Most Chub AI alternatives lists repeat a “20 free chats a day” figure that appears nowhere on Chub’s own site, or treat this like an ordinary switch story. It is not.
Chub did not get more expensive. It got harder to pay for at all. Below is the honest picture of what changed, and seven alternatives that fit the actual reasons people are leaving.
One of the seven is ours, we have put it fourth, and we have written down the reason it might not suit you.
What’s Happening with Chub AI?
Two things, and they compound.
The paid door is crypto only. Chub’s own subscription page charges $20 a month, and its “Why Crypto-Only?” section states the reason plainly: “The primary sources of censorship pressure for most websites are credit card companies and payment processors. By not using them, we are able to stay free of that pressure permanently.” This is not new — the same page dates the paid tier “since the launch of subscriptions in June 2023” — but it is the point most reviews still get wrong when they call the switch “recent.”
The free tier is no longer a tier. In Chub’s own words on the same page: “One-time free trial credits amounting to a few dozen messages are sent out to new users regularly.” A one-time trial handout is not a free plan.
Put together: unless you own crypto, you cannot really use Chub, and the low-friction door that let non-paying users hang around has been welded shut.
Search demand tracks the confusion. “Chub AI alternatives” ran at 48–83 US searches a month from January through April 2026, then climbed to 213 in May, 380 in June and peaked at 490 in July before receding to 129 in August and 331 in September (Ahrefs Keywords Explorer, September 2026). A summer spike that partly rolled back, not the sustained sixfold rise you sometimes see quoted. “Sites like chub ai” holds a steadier 100 a month.
Chub AI Pricing in 2026: Crypto Only, No Ongoing Free Tier
Here is what actually costs, straight from Chub’s own page:
| Path | Cost | What you get |
|---|---|---|
| Trial credits | $0 | ”A few dozen messages,” one-time, distributed to new accounts periodically |
| Chub subscription | $20/mo, crypto | ”Unlimited access to all LLMs, including Soji 1.6T 60K”, voice, multimedia |
| Bring your own key | 0–$30/mo | Route through OpenAI / Anthropic / DeepSeek — you pay them, Chub takes nothing extra |
The bring-your-own-key path is the crypto workaround people actually use. You pay a normal API provider with a normal card, plug the key into Chub, and skip the subscription entirely. It is fiddly, and it is why half of Chub’s audience is now looking at services that just take payment normally in the first place.
Is Chub AI Still Worth Staying On?
For a certain user, yes. If you already own crypto, want unlimited voice and image generation bundled, and specifically want Chub’s own Soji model, the $20 is not bad. Nothing else in this list ships all three in one flat fee.
For everyone else the friction is the answer. No crypto means no product. A trial handout is not a plan. And the free-model version of long-form roleplay everyone came to Chub for is gone. Most of the audience leaving is not leaving over quality — it is leaving over payment.
The 7 Best Chub AI Alternatives in 2026
1. Janitor AI — closest catalogue, normal payment flow
If your reason for leaving is “I do not use crypto,” Janitor AI is the softest landing. The character library is comparable in shape to Chub’s, adult roleplay is supported on the free JLLM tier with no card at all, and if you want premium models the paid Janitor+ tier and the Router run on ordinary billing. Full context in our Janitor AI review.
Best for: Chub’s cataloguey feel without the crypto step. Downside: the best model quality still means bringing your own OpenRouter key or paying for the subscription — the free model does not match Soji.
2. SpicyChat — deepest character-building kit
Large library, a real free tier, and the strongest authoring toolkit here: Lorebook, Director Mode, group chats. If you built characters on Chub and want to keep building, SpicyChat is the closest structural match to that workflow. Our detailed SpicyChat review covers the price change and where the free tier undersells the product.
Best for: people who enjoy building characters, not just talking to them. Downside: the tier where memory and long replies live is no longer cheap.
