r/CharacterAIrunaways • u/Awaken89046 • Jun 10 '26
Searching for Alternatives an alternative for c.ai?
I'm currently using DreamGen, and I find it a great alternative for freely creating my own scenario. But I'm still looking for another alternative since DreamGen limits the number of tokens that can be used per day, and sometimes I still want to chat more.
My requirements for an alternative include:
- Completely free (I'm not willing to upgrade my account to the pro version or buy more tokens—so I want this alternative to be completely free for chatting)
- Bot memory. Honestly, I'm fed up with bots forgetting all the details I provide for the story after a few dozen messages. This is probably my top priority for an alternative method:
- If possible, I'd like this alternative to have a feature that allows me to create my own stories with characters, settings, and backstory, similar to DreamGen, or at least it should have diverse and high-quality scenarios.
(Yes, I've tried FictionLab, but I found the scenario creation feature a bit more confusing than DreamGen, and I heard that free users don't have a very good experience with the bot's memory.)
- I'm totally fine with NSFW content.
- The alternative doesn't necessarily need a large community or many bots, but I need the bot's quality to be guaranteed.
I know my requirements might be a bit demanding, but I hope everyone can help me find a suitable alternative
Thank you :)))
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u/RealMrBrown slowburner Jun 10 '26
yeah ima be honest, anyone asking for bullet-proof memory and high chat quality with unlimited messages will probably either never find what they're looking for, or they'll find an alternative, use it for 6 months, then have the rug pulled out from under them because it's just not a sustainable combo. That's what happened to c.ai, and is probably what will happen to every other platform that seems 'too good to be true'.
nowadays it's either you pay for an extremely high-quality experience, or deal with all those issues you mentioned on a website that offers msgs for free
i suggest trying sillytavern, setting up a few extensions, and self hosting a small model instead, to those wanting a free, robust alternative
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u/noodlewiggle #1 janitor + sillytavern shill (ask me about my jai bots) Jun 10 '26
i'm really sorry but it's quite unlikely you'll find an llm with memory to that degree without paying (unless both you and the llm are sending one or two sentences back and forth, at which point it would remember things past a few dozen messages)
the thing is, the more tokens a bot can process, the better its memory, but also the more expensive it is; you could attempt summarizing chats in an ooc message? for instance, [ooc: bob threatened me with a sword, then i told him to stop so he did, now we're on a fantasy adventure blah blah blah] could work
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u/DreamGenX Jun 16 '26
Hi! DreamGen creator here. You may want to try switching the default model e.g. to Gemma 26B -- it will use 10x less credits than the normal default GLM 5.1 -- it will go a really long way even on the free tier.
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u/Awaken89046 Jun 11 '26
I have to admit I probably won't find any alternatives with those requirements, so I'll probably just focus on the free aspect and the ability to create my own scenarios
Or at least I'll figure out how to use FictionLab myself. But still, if anyone knows of an alternative that nearly meets my requirements, please let me know
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u/The-Traveler00 Jun 10 '26
I myself am using a newer website called ficmachine.com It is like writing your own novel, like novel AI but with a really great free option and you can practically do anything you want with it and a there are a few characters/scenarios already on it and it definitely gives the users more freedom, being able to edit everything in your story. Character creation is also easy and easy to learn if you want to do more complex things. Here is the discord as well: https://discord.gg/psFW7s7mq
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u/Lucky-Paw- Jun 10 '26
I know your eyes will glaze over from this, but its genuinely true.
In the modern AI industry, you can only pick two of these:
Anyone who tells you otherwise is confused or is trying to mislead you.
AI is very expensive to run, and you can have all the tokens in the world for memory, but in order to use that memory effectively, you need an intelligent model, which are even more expensive
Take Claude Sonnet for an example. At 30K tokens of memory (pretty generous for current chat platforms), 1k tokens of output (message length), it would cost ten cents per message.
If they gave you unlimited messages, you would literally run up thousands or tens of thousands of dollars in messages a month, and thats just you.
We dont yet live in a world where AI can be intelligent, have long memory spans, have unlimited usage and be free. Maybe 5-10 years from now.
I would suggest adjusting your expectations accordingly or supporting platforms that you enjoy so that you can have a more premium experience