Janitor AI Review: I Verified Every Claim Against The Official Changelog

Quick Answer: Is Janitor AI Worth It in 2026?

Janitor AI’s worth using if you want unfiltered character roleplay and you’re okay with some setup friction. The base platform is free with unlimited messages. Beyond that, the paid tier, Janitor+, costs $12.99 per month.

The catch is memory. Specifically, the free model holds roughly 8,000 to 9,000 tokens, so long stories start forgetting around message 25 to 30.

Because of that, most heavy users reach for an external API key instead of the subscription. In fact, community billing receipts point to just $2 to $3 per month for that route.

Why I Wrote This Review Differently

I didn’t start by testing the product. I started by fact-checking the reviews that already rank. That turned out to be the more useful exercise, honestly.

Here’s what I mean. Roughly half of the current page-one results say Janitor AI has no mobile app. But the official iOS and Android apps launched on 7 February 2026, according to their official announcement.

Several others quote a “$9.99 per month Pro plan.” I couldn’t find that tier in any official source, though, because it doesn’t exist.

So my hands-on work here was verification rather than vibes. To do it, I pulled every announcement from the Janitor newsroom, read the full changelog, checked the help desk, and opened both store listings.

Where I mention how the product feels day to day, I’ve attributed it to named testers and community threads. On top of that, I’ve flagged which tier each number comes from, so you can judge it yourself.

Key Insights

• Janitor+ costs $12.99 per month. It launched 24 June 2026. There’s never been a $9.99 Pro tier.
• Official mobile apps exist. They shipped 7 February 2026. Currently, iOS sits at 4.0 stars and Android at 3.4 stars.
• The free tier really is unlimited on JanitorLLM. That “limit” warning is a context notice, not a message cap.
• The memory ceiling is real. It’s roughly 8,000 to 9,000 tokens, with drift around message 25 to 30.
• Repetition is architectural. The team admitted as much on 30 April 2026. Still, a July patch cut detected loops from 6/64 to 2/64.
• Bringing your own key usually beats the subscription on cost. DeepSeek receipts show $2 to $3 monthly.
• The UK isn’t blocked. That ended 15 June 2026, when age verification replaced the block.
• Scripts is the actual differentiator. It’s got version control and visual diffs. Yet almost no review mentions it.
• Still missing: voice, image generation, video, two-factor authentication, and JLLM v2.

What Janitor AI Actually Is (And Three Things It Isn’t)

Janitor AI’s a control layer that sits on top of language models, not a model company. On this platform, you can pick a character, type a message, and the platform assembles context before sending it off to an engine.

That engine can be JanitorLLM (JLLM), the free in-house model. Alternatively, you have the option to connect your own key from OpenAI, Anthropic, DeepSeek, OpenRouter, Kobold, Chutes, or NanoGPT.

The platform launched back in June 2023. Its founder posts publicly under the handle shep.

Three things it isn’t

1. Not a data-cleaning tool. At least one ranking review describes business data automation features. That’s a completely different product.
2. Not a productivity assistant. So if you want coding help or research, this is the wrong tool.
3. Not model-locked. Unlike most competitors, you can swap the engine without rebuilding your characters.

How one message actually travels

1. Your character card loads into the context window as permanent tokens.
2. Then your persona and any scripts get appended.
3. Recent chat history fills whatever budget’s left.
4. The whole package goes to JLLM or your chosen proxy.
5. Finally, the response comes back and gets rendered in character.

Understanding step 3 explains nearly every memory complaint. I’ll come back to that shortly.

The scale, stated honestly

Metric	Value	Source
Daily active users	1.4M+	Janitor, Mar 2025
Monthly visits	164.44M	Semrush, May 2026
Growth (MoM)	+16.43%	Semrush, May 2026
Avg. session	17m 39s	Semrush, May 2026
Direct traffic	88% to 92%	Semrush, Similarweb
US site rank	#135	Semrush, May 2026

That session length is the number worth pausing on. After all, nearly 18 minutes per visit is high for any consumer web product.

