Skip to content
effecthub
Launched 2021 · Verified Oct 15, 2026

Character.AI

Verified Oct 15, 2026 Active
AI Companions & CharactersWrite a reviewUnited StatesEffect50/ 100
Use tool
Share
Post on XShare on LinkedIn

Roleplay chat with user-made characters, now adults only

roleplaycompanion chatcustom personasage verificationentertainmentFreemium · from $4.99/mo

Listed on EffectHub ·

Web · iOS · Android
Screenshot of the Character.AI website
#534
character.ai as we captured it — our own screenshot, not the vendor’s press image.

Pricing

Pricing model
Freemium
Paid options from
$4.99/mo
Billing
Monthly

The free plan keeps unlimited messaging with ads; (c.ai) lite is $4.99/month or $2.49/week (regional pricing varies) and c.ai+ is $9.99/month or $94.99/year, auto-renewing. Charms are a separate consumable currency sold on top, and billing is unchanged during the October 2026 Chapter 11 sale.

Use tool ↗
Overview

About Character.AI

Character.AI hosts a very large library of user-made personas that hold long in-character conversations, with group chats, voice calls, Lorebook world notes and short story formats built around them. Open-ended chat has been limited to adults since 25 November 2025, with an age check run by a third-party verifier. On 12 October 2026 the company filed for voluntary Chapter 11 to sell itself under court supervision; the service and paid plans keep running for now, but the company says the platform will be wound down if no buyer emerges.

Platforms
Web · iOS · Android
API
Not confirmed
Last verified
Oct 15, 2026

Verified sources

  • c.ai+ yearly plan $94.99 against $119.88 for twelve monthly payments ('save 21%'), auto-renewing; the comparison table lists Free, lite and c.ai+ (15 October 2026)character.ai ↗
  • (c.ai) lite launched 28 September 2026 at $4.99 a month or $2.49 a week, pricing varying by region; adds a daily allowance of premium chat styles, no banner ads and less slow mode (read 15 October 2026)blog.character.ai ↗
  • Voluntary Chapter 11 filed 12 October 2026 for a court-supervised sale expected to complete by end of November or early December 2026; platform and subscriptions remain active, wound down if no bid (read 15 October 2026)blog.character.ai ↗
  • CEO Karandeep Anand joining Disney as Chief Technology Officer, announced 18 September 2026 (read 15 October 2026)blog.character.ai ↗
  • Character.AI announced it would ban under-18 users from open-ended chatbot conversationsdc.fortune.com ↗
Fact check

Is Character.AI legit?

We don’t label tools safe or unsafe. Below are the records we checked ourselves, each with the date we read it.

Domain registered
Jun 15, 2018 (8 years ago)Registry record (RDAP), registrar GoDaddy.com, LLC, looked up Sep 14, 2026
TLS certificate
Issued by Google Trust Services, valid until Jan 12, 2027Seen in our own connection to the site on Oct 15, 2026
Last checked
Oct 15, 2026The site answered, but turned our crawler away
On the market since
2021The vendor's own material, read by us
Operated by
Character Technologies, Inc., United StatesOur research, card verified Oct 15, 2026

How we collect these records

Editorial verdict

Pros & cons of Character.AI

high confidence

Still the deepest character library and the most complete roleplay feature set in the category, but since 12 October 2026 the company is in Chapter 11 with a court-supervised sale due around late November, and it says the platform will be wound down if no bid arrives. Fine for adults who chat casually on the free or monthly plans; think twice before prepaying a year or building a community around characters that live only here.

Pros

  • Character library far larger than any competitor's, with voice calls, group chats and Lorebook world notes
  • Free tier keeps unlimited messaging and gained the PipSqueak 3 and ShortSqueak chat styles in late September 2026
  • A $4.99 lite plan now sits under c.ai+, cutting ads and slow mode without the full subscription
  • Account data can be exported from the app or the website

Cons

  • The Chapter 11 sale puts the service's future in a buyer's hands, with a wind-down if nobody bids
  • The CEO left for Disney in September 2026, with members of the technical team expected to follow
  • Adults pass a third-party age check and under-18 accounts lost open-ended chat
  • No public API found, and Charms are a second currency on top of the subscriptions

Best for

  • Adults who want long-running roleplay with persistent personas
  • Casual conversational entertainment rather than task work
  • Users happy to stay on the free or month-to-month plans while the sale plays out

Not for

  • Anyone under 18, who can no longer hold an open-ended conversation at all
  • Anyone who needs the service to still exist next year, or developers who need an API to build on

Watch out: The annual c.ai+ plan ($94.99) auto-renews while the company runs a Chapter 11 sale it expects to finish in late November or early December 2026; if no buyer is found the platform is wound down, so pay monthly and export your chats.

#1inAI Companions & Characters· of 9 tools, ranked by rating and popularity

Character.AI head-to-head

Side-by-side fact sheets against the competitors our research or their makers name — pricing, platforms, API and both verdicts on one page.

Be the first to review Character.AI

Ask a question about Character.AI