Compare & Contrast of Chatbot Websites

A Primer on Chatbot Frontends: For all new users trying to escape the clutches of C.AI

Introduction:

The Websites at a glance

Plug & Play Platforms:

Janitor

Difficulty rating: Low
Target audience: Plug and play; ex-cai users.
Free Model Context: 8000 Tokens
Pros:

• Simple, easy to use UI, complete with a free in house JLLM.
• Decently sized creator community with plenty in house guides tailored for Janitor specifically.
• Janitor allows you to hide the definition of your bots, if you feel you must.
• The expanded servers have eliminated the previously much hated queue.
• Recently, Janitor has updated to allow lorebooks, a feature that will let you set story flags and only use tokens when needed.
  Cons:
• The quality of JLLM is at the whims of the gods. Peak one day, dyslexic the next.
• There is a LOT of slop. Just straight up. Excessive tokens, poorly writing bots, generated slop, and much much more. There is very little in the way for sorting through the cards to find good content beyond joining discords with people self promoting. In addition, now that the tokens are hidden by default, its nigh impossible to evaluate the quality of cards, and some may contain a couple of nasty surprises
• Limited in features. While promises have been made to change this, currently Janitor is missing most V2 features. Including: Multiple Greetings, Sprites, preset controls, etc.
• Dev team uncommunicative, changes without warning.
• Due to the website set up, hard for creators to get bots trending.
• There is a culture of css profiles on Janitor that can be jarring. Users with epilepsy are recommended to use another website. Thankfully, Shep has recently rolled out an option to deactivate CSS for users.
• The dev team on Janitor is notoriously uncommunicative and makes changes without warning. The community as well is known for its toxic positivity and hostility to the mention of other competition. (You risk getting a ban for doing so on their platform.)

Character Card Platforms:

Character hub

Difficulty rating: Medium/High
Target audience: Freedom lovers & Creators that want something more advanced than Janitor.
Free Model Context: 8000 Tokens

Pros:

• Users are granted much finer control on Chub. Chat trees, exporting/importing chats, alternative greetings, galleries, are the tip of the iceberg.
• "Chub is uncensored. We do not restrict in any meaningful capacity the variety of characters that are allowed to be posted on the platform nor the type of interactions you are allowed to have with said characters."
• Chub comes built in with a free model known with 300 messages per day, in addition to offering the ability to use your own models via API's.
• Forking: See a cool idea? Want to build on it? Make a fanbot to tie in with the world? Maybe write your own version? Perhaps simply want to write a new greeting? With this feature you can, plus it even links to the original if someone forks a bot of yours (a list of which is viewable on the character page.)

Cons:

• The quality of Chub's model is also up too the whims of fate.
• Users are expected to learn how to use Chub on their own or with the assistance of another person. The following is the official docs for Chub. It may link to other third party guides and community banks for more reading, these are click at your own risk. My personally reccomended guide is this one by StatuoTW
• Chub is almost entirely run by two dev's (Lore/Data) who are infamous for going offline for months on end. As such, many reported bugs go unfixed until these devs come around to it.

Agnai

Difficulty rating: Medium/High
Target audience: Experienced creators, Users who want to run cards on better models, people that want an online alternative to SillyTavern
Free Model Context: Variable

Pros:

• Multiple free models
• Has access to CHUB content base
• Conversation management: Lets you fork chats, back up logs, and keep multiple branches of the same scenario active at once.
• While somewhat difficult on a first attempt, the tutorial plus wiki make using Agnai easy and exciting.
• Agnai is considered the “cleanest” of the API-based frontends, focusing on speed and reliability rather than flashy extras.

Cons:

• Learning curve: Easier than SillyTavern, but still intimidating for users used to plug-and-play platforms like Janitor or CAI.

RisuAI

Difficulty rating: Medium
Target audience: people who want the power of SillyTavern without being tied to a local machine, people who want pretty pictures with their text
Free Model Context: none, bring your own API

Pros:

• Has probably the best support for embedded images out of any frontend. Most cards on RisuRealm (their card sharing website) are extremely high-effort with lots of expression packs.
• Supports all major known APIs, including Horde, plus custom OAI-compatible APIs.
• Supports full prompt templates, plus it can (theoretically) load SillyTavern presets directly.
• Dev actually checks Discord and posts regular changelogs with every update plus responds to bugs.