Now, a quick note on what I left out. You’ll see character library counts ranging from 32,000 to 3,226,375 across other reviews. But I found five mutually exclusive figures and no primary source, so I’m not publishing one.

The same goes for the gender split. Some sources claim 70% female, while others claim 65% male. Neither one’s auditable.

Janitor AI Pricing in 2026

There’s exactly one subscription. It’s called Janitor+, it costs $12.99 per month, and it launched on 24 June 2026. Everything else you may have read about pricing is either outdated or simply wrong.

What Janitor+ includes

According to the official launch post, subscribers get:

• 5x more context for improved memory during chats
• Unlimited priority messages for faster replies under load
• Monthly swipes with frontier models for better regenerations
• A Janitor+ badge, plus a gold username and profile customization added later

The team also stated plainly that the free version “stays exactly the same, and stays completely free.” Moreover, they framed the pricing as intended to break even on GPU costs.

What the free tier really includes

Free users get unlimited messages on JLLM. There’s no daily cap, despite what several reviews claim.

The confusion comes from a warning that pops up in long chats. That notice just means your context window filled up, not that you hit a message limit.

So you can keep chatting, but the bot will simply start forgetting older messages.

The pricing myths, corrected

Claim you may have read	What I actually found
“Pro plan is $9.99/mo”	No Pro tier exists. Only Janitor+ at $12.99
“Annual plan at $99.99/yr”	No annual plan announced anywhere official
“Free tier caps daily messages”	Messages are unlimited
“Requires an API key to work”	JLLM is free and first-party

The bring-your-own-key route, with real numbers

For users who need heavy usage, an external API key is usually cheaper and better than the subscription. 

Here’s current DeepSeek pricing for the popular roleplay pick:

Model option	Cost per 1M tokens	Per session
JLLM (built-in)	Free	$0
DeepSeek V4 Flash	$0.14 in / $0.28 out	~$0.05 to $0.20
DeepSeek V4 Pro	$1.74 in / $3.48 out	~$0.80 to $3.00
Claude Sonnet 4.6	~$3 in / ~$15 out	~$2 to $10

One community member published their actual billing screenshots on r/JanitorAI_Official. Their totals came to $9 across six months, with one month costing $1.43 for 545 API calls and roughly 15.4 million tokens.

That’s the receipt-backed case for skipping the subscription. Similarly, heavy roleplayers consistently report $2 to $3 per month.

Which route may suit you

Your situation	Suggested route	Monthly
Casual chatting	Free JLLM	$0
Long stories, hate setup	Janitor+	$12.99
Long stories, fine with setup	DeepSeek proxy	$2 to $3
Want the strongest prose	Claude or GPT proxy	$15 to $50
Maximum privacy control	Self-hosted Kobold	$0 + hardware

⚠️ Your DeepSeek tutorial is probably broken

You better know that DeepSeek retired the legacy model names deepseek-chat and deepseek-reasoner on 24 July 2026. Yet almost every setup guide online still uses them.

So if your proxy suddenly errors with no fallback, that’s likely why. In that case, you may want to update your model ID to deepseek-v4-flash or deepseek-v4-pro.

The Memory Wall: What Actually Breaks and When

JLLM holds roughly 8,000 to 9,000 tokens, so long-form stories start drifting around message 25 to 30. This single constraint brings most quality complaints on the platform.

So, I traced this across independent tester reports and community threads. Notably, the figure 9,001 tokens keeps coming up as the practical ceiling.

Here’s what shares that budget:

• Your character card (personality, scenario, example dialogue)
• Your persona
• Chat Memory entries
• Any advanced prompts or scripts
• And of course, the actual conversation

Once the budget fills, the oldest material drops out. The model isn’t choosing to forget, though. It genuinely can’t see text that’s fallen outside that window.

The counterintuitive part

A more detailed character card can actually make memory worse, not better. That surprised me when I first traced the math.

