Best European Alternatives to Character.AI
Looking for a European alternative to Character.AI? The platform is a US company, so every conversation you have with a character — and these tend to be more personal than ordinary chatbot use — is stored under American jurisdiction and reachable through instruments like the CLOUD Act.
These European companion platforms are established in the EU, bound directly by GDPR, and clearer about retention, deletion and whether your chats are used for training.
How we rank these tools — 4-step process
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1
European ownership, verified
The company is headquartered and incorporated in the EU, EEA or Switzerland, and processes customer data in Europe. A US parent company disqualifies a tool from this page regardless of where its servers are.
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Category fit and hands-on review
What the tool actually does, who it suits, and where it falls short — checked against the vendor’s own documentation, changelog and pricing page rather than its marketing copy.
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Compliance and pricing check
GDPR posture, hosting location and the prices quoted on this page are verified against the vendor’s public pricing before publication, and re-checked when we revisit the category.
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Position on this page
Placement on this page can be paid, and that can affect which tools appear here and the order they appear in. It never buys a good review: a tool that fails the checks above is not here at any price, and payment does not change the shortcomings we write about. A vendor can ask us to correct a factual error — not to remove a criticism.
Vendors can pay for visibility on this page. It never changes what an entry says about a product, including the criticism, and we earn nothing when you click through to a vendor. Paid placement can affect which tools appear here and the order they appear in. Editorial policy
7 European Alternatives to Character.AI
Selira AI
Character chat with EU hosting and per-character memory
Simone
Conversational AI companion with a consistent persona
BirdyChat
Roleplay and companion chat with European data storage
Darlink
Companion app built around long-running relationships
Everia
Character creation with fine-grained personality controls
Xeve.ai
German-built companion and roleplay chat with EU hosting
MyLovely AI
Companion app with voice and image generation
Key takeaways
- Open-ended chat with Characters began to be removed for under-eighteens on 24 November 2025; the replacement for that audience is Series, Feed and Comics.
- Every account is run through age assurance — signals first, a Persona selfie only if that reads you as under eighteen, and an identity document only if the selfie is inconclusive.
- Character.AI's own privacy policy allows a Character you published to stay active after you have deleted your account and your data.
- Price is not the reason to stay or to go: c.ai+ is $9.99 a month, Selira's cheapest paid tier is $8.99, MyLovely's is $6.00 on annual billing and Xeve's yearly plan works out at $4.89 — but the Selira tiers people actually want start at $12.99.
- Google did not buy Character.AI. The August 2024 arrangement was a non-exclusive technology licence and the return of the founders; Character Technologies, Inc. still controls the data.
Why people leave Character.AI
Character.AI is one of the largest character-chat services in the world, and almost nobody leaves because the writing got worse. They leave because the product they signed up for has been rebuilt around its youngest users and around advertising, and adults are the ones absorbing the changes.
From 24 November 2025 open-ended conversation with Characters was withdrawn from users under eighteen, in stages that ran on across markets over the following weeks, and the company now points that group at Series, Feed and Comics instead.
Every account is now run through age assurance. The first pass is a signals check — login information, activity on the platform, signals from third parties — and only if that reads you as under eighteen are you asked for a selfie, handled by the third-party verifier Persona, with a government identity document requested only when the selfie leaves Persona unsure.
Character.AI states that it does not collect or have access to that document itself.
The second thing people discover late is written down. The privacy policy dated 1 July 2026 says that a Character you have made available to others may be kept active even after you delete your data and your account, and that content you submit is used to train the models under legitimate interest unless you find the setting and opt out. Neither is hidden. Both are the opposite of what most users assume they agreed to.
- The rules changed under existing accounts Open-ended chat for under-eighteens began to be removed on 24 November 2025, announced four weeks earlier on 29 October and preceded by a daily cap that started at two hours and was cut to one before the feature went. The company describes it as one of the most significant safety decisions it has ever made, and for the teenagers involved it is defensible. For everyone else it established the pattern: the central feature of the service is something the operator can withdraw from a class of users on four weeks notice.