Cons:

• Doesn't come with any models, free or otherwise, so you'll need to bring your own.
• Documentation is spotty at best. The Discord isn't very active and asking for help there can take some time to get a reply. Help quality... varies.
• RisuRealm is really only used for sharing cards and not presets. You'll have to either get a standalone preset file from someone else, or manually import a SillyTavern one.
• Heavily used by the Korean community, and cards on RisuRealm aren't always correctly tagged for language.

SillyTavern

Difficulty: Maximum
Target audience: Power user's who want complete control over there experience
Free Model: Null

Pros:

• Total customizability. SillyTavern lets you control everything. Backgrounds, chat size, avatar. There's tons of extensions you can install to modify and add to the client to get anything from additional backgrounds, to guided generations.
• The active community constantly cranks out extensions and mods. Its not just limited to that, the community also create prompts, vn simulator and even how to get started.
• Multi‑bot rooms. Supports both individual and group chats
• Totally and absolutely private. Being locally run software, none has access to your logs.

Cons:

• Steep learning curve. There is no built-in tutorial. Your relying on community guides and your own technical know how.
• There is no built-in model, be prepared to wrestle with API keys.
• The discord for ST is incredibly harsh. It's recommended you receive assistance from knowledgeable individuals.
• No dedicated mobile app. It can run via Linux terminal on your phone, but its clunky and can brick your computer.
• Overwhelming for beginners.

Smaller Character Card Sites:

Wyvernchat

Difficulty rating: High
Free Model Context: 8000-16,000 Tokens
Target audience: ex-cai users, power users,

Pros:

• Multiple free models with between 8-16k token memory means roleplay on Wyvernchat will remember the longest conversations out of all websites free offers.
• Active development: Users of the platform are free to submit feature requests in the Discord for specific requests and options they'd like to see. In addition, active development continues with monthly updates
• Content moderation: In addition to uploaded bots being checked for stolen content, banned topics, and proper ratings, bots uploaded to Wyvernchat are sorted into one of three ratings. Safe, Mature: (18+ themes), and Explicit (Sexual Content) which prevents surprise NFSW if its undesired.
• Wyvernchat has one of the most in-depth online preset setting options, with info on what each slider does. In addition, users are able to share and use other users publicly published presets.

Cons:

• Complex moderation: Some creators struggle with the character tagging requirements. It is recommended that you review the following Outline before publishing to avoid any confusion.
• Smaller card pool: Being a relatively new website means the amount of available content, albiet it comes with the advantage of less slop
• Confusing UI: Users often report that the barrier of entry to Wyvernchat's UI is extremely high.
• Beta status: Many features on Wyvernchat are still as of yet a WIP or can have bugs. While the development team is active in combating bugs, some will take weeks to solve. In addition, users may experience issues with using their own API's and features. Due too there reliance on Featherless, Wyvernchat has been known to have model errors somewhat frequently, coinciding with server usage.
• Addendum: The writer of this article recommends the following Preset for Loosecannon: https://app.wyvern.chat/settings-presets/settings_preset_wJ7f896tR7J49eNcF9YLp

Hammerai

Difficulty rating: Low/Medium
Target audience: Privacy-conscious users, people exiting janitor.ai but put off by chub
Free Model Context: 4,096

Pros:

• Everything is private and locally run
• Runs in browser (no sign-up required) and has a desktop client that can be used offline
• Functions as a mix of Janitor's ease of use and Sillytavern's control and privacy.

Cons:

• Some features gated behind subscription (image gen, larger models).
• Guides are locked behind discord.
• Missing some basic features such as blocking
• Obscure and there are complaints over obtuse design.
• You have to pay if you want to save conversations. You can now save conversations for free!

Character Tavern

Difficulty rating: Medium
Target audience: Casual roleplayers, People who want a alternative Chub with moderation
Free Model Context: 100k

Pros:

• Carries a lot of Plug & Play features with the comprehensive control of Character Card sites
• Decent size: Unlike most alternatives, Character tavern has a decent sized userbase that produces unique content.
• Effortless browsing: Sleek, filter-rich catalog (NSFW toggles, tags, trending tabs).
• Card Creator: Build your own characters without API wrestling.
• Uncensored at its core: Near total freedom of expression.
• Large selection of models for use for free and paid users each with there own use cases.
• Daily credits known as "Puni" let free users access paid models

Cons:

• Tags underutilized and limited.
• Always close to the red: Character Tavern runs on hopes and duct tape.
• Unclear developer communication
• The single dev means some features are missing.

Addendum:

(Only) Card Creation Sites:

https://character-tools.srjuggernaut.dev/

Image Generating websites (and tutorial):

https://rentry.org/Necronomiconart

Socials:

• https://chub.ai/users/SpookySkelly