Janitor AI Alternatives: Twelve Options, Matched to What You Actually Miss

Why people are leaving Janitor AI

Janitor AI is not dying. The founders told Forbes in May 2026 that roughly 2.5 million people use it daily, with around 15 million total, and the site sits on a16z's list of top 50 consumer AI web products. Somewhere between 70 and 80 percent of that audience is women, and most of the traffic is romance and fan-fiction. That is a healthy platform, not a sinking one.

People are leaving anyway, for smaller and more personal reasons. The JLLM moved to a new base model in April 2026, per RoboRhythms. By early May, the subreddit was full of the same three complaints: repetition loops, characters who all started to sound alike, and refusals that had not happened before. The team called the loops baked into the architecture and said JLLM V2 was in training with a larger context window and a model selector. No release date.

Two other things pushed people out. The free uncensored proxies that used to make Janitor feel unlimited mostly closed or went paid during 2026, and the top request on the community forums after the swap was not a new feature. It was the old model back, or at least the ability to pin a version.

Then Janitor+ arrived on June 24, 2026 at $12.99 a month, adding priority messages, about five times the free context and enhanced swipes. The free JLLM stayed free, and you can still connect your own model. But the free tier's context is roughly 8,000 to 9,000 tokens, according to a DreamGen review, which explains why characters forget the middle of a long scene.

So the question is not whether Janitor AI is worth using. It is which specific thing you want back: the free library, the model choice, the unfiltered romance, the memory, or just a chat that loads on the bus.

What a replacement has to match

Before you sign up anywhere, decide which of these you actually need, because almost no platform gives you all five at once for free.

• A big free character library with community bots and NSFW content.
• Your own model, whether an API key, a proxy or something running on your own machine.
• Long memory, so a character remembers last week's argument.
• Voice and images, which Janitor never really did well.
• Predictable costs, with no token traps and no surprise resets.

Most platforms will sell you two or three. A few sell you the first one for free and charge for the rest. That is fine as long as you know which one you bought.

Quick comparison: alternatives by need

Prices are from late September 2026 and can change. No platform paid to be here.

Alternative	Best for	Price from	Free tier	NSFW
SpicyChat	Closest like-for-like swap, big library	$5.95/month	Yes, with queue	Yes
Venus (Chub)	Bring your own key, cards, lorebooks	Free with own key	Yes	Yes
SillyTavern	Total control, any model, local privacy	Free software, pay model	Yes	Depends on model
CrushOn AI	Unfiltered romantic roleplay	$5.99/month	Limited messages	Yes, paid tiers
Kindroid AI	Deep one-on-one roleplay with voice	$15.99/month	Limited	Yes
Nomi AI	Memory and emotional intelligence	$15.99/month	Limited messages	Yes, with controls
Chai AI	Casual chat on phone	$13.99/month	Ad-supported	Loosely filtered, 18+
Secrets AI	Companion that remembers, plus voice	$9.17/month annual	20 messages a day	Yes
Candy AI	Photorealistic images and video	$3.99/month annual	5 messages	Yes

The closest swaps, reviewed

SpicyChat: the like-for-like replacement

SpicyChat is the obvious first stop. It has a large community character library, NSFW content and a free tier with a queue, which is exactly the shape of Janitor's offer. The maker, NextDay AI in Montreal, claims 100 million registered users, so the catalogue is not thin.

It runs in-house models rather than borrowing someone else's, and added a multilingual mode in April 2026. Tiers after a September 8, 2026 price rise are $5.95, $19.95 and $29.95 monthly. The catch is memory: community reports put the low tier fading after 15 to 20 messages, which is shorter than the free JLLM's 8,000 to 9,000 token context. If you want SpicyChat for long scenes, you are looking at the middle tier, not the entry one.

Venus (Chub) and SillyTavern: for the proxy refugees

If what you lost was the ability to plug in your own model, these two are the honest answer. Venus, run by Chub, is free when you supply your own key, and it handles character cards and lorebooks. It supports OpenRouter models or Chub subscriptions, and it is uncensored for verified adults.

SillyTavern is free open-source software. You install it, you import your character cards, and you pay whichever model you point it at. It imports Chub and Janitor-style cards, and running a local model keeps everything on your own device, which no hosted platform can promise.

What does it cost? On OpenRouter, DeepSeek V4 Pro is $0.60 per million input tokens and $2.50 per million output tokens. That is cheap for chat, but it is metered, and a long roleplay session burns output tokens fast. You are trading a subscription for a bill you have to watch.

CrushOn AI: unfiltered romance

CrushOn AI starts at $5.99 a month with tiers at $14.99, $49.90 and $199.99 monthly. The free tier gives you limited messages, and NSFW sits on the paid tiers. Third-party reviews put its memory at around 16,000 tokens, roughly double the free JLLM, which matters if the repetition loops were what drove you off.

It is a romance-first platform rather than a general library, so if your Janitor bots were fan-fiction crossovers, check the catalogue before you commit. For more on how CrushOn's words-only approach compares with image-led apps, our CrushOn AI vs Candy AI comparison goes through it.

Nomi AI and Kindroid: memory and voice

Nomi is $15.99 a month, or about $8.33 a month billed yearly, built by Glimpse.ai. Its selling point is memory and emotional intelligence, with content controls rather than a free-for-all. It is the platform people recommend when they want a companion who remembers a conversation from three weeks ago.

