model on your own GPU cheaper over time.
Choosing among Character AI alternatives
If you want a ready-made app with millions of characters, Character.AI remains the reference point. If you want to choose the model and keep your data, SillyTavern is the established open-source option. If you are building a product, an API gives you full control: reAPI serves GPT-6 Luna, DeepSeek V4.1 Flash and other chat models through one OpenAI-compatible key. Pick the Character AI alternative whose rules you are comfortable owning.
References
- Character.AI. Sign-up page. Retrieved November 4, 2026 from character.ai
- Character.AI Help Center. Important Changes for Teens on Character.ai. October 29, 2025. Retrieved November 4, 2026 from support.character.ai
- SillyTavern. SillyTavern/SillyTavern repository and README. Retrieved November 4, 2026 from github.com/SillyTavern/SillyTavern
- reAPI. GPT-6 Luna and DeepSeek V4.1 Flash model pages. Retrieved November 4, 2026 from reapi.ai/models
- Ollama. Context length. Retrieved November 4, 2026 from docs.ollama.com/context-length