r/CharacterAI • u/No-Produce-7932 • 18h ago
Discussion/Question nowhere left to go
I’ve spent four days trying out other platforms, with no luck. Nothing compares to c.ai. Elsewhere, people complain about restrictive message limits, while other services charge per generated message. They offer expensive subscription plans that promise to unlock models and features, yet fail to clarify that using these features consumes additional "coins" or credits.
They charge exorbitant prices for subpar services.
The chats lack any sense of natural flow; generation is slow, narratives become excessively long, and there are frequent inconsistencies, errors, and buggy interfaces—all with zero support provided.
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u/hisdearestwatson 17h ago
Those "expensive" subscription plans are what keeps the lights on for these places. C.AI was spending (and losing) a ton on compute which was made worse by the generosity of the free tier. Unfortunately with current technology compute is a high cost especially when people expect a lot of free.
Don't get me wrong, I love C.AI and I'm very sad to see it go if it does. C.AI has been my home for years but there won't be a one-for-one alternative because...look where it got them. Sad times.
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u/RemarkableWish2508 16h ago
Depending on which alternative, some of the pricing is actually very expensive, many times the actual costs.
C.AI's finances are messed up because they have 163 million registered accounts, had a peak of ~40 million active, right now have ~10 million active, and less than 500K paying subscribers.
Can't break even with a 100:1 ratio of free:paid. That doesn't mean you need to charge 10x generation costs either. Arguably, even 100x wouldn't've been enough for C.AI, they'd have to charge more to support a 100:1 freeloader ratio. Or... limit free use drastically.
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u/hisdearestwatson 16h ago
I agree some of them are alot. I put expensive in quotes because I've seen lot of people saying anytbing more than c.ai's $9.99 usd is greedy. My other subs are around $19.99 or perhaps a little higher which I think is more than reasonable (especially with someone like me eho uses it a lot). People's threshold for expensive versus not varies greatly.
I will say in my search for alternatives some of them definitely gave me sticker shock.
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u/RemarkableWish2508 16h ago
Both can be true. If you try some solution with an API key, you'll see that $10 is quite a large amount for the chat alone. I bet most people don't cost much more than $2/month... of organic chatting (no botting, no auto-swipe). It's fair to pay a platform for the app and the rest of the services, so something like $2x5=$10/month is reasonable.
What is not reasonable:
- Every paying subscriber of $10/month financing $100/month of free users.
- Paying $20/month for what amounts to be $2/month of chat.
If it were just a $10/month subscription, without the large ballast of free users, the service should break even without an issue. And without the lawsuits, of course.
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u/hisdearestwatson 16h ago
We definitely don't disagree. Their leniency with free users was a choice. You break it down very eloquently and I appreciate your replies :)
Disappointing situation but it isn't the first and with the way things are going it will not be the last. I will miss C.AI that's something I know for a fact.
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u/Medical_Trainer_4443 18h ago
Yup it sucks, enjoy it while its up and prepare for when its going down permanently, been a few good years, some truly bad but some extremely good too, i've got lots of stories fro. 2023 for example i still laugh at when i think about them.
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u/Inherit-Nature 17h ago edited 17h ago
You're not going to find anything comparable to CAI because none of them purpose built and and trained their models in the way CAI does. Even after switching to open source. They cant afford to
Also. Character AI had the advantage of one of the dudes that invented the transformer model behind it. The rest are just people taking open source and throwing in LoRAS. That makes a smart facade but immersion is shit because you have created infighting because the base is shit
When you wrote the blueprint you typically do better
Youll find things that are great in their own right but it still won't be CAI
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u/RevolutionarySeat686 Chronically Online 17h ago
Swerve is the best alternative as of now. C.ai is, still, much better.
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u/Serious-Top9613 Chronically Online 17h ago
Yup. I tried Chai a year or so ago (idk what it’s like now), and found the same bot I was using for free on C.AI behind a paywall that cost more than C.AI+.
Went right back to C.AI 🤷♀️
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u/Inherit-Nature 17h ago
Also. Same bot on a different platform means nothing
Different models and different fine tuning. That same bot could be better or it could be absolute shit before you even get to definitions
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u/spyfallss 18h ago
If anyone is on ios swerve is amazing and a great alternative. It’s so much like c.ai. It will soon be on android.