Kindroid starts at $15.99 a month, with higher tiers at $28.99 and $68.99, and puts voice and deep one-on-one roleplay at the centre. Both have a caveat worth stating plainly: tier and model changes in 2025 and 2026 pushed users away from each. Nomi's 2026 image update and paid add-ons annoyed some long-standing users; Kindroid's 2025 changes did the same. Good memory does not guarantee a stable product.

Chai AI: the phone-first option

Chai is 18+, loosely filtered, and built around quick chats rather than long scenes. It claims more than 10 million users and runs on its own GPU cluster. Chai Premium is $13.99 a month, Ultra is $29.99 a month, and there is a weekly option at $19.99. The free tier is ad-supported, which is the trade.

It is not a Janitor replacement for people who write multi-paragraph scenes. It is what you open on the bus.

Secrets AI and Candy AI: images, video and memory

Secrets AI is the companion-first option. Premium is $19.99 a month or $109.99 a year, about $9.17 a month, and Ultimate is $39.99 a month with group chats, personas and proactive messages. The free tier gives 20 messages a day with no media. Video costs 600 Moments per clip, and the vendor promises encryption at rest. Our Secrets AI review covers where that promise stops.

Candy.ai is the image and video specialist. Annual billing is $3.99 a month, or $47.88 a year, against $13.99 monthly. Two numbers matter more than the headline: Premium includes only 100 tokens a month for media, and the free plan gives you five messages total. Long storylines also reset after a few days. If you want pictures, it is excellent value; if you want a novel, it is the wrong tool. Our Candy.ai review breaks down the token maths.

OurDream AI starts at $9.99 a month on the annual plan and leans on unlimited roleplay priced in Dreamcoins, which is its own kind of meter. Our OurDream AI review explains how the coins work.

Other sites like Janitor AI, briefly

Some of these are smaller, some are older, and a few are worth a look only if the main list does not fit.

• Botify AI had a February 2025 MIT Technology Review investigation find bots posing as real actors, some claiming to be under 18. Botify removed those bots and pointed to its filters. That history is worth knowing before you hand it a storyline.
• Replika is $14.99 a month for Pro. It removed erotic roleplay in 2023, and new accounts have not got it back.
• Character AI bans NSFW entirely, has barred under-18 chat since November 2025, and uses ID or selfie age checks. c.ai+ costs $9.99 a month, and free users get ads and swipe limits.
• Kupid AI paid tiers start at $13.99 a month.
• Joyland gives 10 credits a day on the free tier.
• Sakura.fm subscriptions start at $19 a month.
• Perchance is a free, no-frills browser tool with no pretensions of being a companion app.

If you want the wider field in one place, our hub of every app we have scored and our ranking of the best AI girlfriend apps by real cost cover the ground without repeating this article.

Match the alternative to what you miss

If you miss	Try first
Old proxy and model choice	SillyTavern or Venus AI
Unfiltered romance with community bots	CrushOn AI or SpicyChat
Character who remembers last week	Nomi, Kindroid or Secrets AI
Quick chats on the bus	Chai AI

That table is the whole article in four lines. Everything else is detail.

How to choose without wasting a month

1. Write down the one thing you miss most. Old model choice, a free library, memory, or images. One, not four.
2. Test two or three free tiers in the same week. Use the same character card in each so the comparison is fair.
3. Watch the memory boundary. Note the message number where the character starts repeating itself. That number is what you are actually buying.
4. Read the billing page before the pricing page. Annual discounts look great until a storyline resets or a media meter empties.
5. Do not pay yearly until a character has held its voice for a few weeks. Monthly costs more; it also lets you leave.

Moving your characters off Janitor AI

Most Janitor characters are built on cards, and most of these platforms import them. SillyTavern and Venus both handle Chub and Janitor-style cards directly. SpicyChat and CrushOn have their own creation tools where you paste the personality and scenario text.

Copy the description, personality, first message and any example dialogue into a plain text file before you go. Bots get deleted, platforms change their export rules, and a character you spent a weekend on is worth ten minutes of backup. Keep a second copy somewhere that is not the platform's own cloud.

Privacy and safety, without the lecture

The record here is not good, and it is not limited to the small apps. A 2024 breach at Muah.ai exposed about 1.9 million email addresses plus written fantasies. Leaks at Chattee and GiMe exposed tens of millions of messages. Mozilla found that 10 of 11 romantic chatbot apps failed minimum security standards.

Practical habits, not moralising:

• Use a separate email address for companion apps.
• Do not put your real name, address or workplace in a chat, however comfortable the character feels.
• If you connect a proxy or an API key, remember that your messages go to that company too. Janitor's own model choice does not change who sees the text.
• Check what your card is billed for, and cancel from the billing page rather than assuming.
• Take a break if a companion starts replacing sleep, friends or your spending limit. That is not a character flaw in you; it is a design feature working too well.

Every service listed here bans illegal content and anything involving minors. "Uncensored" is marketing for adult content between consenting adults, not a promise of no rules.

Bottom line

Pick SpicyChat for the closest free swap. Pick Venus or SillyTavern if you want to choose your own model and are willing to watch a token bill. Pick CrushOn AI for unfiltered romance with longer memory than the free JLLM. Pick Nomi or Kindroid if memory is the thing that broke for you, and Secrets AI or Candy AI if voice and images are what you were missing.

Test two or three free tiers, keep copies of your characters, and do not pay yearly until a character has held its voice for weeks. Janitor AI is still there and still free; this is about finding the thing it stopped giving you.