3. Character.AI — biggest library, strictest filter
Bigger than Chub by an order of magnitude, free, no crypto. It belongs here because people forget it exists. The filter is stricter, not looser — if you left Chub over censorship, this is a step backwards. The genuine escapes for that audience are in Character.AI alternatives.
Best for: people leaving over payment, not content rules. Downside: the filter is the harshest of any name on this list.
4. Bonza.Chat — no rule roulette, curated cast
Ours, and here is the honest shape of it. What Chub refugees complain about most — payment friction and unpredictable rules — is what we deliberately do not do: uncensored AI chat with a normal card checkout and an NSFW AI chatbot whose behaviour is the same tomorrow as today.
Best for: people who want the conversation to just work, every time, on a normal payment method. Downside, plainly: we have a curated cast, not a community catalogue with hundreds of thousands of bots. If Chub’s sheer scale was the point, we will feel small. That is a real trade and for some people it is the wrong one.
5. Backyard AI — the local escape hatch that closed
Worth including for one reason: it is the alternative most Reddit threads still name for “runs on your own machine,” and that recommendation is now out of date. Backyard’s own desktop app page says the app is “deprecated and no longer supported.” What survives is a hosted subscription at $12 or $35 a month, visible on their plans page, with a browsable character hub.
Best for: people who wanted a normal hosted service with mobile apps and are fine with the pivot. Downside: if you specifically came for local, offline, on-your-hardware chat, that door is closed. Only SillyTavern still fits.
6. SillyTavern — total control if you will do the work
Not an app in the consumer sense. SillyTavern is a locally installed front-end that talks to whatever text model you connect — a hosted API like OpenRouter, a paid one like OpenAI, or a model you run yourself on a strong-enough GPU. The official install guide is clear, but it is still a real setup: Node.js, a terminal, git clone or npm, model API keys.
The honest sentence self-hosting evangelists skip: SillyTavern is not a one-click product, and if you cannot cheerfully paste a shell command, it is going to be a bad afternoon. That is the trade for the total absence of a company filter.
Best for: people who want the ceiling removed and will earn it. Downside: everything is your job, including the model.
7. CrushOn AI — image-first roleplay with a mainstream checkout
If the specific part of Chub you used most was image generation bundled with chat, CrushOn is the closer visual match. Full write-up in our CrushOn AI review. Card payments, hosted, tighter on some content categories than Chub.
Best for: visual companionship over long-form roleplay. Downside: roleplay depth and world-building tools are thinner than Chub’s.
Quick Comparison
| App | Library | Content freedom | Payment | Setup | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Janitor AI | Very large | High | Free / card | Low | Chub scale, no crypto |
| SpicyChat | Very large | High | Free / card | None | Character building |
| Character.AI | Largest | Low | Free / card | None | Not leaving over rules |
| Bonza.Chat | Curated | High | Card | None | Consistency over catalogue |
| Backyard AI | Medium | Medium | Card | None | Hosted mobile-first |
| SillyTavern | None built in | Total | Your model, your bill | High | Full control |
| CrushOn AI | Medium | Medium | Card | None | Image chat |
About Soji: 1.6T on the Marketing, 671B in the Patch Notes
One honesty note before paying anyone for a model. Chub’s subscription page markets Soji as “Soji 1.6T 60K.” Chub’s own 0.5.7 patch notes describe Soji differently: “a 671B-parameter finetune of DeepSeek V3 0324, at 60K context.”
Both cannot be right for the same model. It could be two tiers, a mixture-of-experts total-parameter count versus active parameters, or marketing drift. Chub has not reconciled the two publicly. Treat “1.6T” with the caution any unexplained number deserves.
Sites Like Chub AI Without Filter Limits
For sites like Chub AI without meaningful filter limits, the honest shortlist is Janitor AI, SpicyChat and us, with SillyTavern above all three if you will run your own model. Character.AI does not belong on that list at any price.