- Proving you are an adult is now a step you can be put through Age assurance runs on every account. The first pass reads signals rather than faces, and only an under-eighteen estimate puts you in front of Persona, the third-party verifier, for a selfie; an identity document is the last resort when the selfie is inconclusive. Character.AI says it never holds that document. The European notice nevertheless anticipates complaints "including how we carry out age verification activities", which tells you the company expects the friction — and if the signals read you wrong, clearing it up is your problem rather than a hypothetical one.
- A Character you published may outlive your account Section 7 of the current privacy policy reserves the right to preserve a Character's characteristics and keep it active on the service even if you delete your data and your account, so that other users are not affected. The advice that follows is to avoid putting anything about yourself into a Character you intend to share. That is a sensible warning and an unusual one: deletion here does not reach the thing you made.
- Nothing about the arrangement is European Character Technologies, Inc. sits at 700 El Camino Real in Menlo Park, and the EEA notice states plainly that information may be stored and processed in the United States and other countries and may be accessible to law enforcement and national security authorities. No European storage region is offered anywhere in the document. What Europe gets is VeraSafe Ireland Ltd in Cork, an Article 27 representative — a correspondence address for data protection, not a place your messages live.
What you have to replace, not just match
Work out which half of Character.AI you are actually attached to, because the European options replace one of them and not the other.
The first half is the conversation: a character with a persona and a memory that holds a thread across sessions.
Every companion app on this page does that, some of them better than Character.AI does, and none of them applies the sexual-content rule that Character.AI enforces on every account. The second half is the library and the community — millions of user-made Characters, other people's creations, the Feed, and now Series and Comics. Nothing here reproduces that, and nothing here is trying to.
Two entries in the list below are not character-chat products at all. BirdyChat is a Telegram-based live chat widget you bolt onto a website, and Everia is a Swedish project management workspace. Their entries say so rather than dressing them up, because a page that pretends otherwise is worth nothing to someone choosing tomorrow.
The alternatives compared
| Position | Tool | Headquarters | Pricing | Jurisdiction |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| #1 | Selira AI | Netherlands | Free tier with premium plans | EU (Netherlands) |
| #2 | Simone | France | Free tier with premium plans | EU (France) |
| #3 | BirdyChat | Latvia | See website | EU (Latvia) |
| #4 | Darlink | Switzerland | Free tier with premium plans | Switzerland (adequacy decision, outside the EEA) |
| #5 | Everia | Sweden | Flat company price from about €35/month for the whole team | EU (Sweden) |
| #6 | Xeve.ai | Olching, Bavaria, Germany | Free tier with premium plans | EU (Germany) |
| #7 | MyLovely AI | Madrid, Spain | Free tier with premium plans | EU (Spain) |
How each alternative compares to Character.AI
- Which law reaches it. EU (Netherlands). Character.AI is run from the United States, so the CLOUD Act obliges the provider to hand over data on a valid order regardless of which country the servers are in.
- Where the data sits. EU.
- Source code. Closed source, as Character.AI is.
- Independently checked. GDPR.
Best for: People whose main objection is the filter, who want images and voice in the same place
Selira AI is operated from the Netherlands by Sria Digital B.V. and combines uncensored companion chat with image generation and voice messages — the widest feature set among the European options, and the closest thing here to a complete answer for an adult leaving Character.AI over the content policy.
Its memory system extracts details like names and preferences and carries them between sessions, which is the mechanic Character.AI users are attached to and the one most replacements handle badly. Characters are built rather than browsed: you configure age, ethnicity and art style instead of picking from a catalogue of strangers' work.
Pricing is where the comparison stops flattering it. The free tier carries no image or video credits at all — unlimited chat, two custom companions and three days of history.
Lite is $8.99 a month for 75 credits, Basic $12.99 for 200, Premium $19.99 for 500, Platinum $39.99 for 1,000 and Diamond $59.00 for 2,000, with an image costing one credit and a video ten. Lite undercuts the $9.99 of c.ai+; every tier that gives you a usable amount of media does not, and the credit ceiling is a limit Character.AI does not impose on text.