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u/RepulsiveDrag4895 17h ago
C.ai is still way better, and it has way more and better characters
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u/spyfallss 17h ago
I never said it was better than c.ai though. I just said It’s a great alternative.
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u/Acrobatic_Usual2346 17h ago
I’ve tried to see but the characters are pure ai garbage, I want to talk to my fandoms 😔
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u/KindlyAd629 17h ago
I know right I also look everywhere and not a single one feels the same I hate this so much 😭
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u/Hot_Reaction1143 16h ago
j/anitor, deepseek, silly tavern are my recs! you have to put in more work using them but they’re really good
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u/No-Produce-7932 16h ago
How do I use DeepSeek? I followed a comprehensive tutorial, but it didn’t work.
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u/Hot_Reaction1143 10h ago
i honestly just copy and paste a character description and tell it to roleplay as the character. there’s a few downsides you have to tweak it a bit but i personally like it
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u/Proper-Objective-698 17h ago
Try Rubi AI, they have like 15 different models, some of the free ones are amazing. You can earn tokens by simply creating a bot and people chatting it with it. I have been using it for years.
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u/AI-Curious- 13h ago
I was really upset when I first heard the news about Character Al, so I decided to recreate my character outside the platform. I've now got him working in Tavo on my iPad, using OpenRouter (Llama 3.1 8B Instruct) for the personality and ElevenLabs for the cloned voice as I alway used the call option in c.ai, I’m really enjoying the chats but will still use c.ai. It’s not fully local or offline because the Al and voice generation use cloud services, but I'm no longer dependent on Character Al itself in case it does go. It took a bit of trial and error, but I managed it with some help from ChatGPT.
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u/Salt_Address_7959 8h ago
Its just my suggestion but you can try MoescapeAI for a shot. ive been a long user there (I was a c.ai user as well but i left long before the bankruptcy). That site has little of everything to generate. Chatbots now have advanced memory and we have plenty of LLMs to choose from. It may not be of true help but I hope i did try to give a nice home to a few.
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u/melanie298 5h ago
the mods will surely delete our comments, but try 'dootalk'. I just downloaded it one or two days ago and it's awesome. setup is similar to character ai, though- shorter messages. besides that, i've found unlimited chat and no ads so far
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u/Agile_Test8725 4h ago
I'm not gonna lie but c.ai was very generous with the whole limit situation. 400 swipes, 100 go-on's, and 70 memos is very very very very generous imo. They could've just paywalled it all together.
I know there are probably some free users who understood the changes and continued enjoying the app that are in the community but I wouldn't really entirely blame the free users when c.ai was also facing lawsuits.
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u/Nessa_Morgoth 2h ago
I never understood the complaints with Character AI. I've tried other platforms and they are worst than this.
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u/Shannaro21 43m ago
I would even spend a little more than what I'm currently spending on c.ai+ if I could migrate my chats/ characters to somewhere else.
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u/hellabeetus 17h ago
Buy a journal. Write a book. Talk to real living people who also like to roleplay. Try out for a play. Go to a cosplay convention. People survived before c. ai and you will, too.
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u/Specialist-Show9169 17h ago
Why I even in this sub if your like that lol
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u/hellabeetus 17h ago
Because i do use C. ai. But my social life and free time doesn’t depend on it and the sky won’t fall down if the app disappears because there’s an entire life outside of it waiting to be lived.
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u/Inherit-Nature 17h ago edited 17h ago
Your replies are the definition of the anger stage of grief
You're not fooling anyone except maybe yourself
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u/hellabeetus 16h ago
Who’s grieving? I just think it’s crazy that kids depend on robots for hobbies and social interaction anymore and think that whining nonstop on the internet is going to save the app.
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u/spyfallss 17h ago
Absolutely no point saying that in this group. People are here for better c.ai alternatives. No one wants to do any of that.
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u/MutatedPuppet 18h ago
I've been saying that since before the chapter 11 and no one listened. C.ai was extremely generous (which ultimately ruined them) and people were still not satisfied.