Coming from Character.AI?
By Sal · Updated
Welcome in. I'm Sal, the one developer behind Character Tavern. Here's the honest version, and you'll be chatting in two minutes.
What changes when you moveWhy Character Tavern
Character Tavern is built by one person, with no company and no investors behind it. Nobody here needs growth targets or a quarterly report, so the site gets to make the choices a company wouldn't.
Better
37 models to choose from, and you can switch mid-chat when a story needs a different voice. Characters can come with several greetings, so the same one can open a different story each time.
More free
Free models with no message cap, no ads, and 150 free Puni every day for the bigger ones. Your characters and chats are yours to download whenever you want.
Friendlier
It runs in your browser, nothing to install. Swipe, edit, rewind or continue any message, and pick which kinds of characters show up for you. When something breaks, you can tell the person who fixes it.
Start in Two Minutes
Make an account
A username, an email and a password, nothing else. Open the confirmation link in your inbox within 3 hours, then log in. Sign up here.
Choose what you see
New accounts see safe-for-work characters only. If you're 18 or older and want more, open Content preferences in your account settings, confirm your age and tick the categories you want.
Pick a character
Browse the catalog or the tags, open a character and press Chat Now. A fandom you loved on Character.AI is a good first search.
Chat, on a free model
Every chat starts on a free model, and free models have no message cap. When you want to try a bigger one, open AI Settings in the chat and pick it in the Model Explorer. Those cost Puni, and you start with 300 plus 150 more to claim every day.
What's Different
Side by side, including the parts where Character.AI does more. You'll find out either way, so you may as well hear it from me.
| Topic | Character.AI | Character Tavern |
|---|---|---|
| Run by | A venture-backed company | One developer, no investors |
| Models | Character.AI's own lineup | Smarter models, 37 to pick from: free ones up to frontier ones like Claude and DeepSeek. Switch any time, even mid-chat. |
| Customization | A few options, the rest is up to Character.AI | Tune how the AI writes: reply length, creativity, reasoning depth, and presets to save it all. |
| Price | Free, or c.ai+ at $9.99 a month | Free models with no message cap, free daily Puni for bigger ones, and optional paid plans. |
| Your characters | Stay on Character.AI | Yours to keep. Download any character as a file and take it anywhere. |
| Your chats | One export of your whole account | Yours to keep. Download any chat, whenever you want. |
| Voice | Voice calls and character voices | Text only |
| Group chats | Several characters in one chat | One character per chat |
| Apps | iOS, Android and web | Web only, installable to your home screen |
The Character.AI column was checked in October 2026. If it has changed since, tell me on Discord and I'll fix it.
What Comes With You
The way you roleplay doesn't change much. Most of what you're used to has a place here, sometimes under another name.
The characters you made
Open each one in Character.AI's editor and copy it into the Studio, field by field. The greeting, the definition, the tagline and the description all have a place there.
Your persona
Personas work the way you know: a name, a description and an avatar the character sees. Keep as many as you like, sorted into folders.
Swipes and edits
Swipe for another reply, edit any message, rewind with Delete from here, or send an empty message to have the character continue.
Memory
What you would pin on Character.AI goes in the Memory Snippet, a note the character always reads. For a bigger world, a lorebook brings details in only when they come up.
What stays behind
- Your chat history
- Character.AI chats stay on Character.AI. There is no way to bring them over, so each story starts fresh here.
- Other people's characters
- A character someone else made on Character.AI is theirs, and copying it here without their permission breaks the rules. Search the catalog for the fandom instead: someone here has likely written one.
- Voice and group chats
- CT is text, one character at a time. If those are what you use most, better you hear it from me now.
Questions People Ask
I don't read private chats. Staff only open one for support you asked for, abuse or safety investigations, security incidents, legal compliance or troubleshooting. The AI providers behind CT are set to never train on your chats. The details are in the privacy policy.
CT's site currency. Free models never use it. Bigger models cost a few Puni per message, and every account can claim 150 for free each day. Puni can't be bought.
Minors in any sexual or romantic framing, your persona included, and a short list of other hard lines. The content rules spell out all of them.
No. Character Tavern is independent, built and run by me, with no link to Character.AI or the company behind it. Character.AI is a trademark of its owner, named here only to compare.
Pull Up a Chair
Stuck on something? Ask in #quick-help on the Discord server. Someone from the community usually answers fast, and I'm around too.