Compare & Contrast of Chatbot Websites
A Primer on Chatbot Frontends: By Skelly: For AWR and all new users trying to escape the clutches of C.AI
As AWR evolves, so do our platforms of choice. While not an exhaustive list, here are a few of the more popular websites, as well as a possible cai alternative for you character lovers.
Warning: Most, if not all, of these websites are formally 18+
Introduction:
Note: As this is a primer; this will not cover dedicated software such as Sillytavern or smaller platforms.
In my time on this community; I've found two major types of chatbot websites. "CAI like" also known as Plaintext platforms and "Chub/Venus like" also known as Character Cards platforms. As such, I've chosen to divide this guide into two. In general Plaintext platforms are more user friendly; while Character Card platforms give their creators further creative freedom.
Character Card Platforms:
1. Janitor: https://janitorai.com/
Difficulty rating: Low
Target audience: Plug and play; ex-cai users.
Free Model Context: 4000 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.
Cons: - The quality of JLLM is at the whims of the gods. Peak one day, dyslexic the next.
- Limited in features. While promises have been made to change this, currently Janitor is missing most V2 features. Including: Lore books, Character Notes, Sprites, etc.
- Due to its overwhelming popularity, it has instituted a queue, meaning you may have to wait 2-5 minutes to use the site. It is recommended creators write their bots on something autosaving like google docs to prevent their hard work from being deleted from a timed-out error and booting back to the queue.
- Due to the website set up, it is incredibly hard as a creator to get your new bots noticed in the trending.
- There is a culture of css profiles on Janitor that can be jarring. Users with epilepsy are recommended to use another website.
- 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.)
2. Character hub: https://chub.ai/
Difficulty rating: Medium/High
Target audience: Freedom lovers & Creators that want something more advanced than Janitor.
Free Model Context: 8000 Tokens
NOTE: It is heavily recommended that before your first time using, to block ALL NSFL tags. Doing so will allow you to browse without seeing (most), properly tagged bots that fall under such topics.
Pros:
- Personal customization on Chub is leagues above Janitor and Character.ai. Chat trees, exporting/importing chats, alternative greetings, galleries, and more 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.
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 guide for Chub: https://docs.chub.ai/docs. It may link to other third party guides and community banks for more reading, these are click at your own risk.
- 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.
Above all. Chub is a place where you view at your own risk. Freedom of expression means it. Click on guides, bots, and links at your own risk.
Chub operates largely of "tagging". Users on Chub are heavily recommended to learn this system, and it is an absolute requirement for creators. Failure to tag properly will not only lead to your bot being largely hidden in search, but failure to tag NSFW/NSFL can get your bots reported and bring consequence. Read the following guide, written by tagging mod counterfeitmonk on tagging: https://theunofficialguidetochubai.wordpress.com/2025/01/21/tagging-you-a-guide-to-tagging-your-bots-on-chub-ai/
3. Agnai: https://agnai.chat/
Difficulty rating: Medium/High
Target audience: Experienced creators, Users who want to run cards on better models
Free Model Context: Variable
Pros:
- Multiple free models backed and quality guaranteed.
- While somewhat difficult on a first attempt, the tutorial plus wiki make using Agnai easy and exciting.
Cons: - No character card service: users must find and download and upload cards they wish to use at this time.
4. Wyvernchat: https://app.wyvern.chat/
Difficulty rating: High
Free Model Context: 8000/16,000 Tokens
Target audience: ex-cai users, power users, creators who wish to push thier cards to the final level.
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.
- 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). Quality standards are higher on Wyvern, and also offer some level of customization via tag blocking.
- Chatting: Beyond even Chub, Wyvernchat has one of the most in-depth 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: - 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.
- Known bugs: Most popular bots not updating, editing messages causes them to resend, Lorebook download error making them unable to be shared, tags and search function errors.
Addendum: The writer of this article recommends the following Preset for Loosecannon: https://app.wyvern.chat/settings-presets/settings_preset_wJ7f896tR7J49eNcF9YLp
CAI like/Plaintext Format Platforms:
1. Character.ai: https://character.ai/
- Yes you know what this is. No I do not need to sell this to you.
- Formally allows <18
2. Xoul: https://xoul.ai/
Difficulty rating: Easy
Target audience: ex-cai users
Pros:
- User Friendly Experience: Xoul keeps the easy to navigate and use UI character.ai is known for, while remaining unfiltered.
- Xoul offers a proprietary 70B model for its users.
- Xoul moderation does not allow any child bots.
- Proprietary features: Things such as feature sliders in creation, and a large husbando oriented creator community and RAG, means that Xoul stands out different from the pack.
Cons: - Pay to play: While chatting is entirely free, features such as voice and call cost money.
- Hampered features: In order to make their website more accessible, Xoul has had to compromise on some features. Lorebooks for example, are hard limited to three active entries at any time.
- Miniscule size: While promising, the current userbase and creator base is a drop in comparison to even our botmaking server; AWR.
Addendum:
(Only) Card Creation Sites:
note: The following website where you can build a character card and download it as a raw file:
https://character-tools.srjuggernaut.dev/
Socials:
AWR: https://discord.gg/Ez53AXTVTy or https://discord.gg/awr
Open to anyone who seeks to improve in their botmaking abilities.
Creator Profile Examples:
a. Wyvernchat: https://app.wyvern.chat/profiles/49mFZhGtgfMfW5Ptyiax2Bh03o32
b. Chub: https://chub.ai/users/SpookySkelly
c. Janitor (Scraps): https://janitorai.com/profiles/e909fdf3-84fb-4113-b8cd-b18c61461418_profile-of-spooky-scary-skelly
d. Xoul: https://xoul.ai/profile/SpookySkelly