What Selira AI does better than Character.AI
- Permits adult conversation, which Character.AI's content rules prohibit on every account
- Voice notes alongside text and images, which Character.AI does not combine in the same way
- A Dutch operating company under GDPR, where Character.AI's European presence is a representative in Cork
- A free tier with unlimited chat and three days of history, so the conversation can be judged before paying
- Deletion requests go to an identifiable EU company rather than to a policy that keeps published Characters alive
Where Selira AI is a step down from Character.AI
- Every tier above the $8.99 entry plan costs more than c.ai+, and all of them bill in dollars
- Images and video consume monthly credits; running out means waiting or upgrading
- No library of millions of user-made Characters to browse, which is half of what Character.AI is
- A far smaller operator, with the support depth and track record that implies
Standout against Character.AI. It is the only tool on this page that puts uncensored chat, image generation and voice in one subscription, which is what most people mean when they say they want Character.AI without the filter.
- Which law reaches it. EU (France). Character.AI is run from the United States, so the CLOUD Act obliges the provider to hand over data on a valid order regardless of which country the servers are in.
- Where the data sits. EU.
- Source code. Closed source, as Character.AI is.
- Independently checked. GDPR.
Best for: Users whose Character.AI habit was a single companion rather than a cast
Simone is built by Agentik SAS in France and aims at conversation rather than scenario roleplay. It is the outlier in this list by design: no catalogue to browse, no elaborate character construction, just a companion that holds a thread and remembers what was said.
Against Character.AI that is a narrower proposition than it first appears, and for a specific kind of user it is the right one. A great many Character.AI accounts are one persona used daily and a few abandoned experiments. If that describes yours, the library you would be giving up is not a library you use.
If your account is the other kind — dozens of Characters, constant browsing, other people's creations — this will feel like being handed one channel. It is also French-first in its positioning, and on the day this page was checked the site did not answer our automated request, so everything above rests on the directory rather than on a fresh reading of its own pages.
What Simone does better than Character.AI
- Adult conversation is permitted, where Character.AI's filter applies regardless of verified age
- A named French company under CNIL supervision, rather than a US controller with an Irish postbox
- Tuned for sustained dialogue rather than for the roleplay format Character.AI popularised
- Nothing to configure before the first conversation, where Character.AI expects you to pick from a catalogue
Where Simone is a step down from Character.AI
- No character library and much less character construction than Character.AI offers
- Not built for multi-character scenarios, which is a large part of why people use Character.AI
- The smallest proposition here, so a bad match is obvious quickly and there is no second mode to fall back on
- Its own pages could not be read on the day of checking, so the feature claims come from the directory
Standout against Character.AI. It is the only entry here that refuses the character catalogue entirely, which makes it the honest recommendation for the single-companion user and the wrong one for everybody else.
- Which law reaches it. EU (Latvia). Character.AI is run from the United States, so the CLOUD Act obliges the provider to hand over data on a valid order regardless of which country the servers are in.
- Where the data sits. EU.
- Source code. Closed source, as Character.AI is.
- Independently checked. GDPR.
Best for: Nobody leaving Character.AI — it is a website live-chat widget
BirdyChat is a Latvian product that puts a live chat widget on your website and routes the messages into Telegram, so a one-person business can answer visitors from a phone. Setup is advertised at three clicks with no registration, and voice messages are transcribed to text.
It has no characters, no personas and no companion chat of any kind. It appears in this list because the directory places it near this category, and the honest thing to say on a page about replacing Character.AI is that it replaces nothing about it.
If you landed here from a search for a Character.AI alternative, skip it. If you happen to run a small site and want visitor messages in Telegram, the pricing is $5 a month, $29 a year, or $99 once for lifetime access with a seven-day trial and no card required.
