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Character.AI vs Swoony

Two fact sheets from our own research, side by side — pricing, platforms, API access and status re-checked by us rather than quoted from the vendors. Character.AI publishes a starting price ($9.99); Swoony does not. Both have a free tier.

Character.AIRoleplay chat with user-made characters, now adults onlySwoonyRomance-focused AI boyfriend chat built around slow-burn and enemies-to-lovers tropes.

Side by side

FactCharacter.AISwoony
CategoryAI Companions & CharactersAI Companions & Characters
Pricing modelFreemiumFree
Starts at$9.99 month—
Public APINoNo
PlatformsWeb, iOS, AndroidWeb
CompanyCharacter Technologies, Inc.—
Launched2021—
Last verifiedSep 6, 2026Sep 1, 2026

What our research says

Character.AI

Still the deepest character library anywhere and the reason the whole companion category exists, but it has been rebuilt around safety and identity checks, and the audience it was famous for is now locked out.

Pros

  • Character library is far larger than any competitor's, with voice calls and group scenes included
  • Free tier is genuinely usable, with the subscription mostly buying speed and memory
  • Safety changes are unusually explicit about what was removed and when

Cons

  • Age assurance defaults to face-based estimation, which is a hard stop for privacy-minded users
  • Charms are a second currency on top of c.ai+, so the $9.99 is a floor not a ceiling
  • No API, no export, and no self-hosting
  • The platform has been reshaped by wrongful-death litigation, and further restrictions are plausible

Swoony

Swoony is narrow by design: it's for people who specifically want romance-novel-style AI chat, not a general-purpose companion app. The closed-door content policy and free-to-start model lower the barrier to trying it, but the operator behind it is not named anywhere on the site, which is worth knowing before you share anything personal.

Pros

  • Free to start with no subscription or card required
  • Built specifically around known romance tropes rather than generic chat
  • States an explicit 18+ and closed-door content policy upfront
  • Simple, single-purpose product with no unrelated feature bloat

Cons

  • No named company, address, or country anywhere on the site
  • As an AI companion product, its data-handling practices deserve more scrutiny than the minimal footer supports

Which one fits

Choose Character.AI if you need

  • Adults who want long-running roleplay with persistent personas
  • People building and sharing characters for an existing community
  • Casual conversational entertainment rather than task work

Choose Swoony if you need

  • Romance readers who want trope-based AI chat
  • Users who prefer closed-door (non-explicit) romantic content
  • People wanting a free companion app with no card on file

More comparisons

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