People rarely leave PolyBuzz over the characters. They leave over the ads and 'take a short break' screens that recent App Store reviews describe every few messages, a memory that loses the plot, and filters that flag ordinary stories. Teenagers did not choose: the terms now bar anyone under 18, and accounts judged younger go read-only.
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Stay on PolyBuzz if you are over 18, you dip into fan-made characters for short chats rather than long stories, and $9.90 a month to switch off the ads costs less than rebuilding your favorites somewhere else.
checked 2026-10-13 · PolyBuzz is Free tier with ads; Standard (Basic on the website) is $9.90/mo or $4.99/week, Premium $19.90/mo, Ultimate $29.90/mo on the US App Store. Coins and Opals are sold separately. · by dan scutaru
better: The closest thing to PolyBuzz's catalog of fan-made characters, and the company says unlimited messaging stays on every tier, free included, so there is no break screen to wait out. Lite at $4.99 a month drops banner ads and cuts interstitials; c.ai+ at $9.99 removes ads entirely.
you give up: The free plan still shows ads and slows down at busy times. Every account goes through an age check, and users found to be under 18 get reading mode with no chat. The company filed for Chapter 11 on October 12 and says the platform will be wound down if no buyer keeps it running.
better: A free tier whose App Store and Google Play listings declare no ads. You steer a story turn by turn instead of chatting with one character, with Story Cards and Plot Essentials kept beside it. Rated 13+ on the App Store, and its Safe setting blocks sexual, hateful and violent output.
you give up: The free tier holds 4K tokens of context and 25 memories, so long stories get trimmed from the start. Paid plans begin at $14.99 a month for 8K. The Mature setting unlocks with a self-confirmed 18+ checkbox, nothing stronger.
better: Free to use with limited access, and its App Store listing declares no ads. It is built around one long-running companion rather than a catalog of characters, which suits you if you mostly talked to the same one.
you give up: One companion, no catalog. Relationship status and voice messages need Pro, saving messages to memory needs Ultra, and monthly plans are listed at $7.99 and $14.99 on the US App Store. The terms say 18+ while Google Play rates it Teen, and Italy fined its maker 5 million euros in 2025 over data handling and age checks.
better: Memory is the product. Subscribers get Cascaded Memory, which keeps hundreds of recent messages in view, long-term memory with no set limit, and keyword-triggered journal entries for facts the bot must not lose. No ads declared on its App Store listing.
you give up: Not really free: a new account gets a 50-message preview, then goes read-only. $15.99 a month on the US App Store, Ultra $28.99 on top; Kindroid says web checkout is usually cheaper. Adults only: paying counts as the age check, flagged free accounts face a Yoti selfie or ID.
better: No ads on any plan, a promise Anthropic made in February 2026. A Project keeps your story bible and earlier chapters attached to every chat inside it, and the free plan includes memory and up to five projects.
you give up: Not a character app: no catalog, no character voices, you write the persona yourself. The free plan runs on a rolling five-hour usage limit. 18+ only, and Anthropic's usage policy bars erotic chats.
better: Text chat on the free plan's default model is unlimited, subject to abuse limits, with a limited version of memory that carries facts from one chat to the next.
you give up: The Free and Go plans may show ads, the same complaint in a different app. No character catalog. Users under 18 need a parent's permission and get teen protections that can reduce sexual, romantic and violent roleplay.
better: Free and open source under AGPL-3.0, installed on your own Windows, Mac or Linux machine or on Android through Termux, so the chats are saved where you can see them. World Info entries insert story facts only when their keywords come up, the most control over memory on this page.
you give up: Only an interface. You still need a model: a paid API key, which sends your text to that provider, or a local one, for which its docs recommend at least an NVIDIA 3000-series card with 6GB of VRAM. Setup is command-line work. No age gate or content rules of its own.
better: One file, zero install, on Windows, Mac and Linux. It runs the model itself on your CPU or GPU, has chat, adventure and story modes, and imports Tavern character cards, so with a local model nothing leaves the computer. Version 1.123 shipped October 13, 2026.
you give up: You find and download a model yourself, and the size you can run is capped by your RAM and VRAM. No catalog, no community, no phone app beyond a Termux install. No age gate and no content rules of its own.
Free and ad-free rarely come together here, because every reply costs the company money. AI Dungeon's free tier declares no ads but holds only 4K tokens of story. Replika's limited free tier has no ads. Claude's free plan has no ads and a limit that resets every five hours. Character.AI gives unlimited free messages, with ads.
SillyTavern and KoboldCpp cost nothing and show nothing, but you supply the model. Kindroid has no ads at all, and no free plan after a 50-message preview.
Most picks above work in a browser with nothing to install: Character.AI at character.ai, AI Dungeon at play.aidungeon.com, Kindroid at kindroid.ai, and Claude and ChatGPT on their own sites. Replika labels its web app as legacy, so treat the phone app as the real one.
SillyTavern opens in a browser too, but the page is served from your own computer, which is the point. PolyBuzz itself runs at polybuzz.ai and has no desktop client, so if you only ever used the website, switching changes nothing about where you chat.
PolyBuzz is 18+ by its own terms, updated June 1, 2026. You give a birth date on first use, and since a December 2025 update it also runs its own behavior-based age estimate and third-party checks, region by region. Anyone judged under 18 gets Viewing Mode: old chats readable, no new ones. In the UK an Ondato or Yoti check is mandatory.
Kindroid, Replika and Claude are 18+ too. Character.AI lets 13-year-olds sign up but gives under-18s no chat. AI Dungeon, and ChatGPT with a parent's permission and teen protections, are the only picks built to admit teenagers, and neither is a companion app.
Same idea, opposite trade-offs. PolyBuzz is adults only, free with ad breaks, $9.90 a month to remove them, with Coins and Opals sold on top. Character.AI admits teenagers but gives them no chat, keeps free messaging unlimited with ads, and charges $4.99 to drop banner ads or $9.99 to drop all of them. Both ban pornographic content.
What matters right now: Character.AI filed for Chapter 11 on October 12 and says the platform will be wound down if no buyer keeps it running. Moving there today could mean moving twice.
For an adult who keeps personal details out of the chats, mostly yes; for anyone under 18, no, by its own terms. Its App Store listing declares frequent sexual content and identifiers used to track you across other companies' apps, and its FAQ still mentions a Teen Mode the terms no longer allow. A Hong Kong company runs the website, a Delaware LLC the apps.
Yes, with ads and break screens that ask you to watch more ads or pay. On the US App Store, Standard (Basic on the website) is $9.90 a month or $4.99 a week, Premium $19.90 and Ultimate $29.90. Coins and Opals cost extra on top of any plan.
Go to Settings, then Account, then Delete. The terms only allow it once any paid plan has expired, so cancel in the App Store or Google Play first and let the period run out. Deletion is irreversible, PolyBuzz says it cannot help you retrieve anything afterwards, and some data can sit in backups until those are updated.
By paying. PolyBuzz's FAQ lists ad-free chat on its memberships, the cheapest being $9.90 a month or $4.99 a week on the US App Store. On the free plan, watching ads is the price of getting past the break screen.