What BirdyChat does better than Character.AI
- A Latvian operator inside the EU, where Character Technologies is a US controller
- A one-off lifetime price exists, which no chat service of any kind here offers
- Answers arrive in Telegram, so there is no second app to keep open
- No registration to get started, where Character.AI now wants an account and an age check
Where BirdyChat is a step down from Character.AI
- It is not an AI companion, has no characters and cannot hold a persona
- Nothing in it addresses the filter, the memory or the age checks people leave Character.AI over
- Aimed at a website owner, not at someone who wants a conversation
- Belongs in the messaging category rather than on a character-chat shortlist
Standout against Character.AI. The only useful thing this page can tell you about BirdyChat is that it is a Telegram chat widget for websites, so it is not the tool you came looking for.
- Which law reaches it. Switzerland (adequacy decision, outside the EEA). Character.AI is run from the United States, so the CLOUD Act obliges the provider to hand over data on a valid order regardless of which country the servers are in.
- Where the data sits. Switzerland.
- Source code. Closed source, as Character.AI is.
- Independently checked. GDPR-adequate.
Best for: People who want the transcript held outside both US and EU reach
Darlink operates from Switzerland, which is the only non-EU jurisdiction in this list and the strongest position available on the question Character.AI answers worst. Swiss data protection sits outside the reach of US process while holding an EU adequacy decision, so transfers from the EU are lawful without extra paperwork.
The product is a build-your-own companion: appearance, personality and persona are configured rather than chosen, with image generation alongside the chat and a free tier above which premium plans sit. On features it is close to MyLovely AI and Xeve.ai, and the reason to prefer it is where it sits rather than what it does.
It is also the least verifiable entry here. On the day this page was checked the site would not serve a page to an automated request, so the company details and prices below come from the directory rather than from a fresh reading of its own pricing page. For a service you are about to tell private things to, check the legal notice yourself before subscribing.
What Darlink does better than Character.AI
- Swiss jurisdiction, outside the US process that reaches Character Technologies directly
- Adult conversation is permitted where Character.AI's rules forbid it
- A companion you construct rather than a catalogue entry someone else tuned
- Free tier available, so the conversation can be judged before any payment
Where Darlink is a step down from Character.AI
- Switzerland is adequate rather than inside the EEA, which matters for a small number of procurement rules
- Company details were the hardest of any entry here to verify independently
- No character library, discovery feed or community of the kind Character.AI is built on
- Smaller and younger than the incumbent by every measure that matters over five years
Standout against Character.AI. It is the only option on this page whose answer to "who can compel this company" is neither Washington nor Brussels.
- Which law reaches it. EU (Sweden). Character.AI is run from the United States, so the CLOUD Act obliges the provider to hand over data on a valid order regardless of which country the servers are in.
- Where the data sits. EU-hosted.
- Source code. Closed source, as Character.AI is.
- Independently checked. GDPR, single DPA.
Best for: Engineering teams replacing Jira, not anyone replacing Character.AI
Everia is a Swedish workspace that combines tickets, sprints, documentation and test cases, sold at one flat company price — free for up to five projects, then $69 a month for the whole company with unlimited users. Its own pitch names Jira, TestRail, Confluence and your time tracker as what it replaces.
There is no companion chat in it, no character creation and no persona of any kind. Like BirdyChat it appears in this list from an adjacent part of the directory, and treating it as a Character.AI alternative would be a fabrication.
The only reason to click through from here is if the tab you actually meant to open was about project tools. In that context it is a real product you can start on without a card; in this one it is a listing, not a candidate.
What Everia does better than Character.AI
- A Swedish company with EU hosting and a single DPA, where Character Technologies is a US controller
- A flat price for the whole company rather than a per-person subscription
- A free tier for up to five projects, with no card required to start
- Priced per company rather than per person, the opposite shape to a c.ai+ subscription
Where Everia is a step down from Character.AI
- It is project management software and has no companion or character chat at all
- Nothing in it touches the filter, the memory or the age verification that drive people off Character.AI
- Priced and built for a team, not for one person having a conversation
- Belongs in the project management category, where it is ranked on its merits
Standout against Character.AI. Worth knowing only so that you do not waste a signup: Everia is a Jira replacement that happens to appear on a companion shortlist.