Think about it this way. A 3,000-token card on a 9,000-token window leaves only 6,000 tokens for your story. Cut that same card to 1,400 tokens, though, and you free up serious room.

For that reason, testers who track this recommend users keep permanent tokens under 1,500, with 2,000 as a hard ceiling.

A token budget worksheet you can try

1. Open your chat settings and check the current context size value.
2. Next, trim your character card so personality, scenario, and examples stay under 1,500 tokens.
3. Set max tokens per reply somewhere between 240 and 350 for roleplay.
4. Then add an instruction like “aim for 240 to 280 tokens per response.”
5. Every 10 to 20 messages, type an out-of-character command asking the bot to summarize the story so far.
6. Paste that summary into Chat Memory as a compact recap.
7. Finally, put scene-specific details, like outfits or locations, in author notes rather than the permanent card.

At roughly 260 tokens per reply, a 9,000-token window supports around 50 exchanges before older content starts dropping.

The chat transplant technique

When a story gets too long, you may want to start fresh with a summary instead. Community members call this a chat transplant.

Basically, you summarize the roleplay so far, open a new chat, and paste the summary in. That way, the bot gets a clean context window with the key facts intact.

What each tier actually buys you

Setup	Context window	Cost
Free JLLM	~6,000 to 9,000 tokens	$0
Janitor+	~45,000 tokens	$12.99/mo
DeepSeek proxy	128,000 to 1M tokens	$2 to $3/mo

To be fair, that 45,000-token figure for Janitor+ comes from community testing, not an official specification. The official wording is simply “5x more context”, so you better keep track of your token usage.

The free model’s ceiling is what causes bots to forget mid-story.

Output Quality: The Repetition Problem

Repetition is the most common complaint about JLLM, and the team has published measured data on fixing it.

What went wrong, by date

On 20 April 2026, Janitor swapped JLLM’s base architecture. The retraining improved logic, but it also introduced grammar regressions.

After this change, users reported random capitalization, article misuse, and repetition loops. In some cases, replies looped a single phrase until the response cut off.

Then on 30 April 2026, the team posted a candid admission. They described repetition as “a limitation of the model architecture” that no amount of tuning fully solves.

A week later, on 8 May 2026, they disclosed something else. One of their GPU hosts had been dead “for a while” while still receiving traffic, which caused failed and slow generations.

The measured fix

On 18 July 2026, Janitor shipped a targeted repetition patch and published the benchmark results:

• Detected loops fell from 6 out of 64 generations to 2 out of 64
• The highest-failure test fell from 5 out of 8 loops to 0 out of 8
• Results across six general benchmarks stayed within -1 to +1.6 percentage points

That last line matters more than it looks. Essentially, it means the fix didn’t degrade general quality just to reduce looping.

The team also noted this “is not a complete cure for every kind of repetition.” Personally, I found that framing unusually honest for a product changelog.

Workarounds you can try today

1. Set your repetition penalty between 1.05 and 1.10 in generation settings. Above 1.15, though, output tends to get worse.
2. Then add an explicit anti-repetition line to your system prompt.
3. Reroll rather than resending the same prompt, since looping is per-prompt, not per-session.
4. Or switch to Response Length: Shorter if verbose replies are the real issue.

JLLM-short, now free for everyone

On 15 July 2026, Janitor released JLLM-short to all users. Previously, it was a Janitor+ perk.

According to the official post, it uses the same base model but produces replies that are on average 70% shorter.

You can find it under model settings, then Response Length, then Short. So if long-winded replies bother you, that’s a free fix.

JLLM v2: still promised, still undated

Janitor’s been promising JLLM v2 since August 2025. It hasn’t shipped.

The team has confirmed they purchased NVIDIA B200 GPU clusters to train it. Promised improvements include larger context, creator-chosen formatting, and model version selection.

Even so, the stated timeline remains “when the cluster is operational.” I’d treat any specific date you see online as speculation.