And be sceptical of anything advertised as completely unrestricted — every hosted service has a floor, because payment processors and app stores impose one. Chub’s crypto pivot exists precisely to escape that floor; a service that skips it will accept the trade-offs Chub accepted, which brings us back to why you are reading this article.
Sites Like Chub AI That Take a Credit Card
Every option above except SillyTavern takes a normal card. If your reason for reading this is that you refuse to buy crypto to buy a chatbot, that is the entire list — pick on the other dimensions.
What’s Better Than Chub AI?
Depends on your reason for leaving.
- You do not want to buy crypto → Janitor AI or us (whichever fits your catalogue-vs-consistency preference).
- You want serious model quality on demand → Janitor AI with an OpenRouter key, or SillyTavern with whatever model you pay for directly.
- You want to build characters, not just chat → SpicyChat.
- You want images more than talk → CrushOn.
- You want no company filter at all → SillyTavern.
- You want the same product next month → us, with the catalogue caveat above.
None of these is “better than Chub” in the abstract. They are better than Chub at something Chub is bad at for you.
Which AI Is the Most Unrestricted?
SillyTavern, and it is not close, because the question is slightly wrong.
SillyTavern is a local interface rather than a service. It has no content policy of its own; whatever limits you meet come from the model you connect and the terms of whoever provides it. Connect a hosted model and its provider’s rules still apply. Run a model locally and there is no external policy at all — the SillyTavern GitHub project is open source and does not phone home.
Among hosted apps you can simply sign up for, Janitor AI and SpicyChat sit at the permissive end, followed by Bonza.Chat and Chub. But every hosted service has that floor. Anyone promising a hosted service with genuinely no limits is either new enough not to have been pressured yet, or lying.
One limit is not negotiable anywhere, including here: nothing involving minors, real or fictional. Every platform in this article removes that content and bans for it.
How to Pick Without Regretting It
Match the app to the actual complaint, not the loudest recommendation.
- Do not own crypto → Janitor AI, or us
- Want unlimited voice + images bundled → stay on Chub if you can pay, or accept a heavier bill splitting them across services
- Want to build, not browse → SpicyChat
- You mostly wanted images → CrushOn
- You want no ceiling at all and will run your own model → SillyTavern
- You want the same product next month, on a card → us, with the catalogue caveat
A practical note from Chub-migration threads: plenty of people keep Chub around for old bots while using something else day to day. Migration does not have to be a clean break, and treating it as one is why people bounce back — the same pattern shows up in our PolyBuzz alternatives write-up.
Frequently Asked Questions
What happened to Chub AI? The paid door became crypto-only and the free tier collapsed into occasional one-time trial credits. Chub has been crypto-only since the June 2023 subscription launch, per its own subscription page; what changed for most people is the disappearance of a usable ongoing free option.
Is Chub AI still free? Not in any real sense. New accounts receive one-time trial credits — Chub calls them “a few dozen messages” — and after that any further use requires the crypto subscription or a bring-your-own-key API setup.
What is the best Chub AI alternative? There is no single best answer, which is why this list matches apps to complaints. If forced to one: Janitor AI for catalogue on a normal payment method, SpicyChat for character-building depth.
Are there sites like Chub AI that are uncensored? Yes. Janitor AI, SpicyChat and Bonza.Chat all allow adult content. SillyTavern removes the ceiling entirely if you run your own model.
Can I use Chub AI without crypto? Only by routing through your own API key — you pay OpenAI, Anthropic, DeepSeek or an aggregator like OpenRouter with a card, and plug the key into Chub. Fiddly enough that most people just switch.
Which AI chatbot is the most unrestricted? SillyTavern with a local model, no contest — no company sits in the loop. Among hosted services, Janitor AI and SpicyChat sit at the permissive end.
Will I lose my Chub characters if I switch? Yes, in practice. None of these import Chub bots directly. Copy the character description and lorebook text out before you cancel.