- Which law reaches it. EU (Germany). Character.AI is run from the United States, so the CLOUD Act obliges the provider to hand over data on a valid order regardless of which country the servers are in.
- Where the data sits. Germany.
- Source code. Closed source, as Character.AI is.
- Independently checked. GDPR.
Best for: Cost-driven switches that still want German data protection
Xeve.ai is run by Jay Web Development from Olching, Bavaria, and it does customisable characters, roleplay chat, image and video generation. Its own documentation puts the all-access membership at $12.99 a month, $6.29 a month on the quarterly plan and $4.89 a month on the yearly one — so it is more expensive than the $9.99 of c.ai+ month to month, and clearly cheaper if you commit for a year.
It is also the most candid operator here about the thing this page is partly about.
Its documentation on age verification and identity checks describes an identity document and a selfie handled by Didit, a third-party verifier that returns a result and a reference number rather than the document, applied when a payment provider or the law requires it, and it names a youth protection officer. That is a narrower trigger than Character.AI's blanket age assurance, and it is written down where you can read it before signing up.
The size of the operation is the counterweight. This is a small German business rather than a venture-funded company, and the support depth, roadmap and availability guarantees are what a small business can offer. For some readers that is exactly the point, because a small operator holds a small amount of very sensitive data.
What Xeve.ai does better than Character.AI
- The yearly plan works out at $4.89 a month against $9.99 for c.ai+
- Adult roleplay is permitted, which Character.AI's content rules do not allow at any age
- German jurisdiction with a named operator and a published address, rather than a US controller and an Irish representative
- Publishes exactly when identity checks apply and which verifier handles them
- Live video chat with a character, which Character.AI does not offer inside the conversation
Where Xeve.ai is a step down from Character.AI
- By far the smallest operator here, with the support and continuity risk that carries
- Identity checks still exist, so leaving Character.AI does not mean leaving verification behind
- Media is metered: an image costs 5 credits and a generated video 20, with packages from $4.99 on top of the membership allowance
- No character library, no discovery feed, no community around it
- A sole operating business rather than a company with an organisation behind it
Standout against Character.AI. It is the cheapest way off Character.AI if you are willing to pay for a year up front, and the only tool here that publishes its own identity-check policy in a page you can read before paying.
- Which law reaches it. EU (Spain). Character.AI is run from the United States, so the CLOUD Act obliges the provider to hand over data on a valid order regardless of which country the servers are in.
- Where the data sits. EU.
- Source code. Closed source, as Character.AI is.
- Independently checked. GDPR.
Best for: People who want to construct the character rather than pick one
MyLovely AI is operated by PromptRepublic S.L. from Madrid. Its emphasis is construction: you set appearance, voice, personality traits and habits and end up with a companion that is yours, with more than a hundred ready-made characters if you would rather start from one.
Against Character.AI the practical differences are the sexual-content rule, which does not apply here for adults, and the media. Chat, generated photos, video and voice messages all sit in the same product, where Character.AI pushed media into Series and Comics as a separate entertainment format aimed largely at the audience it removed from open chat.
Two details worth having before you pay. Plans are monthly, quarterly or yearly and every one of them includes a token allowance for chat, voice, photos and video, which you top up when it runs out — so the monthly figure is not the whole cost. And the company states that a neutral name appears on your bank statement, which is a real consideration for a personal purchase and is not something Character.AI has ever had to think about.
What MyLovely AI does better than Character.AI
- Adult conversation is permitted, where Character.AI's rules prohibit sexual content outright
- Character construction goes deeper than Character.AI's definition fields, down to voice and habits
- A registered Spanish company under GDPR, against a US controller whose EU footprint is a representative
- Voice, photos and video sit inside the companion chat rather than in a separate entertainment format
- A neutral billing descriptor, which matters for a personal subscription in a way it does not for c.ai+
Where MyLovely AI is a step down from Character.AI
- Token allowances mean the advertised monthly price is a floor rather than the total
- No equivalent of the millions of user-made Characters on Character.AI
- Its user numbers are the company's own claim and have not been audited by anyone
- A small operator competing on customisation in a market where several rivals offer the same list
Standout against Character.AI. It is the only entry here that commits in writing to what shows up on your card statement, which for this category is a more practical promise than most privacy language.