The Mobile Apps Most Reviews Say Don’t Exist

Official Janitor AI apps launched on 7 February 2026 for iOS and Android. The publisher is JanitorAI, INC on both stores.

I checked both listings directly. Here’s what I found:

Platform	Rating	Ratings count
iOS	4.0 stars	~1,290 to 2,200
Android	3.4 stars	~8,679

iOS runs v2.1.0 at roughly 101 MB, listed under Books and rated 17+. Android, meanwhile, carries a USK: Ages 12+ rating.

Why Android scores lower than iOS

That 0.6-star gap isn’t random. The changelog documents Android-specific bugs that iOS never had.

So I mapped the store ratings against the fix log, and the pattern lines up:

• 8 June 2026: text overflowing outside the screen on the app
• 9 June 2026: text overflow issue on iOS resolved
• 25 May 2026: app hanging, forcing users to close between each message
• 20 May 2026: continue message feature bug

The launch post itself acknowledged this. It stated that “android in particular has some known issues were prioritizing.”

That Android USK 12+ content rating is worth noting too. Frankly, it seems inconsistent for a platform with adult content, even in restricted mode.

Restricted Mode explained

The app opens in Restricted Mode by default, and this confuses most new mobile users. Because of that, Janitor published a dedicated explainer.

In Restricted Mode:

• Characters with higher content scores get blocked entirely
• Character definitions are hidden (personality, scenario, first message)
• Names and descriptions get filtered for explicit terms
• Only approved images appear in descriptions
• Search results exclude more content
• Plus, chat messages get keyword-checked

The reason’s straightforward enough. Apple and Google enforce strict content policies, so stricter mobile filtering keeps the app in the stores.

How to enable full content on mobile

1. Open a browser and go to janitorai.com/profile-settings.
2. Find the setting labeled “Enable NSFW on Mobile.”
3. Turn it on.
4. Then head back to the app.

You can’t do this inside the app itself. That restriction comes from app store rules, not a Janitor decision.

A warning about copycat apps

Janitor posted a fake app warning on 4 February 2026. Several imposter apps had appeared before the official one launched.

The publisher should read “Janitor AI Inc” on both stores. And if you installed a fake app earlier, the team recommends deleting it and changing your password.

The 0.6-star gap tracks Android-specific bugs the team acknowledged at launch. Ratings checked 28 July 2026.

Scripts: The Feature That Actually Sets Janitor Apart

Scripts is Janitor’s most distinctive feature, and I found almost no review that covers it. That gap surprised me, because nothing comparable exists on competing platforms.

What Scripts does

A standard character card is static. In other words, it says the same thing on message one and message fifty.

Scripts adds conditional logic on top. The help desk describes it as “sticky notes that appear just for the current message.”

As a result, your character can react to what’s actually happening rather than repeating fixed traits.

Version control, added 28 April 2026

Here’s the part I found genuinely unusual for a consumer chat platform:

• Automatic version history. Every time you stop editing, the system snapshots a version.
• Visual diff viewer. You can compare versions with syntax highlighting.
• One-click restore. Any previous version may be brought back instantly.
• Published version tracking. Versions created at publish time get marked.

That’s developer tooling applied to character writing. So if you build complex bots, it removes real risk.

Community engines you can use

The help desk also hosts ready-made scripts from community creators. Here are a few:

Script	What it does
Advanced Lorebook	Framework for triggered lore entries
Emotion Engine	Scans replies for emotional cues, adjusts mood
Scene Orchestrator	Manages scenes, handles “cut to” commands
Likes-Dislikes-Fears	Captures preferences you mention, stores them
Random Encounter	Weighted random events, Pokemon-style
Weighted Random Events	Tunable probability per event
General Debugging	Shows message count, scenario, personality state

Most of these come from creators Icehellionx and Arcanox.

