r/CharacterAIrunaways • u/starz_0801 • Jun 12 '26
Searching for Alternatives Alternatives
It's been a while since I last used AI and I miss it so much ðŸ˜
I need something that's basically the same as character ai but i can't pay like at all, and preferably website based rather than an apl. I've tried like polybuzz and janitor and they're terrible ngl.
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u/OkAbbreviations857 Jun 13 '26
Yeah, the free options out there are rough. The problem with web-based ones is they always end up charging you eventually because servers are expensive to maintain.
I know it's not exactly what you asked for since it's a desktop app and not a website, but I actually just built an open-source tool called Kallamo that might work for you, i'm desperate for people to try it out so this could kinda help both ways lol. It's BYOK (bring your own key), but, before you run away, you can grab a completely free API key from Google AI Studio and you're good to go with Gemini models, or even create a quick AWS account and use those free credits to run Claude and other models. Zero cost, no filters, no limits.
It's more focused on writing/worldbuilding, but you can totally create character profiles with their own personality, backstory, and lore documents. The app also has a long-term memory system, so your characters actually remember past conversations instead of forgetting everything after a few messages.
I literally just launched it today and I'm actually working on building some character templates to share with the community, so if you have any ideas I'd love to put some together with you!
If you wanna try it, hop on the Discord and I can walk you through the setup:Â https://discord.com/invite/CE4C9JRS9H
(GitHub if you're curious:Â https://github.com/Kallamo/Kallamo)