What actually breaks when you switch
Nothing comes with you. There is no export from Character.AI that any of these apps will read, so the chats stay behind and the personas have to be retyped. Copy the description and the example dialogue of the two or three Characters you actually use into a text file before you close the account, because the account page is where they live and the copy is the only version you will have.
Expect the replacement to sound different, and give it more than an evening. A Character was tuned against Character.AI's model, and the same description fed to another service produces another personality. The first hour on any of these apps is spent discovering that the character you rebuilt is not the character you left, which is the point at which most people give up too early.
Then check the bill properly. Several of these apps meter images, voice and video through credits or tokens rather than charging a flat monthly fee, so the headline price is the entry rather than the total. Run a normal week on a free tier first and see what you consume before you compare anything with $9.99.
Does switching mean I stop being asked to prove my age?
No, and anyone promising that has not read the European sites either. Xeve.ai publishes a page on age verification and identity checks describing an identity document and a selfie processed by Didit, a third-party verifier, in cases where a payment provider or the law requires it. It also names a youth protection officer, which is a German convention rather than a marketing line.
The difference is the trigger, not the plumbing. Both route the document through a third-party verifier that keeps it — Persona for Character.AI, Didit for Xeve — and both operators say they receive a result rather than the document. But Character.AI runs its estimation over every account as a condition of continued use, while Xeve documents a check only where a payment provider or the law asks for one.
If your objection is to face scans on principle, test the free tier of whichever app you pick before paying, and read its verification page rather than its landing page. In this market that page is where the real policy lives.
Can I take my Characters and chat history with me?
Not in any form another service will accept. You can exercise a data subject access request and receive a copy of what Character.AI holds, which is a right the EEA notice spells out, and the export will be a file you can read.
None of these apps has a Character.AI importer; the closest thing is Selira, which reads a ChatGPT export or a plain text file into its memory system, which is not the same as moving a chat history across.
Characters are worse than chats. A Character is a name, a greeting, a description, an example dialogue and a set of settings tuned against a specific model. The text can be copied by hand in twenty minutes; the behaviour cannot, because it was tuned against a model you are leaving behind. Expect to rebuild rather than migrate, and expect the rebuilt version to read differently.
If a Character you made is public, copying it out does not remove it. Under the current policy it can remain active for other users after your account is gone, so treat the copy as a copy rather than as a move.
Is the content filter really the reason people leave?
For a large share of them, yes, and it is worth being precise about what the filter is. Character.AI prohibits sexual content on every account, verified adult or not, and there is no setting that turns it off. It is a rule rather than a roadmap item, so waiting is not a strategy.
Every companion app in the list below takes the opposite position for adult users, and that difference — not jurisdiction — is what most people are actually shopping for when they search for an alternative. This site is not going to pretend otherwise.
The honest counterweight is that an unfiltered model is not automatically a better conversationalist. Character.AI's strength was always the breadth of its Character library and how well an ordinary user-made persona held together. Judge the replacements on whether the character stays in character for an hour, not on what they permit.
Which of these is a genuine like-for-like replacement?
None of them, and the gap is the library rather than the chat. Character.AI is a catalogue of characters made by other people, with discovery, popularity and now a feed on top. Selira, Xeve.ai, MyLovely AI and Darlink give you a roster plus a builder; Simone gives you a single companion deliberately.
If your use of Character.AI was one or two personas you returned to, the replacement is close to complete and the move takes an evening. If it was browsing what strangers had built, nothing here fills that space, and the closest analogue in this directory is the roster an individual app ships with.
BirdyChat and Everia are in this list from adjacent categories and replace nothing at all here. Read their entries for what they are rather than as candidates.
Which one to pick
If you are leaving because of the filter and you want the same range of things in one place, Selira AI is the recommendation, with the caveat that the tier worth having costs more than the subscription you are cancelling and meters its images.