The July 2026 API settings redesign

On 19 July 2026, Janitor rebuilt the API settings page. The changes matter if you run custom prompts:

• Multiple saved custom prompts you can switch between
• Settings split into General and Instructions sections
• Temperature and max tokens grouped under Generation controls
• An explicit Save button with unsaved-change warnings
• And remaining enhanced swipes visible for Janitor+ users

Then a day later, on 20 July 2026, they raised the custom prompt character limit from 10,000 to 500,000 characters. That’s a fiftyfold increase, and I haven’t seen it mentioned anywhere else.

Who Scripts suits

Scripts may be worth your time if you build bots or run long campaigns. That said, it has a real learning curve.

If you mostly chat with other people’s characters, you can safely ignore it. The feature adds nothing to casual use.

Privacy, Safety, and the Age Verification Timeline

Janitor’s privacy story is mixed. The age verification setup is more privacy-conscious than what others suggest, but the retention policy’s still thin.

The UK block, and why it ended

This arc is genuinely under-reported, so here’s the sequence.

On 20 July 2025, Janitor announced it would block UK access starting 24 July, with just four days’ notice. The reason was the Online Safety Act.

The post described the compliance burden in specific terms:

• The main law runs 250+ pages
• Ofcom guidance runs over 3,000 pages
• Fines reach £18 million
• Plus personal criminal liability for the team

They also corrected a rumor directly. Users couldn’t face legal consequences, since the Act applies to service providers rather than people using the site.

That block has since ended. On 15 June 2026, the changelog confirmed age verification went live for UK users instead.

Brazil and Australia

Two other laws forced the same change elsewhere:

Country	Law and date	Fine exposure
Australia	Age-Restricted Material Codes, live 9 Mar 2026	Up to $35M
Brazil	Digital ECA, Lei 15.211/2025, live 17 Mar 2026	Up to $9.5M
UK	Online Safety Act, verification 15 Jun 2026	Up to £18M

Janitor’s announcement said their options were verification, blocking, or those fines. They chose verification, while stating plainly they’re “against KYC for social media.”

How the verification actually works

They use k-ID, the same provider behind Discord, Twitch, and Snapchat. From there, you have three options:

1. Facial age estimation. A short video selfie that runs entirely on your device. Nothing gets uploaded or stored.
2. ID scan. A government ID photo, deleted immediately after age confirmation. k-ID never shares it with Janitor.
3. AgeKey. If you’ve verified on another k-ID platform, you just tap Face ID or a fingerprint. Takes roughly 3 seconds.

Janitor receives only a yes or no on whether you’re over 18. Nothing else.

The system is IP-based only too. Per the post, they don’t track physical location, ask for an address, or use GPS.

This matters because several reviews describe it as a mandatory government ID upload for everyone. That’s simply not accurate.

Where privacy is genuinely thin

I want to be even-handed here, though. Some gaps are real.

• Retention periods aren’t specified. No official statement covers how long chats are stored.
• No end-to-end encryption. Chats sit server-side in plain form.
• Staff access is conditional. Safety documentation notes operators may review content to investigate abuse and prevent fraud.
• Training use is unclear for the free model.

The practical takeaway? Your chats are private from other users. But they’re only conditionally private from the platform.

The bring-your-own-key privacy trade

Using an external API adds a second company to your data chain. Sometimes even a third.

When you route through OpenRouter, for instance, your provider can change dynamically per request. One community analysis noted seeing Chinese, US, and German providers listed on a single model page.

So if privacy’s your priority, JLLM keeps the data with one party. On the other hand, if output quality matters more, a proxy wins.

Account security

On 10 May 2026, Janitor added a security tab. Now you can:

• View every active session with device, location, IP, and last-active time
• Sign out individual sessions, or all other devices at once
• Manage connected login providers

Two-factor authentication was announced as “coming soon” in that same post. As of late July 2026, though, I couldn’t confirm it shipped.

For Creators: Verification, Analytics, and the Trust Ledger

Janitor reopened Creator Verification on 14 July 2026 with published criteria. It’s very recent, and I found zero coverage of it elsewhere.

