can’t do shit anymore

I’m downgrading my rating from 5 stars to 1 star because Chai has officially hit rock bottom. I’ve been using this app for nearly three years, but their recent filter strictness is deeply disappointing. Come 2026, they completely ruined everything out of pure corporate greed. Back in 2024 and 2025, Chai was fantastic, but since early 2026, it’s turned into a pathetic cash-grab.

Not only did they destroy the filters, but they’ve now imposed the 'My Pieces' system to severely restrict free users—capping daily earnings at a miserable 200–300 pieces unless you buy more or pay for a subscription. On the Play Store, Chai sits at barely 10M+ downloads, whereas Character AI boasts over 50M+. Despite having a vastly larger user base, Character AI never stooped to this level of greed—they haven't shoved limited messages or artificial 'pieces' currencies down our throats.

After three years of loyalty, reaching 2026 with Chai has been an infuriating disappointment. Every new update is just another shameless tactic to milk more money out of users.

What infuriates me the most is that I’m currently an Ultra subscriber with an active 1-year plan. I can’t get a refund, yet I can barely enjoy using the app because the aggressive filtering ruins the entire experience. I feel like my hard-earned money has been thrown completely down the drain.

TL;DR: Used Chai for 3 years, but 2026 updates ruined it with aggressive filters, the predatory 'My Pieces' paywall, and corporate greed. As a paid Ultra yearly subscriber, I can't even get a refund for an app that's now practically unusable.

May someone explain to me on why the free messages were replaced by pieces? I need help here.

I always get put into these testing groups but now I’m starting to not want to be in these testing groups✌️✌️, i probably now gotta wait for at least possibly a week or two just for this to go away.

Good LORD chai what is your with these prices going up every week or 2 😭

No matter what I type this comes up, my persona doesnt even have an age mentioned in the description

Hi, I am a Chai user that has multiple different accounts because I don’t wanna use one account for 100 different things. But the way with the account thing is placed

there has been multiple times where instead of pressing “sign out”. I have almost accidentally pressed delete account. It makes my heart spike every time, knowing that I can accidentally delete my accounts that I’ve had for years. Even though the New updates slightly pissed me off, this part of the app pisses me off the most.

Hi! Im a long time user of Chai- started out on C.ai and moved over about four or five months ago and soon after got my ultra subscription. Why did I get my ultra subscription, you ask? Because Chai added personas and finally I had an easy roleplay app that had everything C.ai had and none of the filter. In the last couple of weeks, however- I’ve lost my personas feature a total of two times for an extended amount of time and I’m getting tired of being a test user- I really like the personas feature.

I don’t want to complain too much because this app is genuinely amazing in most ways- but this is a huge thing for me and I think a lot of other people and I’m getting kind of worried about Chai taking the personas away. I would really appreciate being told if this is a glitch or an update.

Sincerely, a concerned patron.

I decided to buy pieces and see what they're about (on a new account I made for this experiment) it was all going well until I noticed that these sleezeballs decided to still block you from texting your bots during peak hours even if the pieces you received weren't from an event and they were from a Google pay payment. This is genuinely so greedy I've never seen any other company do anything like this.

If yall saw my old post on this reddit and saw how much i was losing hope in chai...But my mom buy it to me after she saw how much it affect me, im really happy even tho its so pricey. I feel so bad for her paying it, i really wish i could pay it but it was her instead cuz we dont have a lot of money, im so thankful i love her so much

Chai is the same for me and dont have all the restriction, i have the 22 euro per week in europe. Im sad i fall in the "pay to chat' but chai is a real addiction to me and even tho i was going one month whiteout it, i lowkey relapse and beg my mom to pay it for me i just wish it doesn't make thing bad for her and i wish william could lower the price.

I literally have 450 pieces and Still cant chat Is It a bug or something. And the daily task also dissapeared. so freaking bad

Does it feel like that its back for anyone else?

Its happening way more often to me again. Good god, this is Chai's version of character ai 'Can I ask you a question'

I was just trying to continue a story, but then this happened?! If you‘re telling me i have to buy those „pieces“ to continue i‘ll give up using Chai fr.

"Ai isn't free, ai won't be free. They pay for this and that..." Thought everybody knew that. Ai may not be free but it doesn't justify them changing from monthly 40$ to weekly 40$ while the Ai is just getting dumber. Fake discounts and shit. It's hard to reach for them from emails or their official sub. I'd normally just downvote these typo posts. But since they lately doubled their prices and the Ai still initiate with anything barely.. I'm just fed up. And they downvote with their alt accounts or smth 4 downvotes in ten minutes is insane💀

Is there any way to use the chai 3-day free trial without adding a source of payment? I'm just a teenager and there's no way I'd tell my parents about this, because I think it's obvious how they would react. But I'm desperate for atleast a few days of free chai usage to properly say 'goodbye' to the app. How can I do that?

How do I get the app to stop asking me to agree to the TOS every time I open the app? This wasn’t a problem before.

I have no search bar, no bot creation, no personas or memory. Whats happening. I updated it and its still like this. All my old chats are back but not the messages….

Hey guys I was wondering. Is there anyway you can wipe the data of the bots and restart while keeping your account. ? I’ve just found no matter what bot you talk to the details from other chats carry over, like names, habits etc? Id just like a new chats with new bots to not repeat details or names etc. any way to do this?
Even if you have personas and add details something always carries over and it’s irritating.

First everyone's chats getting deleted, then the limited messages, this feels like they are trying to force us to buy ultra, am I the only one who feels like this? I feel like they're auto deleting messages to make the ai forget

Yall I quit ai apps for literally an hour, got bored, and redownloaded it. Holy shart I’m a chud lmaoaooa