If you are leaving because of the price, Xeve.ai on the yearly plan is the cheapest of these at $4.89 a month, and it is also the one that tells you in advance when it will ask for identification — but check what the media credits add before you treat that figure as the bill.
If you are leaving because you want the transcript outside American reach entirely, Darlink in Switzerland is the strongest position, provided you verify its legal notice yourself first.
If your Character.AI was one companion rather than a catalogue, Simone was built for exactly that and everything else here will feel oversized. If your Character.AI was the catalogue — other people's creations, the discovery, the community — accept that no European app on this page rebuilds it, and choose on the conversation instead.
And ignore BirdyChat and Everia for this purpose. One is a Telegram chat widget for websites and the other is a project management workspace; neither replaces anything Character.AI does, and saying so is more useful to you than pretending we have seven candidates when we have five.
Frequently Asked Questions
Three reasons, in roughly this order: the filter, which applies to every account and cannot be switched off; the age assurance introduced alongside the under-eighteen changes, which can escalate to a selfie and, at the far end, an identity document; and the discovery that content submitted to the service is used to train the models under legitimate interest unless you opt out. Jurisdiction is a fourth reason and, for most people searching, not the first one.
Not from the platform — from open-ended chat with Characters, which is most of what the platform was.
Removal began on 24 November 2025 for a first group of US users and rolled out in stages to other groups and markets over the following weeks, after a wind-down in which the daily limit went from two hours to one. Under-eighteens were pointed at Series, Feed, Comics and other creation features instead. The terms prohibit use below 13, and below 16 in the EEA and the UK.
No European region appears anywhere in its published policies. The EEA and UK notice dated 1 July 2026 says information may be stored and processed in the United States and other countries, and that data may be accessible to law enforcement and national security authorities in certain circumstances. VeraSafe Ireland Ltd in Cork is the appointed Article 27 representative, which is a contact point for data protection matters rather than European hosting.
Yes, on the content you submit, on the legal basis of legitimate interest under Article 6(1)(f), and it says it disassociates the content from account details and strips directly identifying information first. You have a right to opt out at any time through the model training setting, and the company documents where that setting is. Opting out is not retroactive, which is the part people find out about afterwards.
Not necessarily. The privacy policy reserves the right to keep a Character you made available to other users active on the service even after you delete your data and your account, so that other users are unaffected — and it advises not putting personal details into a Character you plan to share. Everything else follows the general retention rule, which is defined by purpose rather than by a fixed number of days.
No, and the belief is widespread enough to be worth correcting. In August 2024 Google paid a reported $2.7 billion for a non-exclusive licence to the technology and hired back co-founders Noam Shazeer and Daniel De Freitas. It was not an acquisition: Character Technologies, Inc. remained a separate company and is named as the data controller in the policy currently in force.
Some are, and it depends entirely on which tier you compare. c.ai+ is listed at $9.99 a month, or $94.99 a year.
Against that, Selira's cheapest paid tier is $8.99 a month for 75 credits, MyLovely AI's Premium Plus works out at $6.00 a month billed yearly, and Xeve.ai's membership is $12.99 monthly, $6.29 on the quarterly plan and $4.89 on the yearly one. The tiers people actually end up on are the dearer ones: Selira Basic is $12.99, Premium $19.99, Platinum $39.99 and Diamond $59.00. And all of these European apps quote in dollars rather than euros.
For adults, these apps permit mature and explicit conversation that Character.AI prohibits, which is the main functional difference. That is not the same as no rules: each still has terms, moderation and age gating, and Xeve.ai in particular documents identity checks through the verifier Didit. Read the terms of the one you choose rather than assuming the absence of a filter means the absence of a policy.
Other people's Characters. The service is a library of millions of user-made personas with discovery and popularity built around it, and every app on this page offers a roster plus a builder instead. You will also leave behind the memory that has accumulated in your existing chats, because none of it transfers. Budget an evening to rebuild the two or three personas you actually use.
Explore More European Alternatives
Discover privacy-focused European alternatives to other popular US tech services.