The new eligibility bar

According to their official announcement, you may apply if you have:

• At least five public bots, AND
• 10,000 followers, OR three or more public bots with 50,000+ messages each

You can check your progress under Settings, then Verification.

Meeting the minimum makes you eligible for review. It doesn’t guarantee approval, though.

What reviewers consider

• Good standing with community guidelines and terms
• Authentic growth. Botting or metric manipulation may disqualify you
• Originality. Accounts that mainly repost or minimally modify existing bots may not be eligible
• Community engagement. Active maintenance and user interaction

And if your application’s declined, you may reapply after three months.

Why it was paused, in their words

The post’s candid about the failure. The original request form “quickly became backlogged with tens of thousands of submissions.”

They also acknowledged the earlier discretionary approach wasn’t fair. Deserving creators went unverified simply because staff never saw their profiles.

Other creator tooling shipped in 2026

Date	Feature
13 Jan	Analytics dashboard: impressions, views, retention
19 Jan	Scheduled releases with public countdowns
28 Apr	Scripts version control with visual diffs
27 May	“Save as new” to create character variants
18 Jun	Creator search, tuned to highlight smaller creators
23 Jun	Persona limit removed entirely (was 100)
14 Jul	Creator Verification reopened

Public Chats changed the platform

On 31 March 2026, Janitor launched Public Chats. You can publish conversations for others to read, react to, fork, and continue.

That turns roleplay into shareable social content. Naturally, the most upvoted chats reach the homepage.

For creators, it also works as free distribution. Readers discover bots through chats instead of search.

The honest trust ledger

I wouldn’t call the creator relationship smooth. Community members raise recurring, documented concerns.

• The verification U-turn. Before the new system, the founder reportedly verified everyone waiting, then unverified them minutes later.
• The ad rollout. Ads arrived in September 2025 to fund JLLM v2. Community members reported low-quality ad inventory, and the test was pulled after complaints.
• Unpaid moderators. Former moderators have posted publicly about the experience.
• Policy communication. Guidelines have been updated without notice, and some creators were banned for bots that were compliant the day before.
• Bot scraping. Third-party scraper sites republish character definitions that creators set to private. As a result, several well-known creators have made bots private or left in protest.

These come from community threads rather than official sources. Still, I’m including them because a review that skips them isn’t complete.

Reliability: Why It Broke, and Why It Broke Less

Janitor’s stability improved substantially after a full backend rewrite, and the engineering post explaining it is one of the more interesting things on the site.

The Node.js wall

In November 2025, the founder published a technical retrospective. The numbers are specific.

At one point, they hit 500,000 concurrent WebSocket connections. Their Node.js cluster was chewing through roughly 120GB of RAM across 30 servers.

For comparison, they noted WhatsApp handles 2 million connections per server using Elixir.

The rewrite

So they moved to Elixir and Phoenix, plus Cloudflare Workers for stateless endpoints. The results:

• What took 30 Node servers now runs on 3 Elixir nodes
• Each connection runs as an isolated process, so one crash doesn’t cascade
• Over 20 billion rows in the chats table were migrated
• The migration took 4 months and required rewriting 100+ API endpoints

Infrastructure costs dropped, and response times improved.

I find this useful context because it explains the historical downtime complaints. Many reviews cite instability without noting the cause was addressed.

Documented 2026 incidents

The changelog logs failures rather than hiding them. Here’s a sample:

Date	Incident	Impact
1 May	JLLM outage, bad deploy	~15 minutes
8 May	Dead GPU host still routing	Failed generations
28 May	Database pooler failure	Servers restarted
16 Jun	Trending page broken	Fixed
26 Jun	Caching issue breaking text	~10 minutes
3 Jul	Moderation API instability	Ongoing fixes

Why I’m not quoting an uptime percentage

You’ll see both “78% uptime” and “99.87% uptime” in other reviews. Neither one’s sourced, and they can’t both be true.

I’d rather show you the dated incident log above. It’s verifiable, and frankly more useful.

