Felix Laurent
character.ai filed for chapter 11 on october 12, 2026, and may be wound down if no buyer keeps it running. disney's $20m bid covers a technology license, not the app or the chats. the sale hearing is proposed for november 24. this guide covers the best character ai alternatives for roleplay and companion chats. it also shows how to export your chats and when running characters locally makes sense.
is character.ai shutting down
character.ai is still running today. the parent company, character technologies, filed a voluntary chapter 11 case in the us bankruptcy court for the district of delaware. it listed estimated assets and liabilities of $50m to $100m each. reuters reports the company was losing about $8m a month.
the company says it hopes the sale keeps the platform alive. its own statement also says the platform will be wound down if no suitable bid comes in. for now the app works, subscriptions continue and billing is unchanged.
the filing closes a run of setbacks. in 2024 google hired the founders and dozens of researchers under a non-exclusive license. in november 2025 character.ai banned open-ended chats for users under 18. in january 2026 it settled several wrongful-death lawsuits. in september 2026 its chief executive, karandeep anand, left to become disney's chief technology officer.
what disney is buying – and what it is not
disney is the stalking-horse bidder: $20m for a non-exclusive, perpetual license to some of character.ai's intellectual property. other bidders can top the offer. disney does not get the app, the website, user accounts, chat histories or the characters users made.
at the first hearing on october 14, the company's lawyer told the court disney is not interested in user data. the lawyer also said no one had offered to buy the platform itself. the company told npr it has about 12m monthly active users. the court filings count about 163m current and past users, and none of them are creditors in the case.
how to export your character.ai chats
character.ai still offers a full data export. the path differs between the website and the app:
- web: profile → profile settings → account → manage account & data → export data
- app: profile → settings → legal & privacy → export data
the export takes three to four weeks, according to the help center. it covers the whole account – there is no way to export a single chat. the sale is expected to close in late november or early december, so a request made today lands close to that date.
an export keeps the text, but no other app imports it as a working character. deleting the account is permanent, so wait for the download link first. state attorneys general, including new york's letitia james, asked the court to let users access and delete their data before any sale.
the best character ai alternatives
the closest replacements are apps built on the same idea – a public library of characters made by users. each one below solves a different problem left by character.ai:
| app | what it is | where your chats live | the catch |
|---|---|---|---|
| talkie | minimax's character app with a large community library | minimax's servers | minimax is a chinese company, listed in hong kong in january 2026 |
| chai | a swipeable feed of user-made characters | chai's servers | paid access in "low tier" countries since january 2026; token limits froze chats in february |
| janitor ai | free community library, bring your own api key | janitor's servers | much of the library is 18+ |
| ai dungeon, novelai | text adventures and co-written stories | the service's servers | built for stories, not one-on-one chats |
| replika, nomi | one long-term ai companion | the service's servers | no public character library |
| meta ai, grok companions | character chat inside big platforms | meta's and xai's servers | fewer custom characters, the platform's own rules |
| sillytavern | open-source app you run yourself | your own drive | setup takes about an hour |
every hosted app in this table runs on the same model as character.ai: venture money, compute bills, moderation costs and lawsuits. talkie is the closest match by format. the wall street journal counted about 11m monthly active users for it. chai had 1m daily active users in 2025, according to its wikipedia page.
janitor ai is the pick for users who want to choose the model. it lets users plug in their own api key from a model provider. the content settings are looser than on character.ai.
the local option: your own characters on your own computer
the only option no court can wind down is the one on your own machine. sillytavern is a free, open-source app for character chats. it runs on your computer, and the characters and chats stay on your drive.
sillytavern is only the interface. the replies come from a language model, run locally through ollama, koboldcpp or lm studio, or rented through a cloud api such as openrouter. a local model needs a graphics card with roughly 6gb of video memory or more. setup takes about an hour and some comfort with installing software.
how to move a character from character.ai
no tool converts a character.ai export into a working character elsewhere. the character has to be rebuilt by hand. the export and the app give you the raw material: the description, the greeting and your past dialogue.
in sillytavern or janitor ai, paste the description into the character's personality field. add the greeting as the first message. a few lines of your best past dialogue work as example messages that set the tone. the model will not match character.ai's own model word for word.
faq
short answers to the questions users ask most about the shutdown and the move.
is character.ai shutting down?
not yet. it filed for chapter 11 on october 12, 2026, and will be wound down if no buyer keeps it. the sale hearing is proposed for november 24.
what happens to my character.ai chats?
they stay available while the app runs. character.ai has not said what happens to stored chats after a sale or a shutdown.
what is the closest alternative to character.ai?
talkie is the closest by format: a public library of user-made characters with one-on-one chats.
is there a free character ai alternative?
janitor ai has a free tier with a community library. sillytavern is free and open source, but you need your own model.
can i run ai characters without the internet?
yes. sillytavern with ollama, koboldcpp or lm studio runs fully on your computer once the model is downloaded.