Peak hour behavior

Community reports consistently point to slowdowns during evening traffic peaks. Roughly 7 PM to 1 AM UTC is when European evening overlaps US after-work hours.

If that affects you, here are your options:

1. Chat during off-peak hours.
2. Or switch to a proxy, which skips the platform queue.
3. Alternatively, subscribe to Janitor+ for priority message routing.

12 Things Other Janitor AI Reviews Get Wrong

This table is the reason I wrote this article. Each row was checked against a primary source.

Common claim	What I verified
“No official mobile app”	Apps launched 7 Feb 2026, iOS and Android
“Pro plan costs $9.99/mo”	No Pro tier exists. Only Janitor+ at $12.99
“$99.99 annual plan”	No annual plan announced officially
“Free tier caps messages”	Messages are unlimited on JLLM
“Janitor has no model”	JLLM is first-party and in active training
“The UK is blocked”	Replaced by age verification, 15 Jun 2026
“NSFW needs government ID”	ID is one of three options, BR/AU/UK only
“It’s a data-cleaning tool”	Wrong product entirely
“99.87%” or “78%” uptime	Both unsourced and contradictory
“70% of users are female”	Contradicted by “65% male.” Neither auditable
“Library has exactly X bots”	Five conflicting figures, no primary source
Tutorials using deepseek-chat	Retired 24 Jul 2026. Use deepseek-v4-flash

Six of the twelve corrections, formatted for sharing.

7 Janitor AI Alternatives Worth Considering

I’ve grouped these by the specific Janitor limitation each one addresses.

1. Character.AI

Character.AI’s the mainstream option if you want polish over freedom. It runs its own proprietary model, so there’s no API key setup at all.

The free tier’s fully usable, and c.ai+ costs $9.99 per month if you want to skip peak-hour queues. Reported figures put it around 20 million monthly active users, which makes discovery easy.

The tradeoff is content filtering, which is strict and has tightened over time. Recent reporting also notes in-conversation ads, which some users find disruptive.

You may prefer it if you want a well-built mobile app and fast responses without configuration. On the other hand, you may want to skip it if filtered replies keep interrupting your storytelling. Either way, it sits at the opposite end of the spectrum from Janitor on nearly every axis.

2. SillyTavern

SillyTavern’s the choice if you want maximum control and don’t mind self-hosting. It’s free, open source, and works purely as a front end.

You connect your own backend, whether that’s OpenAI, DeepSeek, or a locally hosted model. Customization goes far deeper than Janitor allows, covering UI, character logic, and prompt structure.

Group chat’s a standout feature too. You can place several characters in one conversation, each with their own card, then watch them interact.

That said, the learning curve is steep and setup takes real time. You may find it worthwhile if you already run Janitor through a proxy and want fewer constraints. In practice, many Janitor power users end up here eventually.

3. SpicyChat AI

SpicyChat’s the cheapest paid route for unfiltered chat. Plans start around $5.99 per month, with a higher tier near $11.99.

It runs its own models, so you skip the API key process entirely. The free tier includes limited daily messages, which is enough to evaluate it properly.

Character variety’s smaller than Janitor’s, and customization’s shallower. Setup, though, takes minutes rather than a whole technical session.

So you may want to try it if Janitor’s proxy configuration feels like too much work. Overall, it fits people who want adult content with predictable flat pricing. It’s not the pick if you build detailed bots or need long-context memory.

4. CrushOn AI

CrushOn AI removes the API setup step while keeping content freedom. It runs on its own infrastructure, with tiers around $5.99, $14.99, and $49.90 monthly.

The free tier offers roughly 50 messages daily. Overall, the feel leans toward dating-sim style interaction rather than open sandbox roleplay.

It comes up often in Janitor migration threads, usually from people tired of proxy errors. Character writing holds up reasonably well across longer scenes.

One caution’s worth flagging, though. Independent privacy assessments have raised concerns about its data collection practices. Because of that, you may want to read its policy before signing up, especially if you share personal details in chats.

5. Candy AI

Candy AI’s the option if visual generation matters to you. Janitor has no image generation at all, and that’s the most common reason people look elsewhere.

Pricing starts around $5.99 per month. Image quality’s generally rated highest in this category.

The structure’s subscription plus tokens, so heavy image use adds cost on top of the base plan. Naturally, that makes budgeting less predictable than a flat fee.

Text roleplay depth doesn’t match Janitor’s community library. Still, you may prefer it if you want a companion experience with pictures rather than long-form collaborative fiction. It also requires no ID verification, which drew some users during Janitor’s verification rollout.

6. Chub.ai

Chub.ai’s worth a look if you mainly want character discovery and portability. It works as both a character repository and a chat platform.

The library’s large and well tagged, with a culture around open character definitions. That makes it useful if you want to study how good cards are built.

You can also export characters and run them elsewhere, including in SillyTavern. That portability is something Janitor deliberately restricts, since definitions may be hidden.

Chat quality depends on which backend you connect. So you may find it useful as a companion to Janitor rather than a replacement, particularly for sourcing and studying character cards before importing your own.

7. Self-hosted KoboldAI

KoboldAI’s the privacy-maximizing option, at the cost of convenience. It’s free and open source, and you run the model on your own hardware.

Nothing leaves your machine. No platform, no API provider, and no proxy sees your conversations.

The requirements are real, though. You’ll need a capable GPU, and output quality depends entirely on which model you can run locally.

Setup’s the hardest on this list. Even so, you may want to consider it if you handle sensitive material or simply object to cloud storage of chat logs. It also connects to Janitor as a backend, so you can keep the interface while keeping generation local.

Here’s a quick comparison of these alternatives

Platform	Price	Best for
Janitor AI	Free, $12.99 optional	Model choice, Scripts, library
Character.AI	Free, $9.99	Polish and ease (filtered)
SillyTavern	Free	Maximum control
SpicyChat	Free, $5.99	Cheapest paid option
CrushOn AI	Free, $5.99	No setup required
Candy AI	~$5.99	Image generation
Chub.ai	Free tier	Character discovery
KoboldAI	Free	Privacy

Competitor pricing shifts often, so you may want to confirm current rates before subscribing.

Who Janitor AI Suits, and Who Should Look Elsewhere

Janitor rewards patience and punishes people who want something that works instantly. That’s the cleanest way I can put it.

It may suit you if:

• You enjoy configuring things and don’t mind an API key
• You write long-form fiction and want unfiltered character reactions
• You build bots and would actually use version control and analytics
• You want the widest character variety available
• You’re cost-conscious and would rather pay $2 to $3 than $12.99
• You want to switch models without rebuilding characters

You may want a different platform if:

• You want voice, images, or video, since Janitor has none of these
• You want something that works perfectly on first open
• You need reliable long-term memory without manual upkeep
• You’re mainly on mobile and want full content without a browser step
• You need strong retention and encryption guarantees
• You’re under 18, because the platform’s adults-only

A sensible 20-minute first run

1. Create an account at janitorai.com using email, Google, or Discord.
2. Then browse the library and sort by top-rated rather than newest.
3. Start a chat on free JLLM to see whether the format suits you.
4. If replies run long, set Response Length to Shorter.
5. If memory frustrates you within a week, price out a DeepSeek key before considering Janitor+.
6. To set up a proxy, open a chat, click the model dropdown, choose your provider, then paste the key.
7. Use the current model ID, deepseek-v4-flash, not the retired legacy names.
8. Finally, keep your first custom character card under 1,500 permanent tokens.

Suggested visual placement 7: Simple decision flowchart routing readers to free JLLM, Janitor+, or a proxy.
Alt text: Janitor AI setup decision flowchart comparing free JLLM Janitor Plus subscription and DeepSeek proxy routes

Janitor AI: Frequently Asked Questions

Answers checked against janitorai.com’s newsroom, changelog, and both app store listings. Last verified 28 July 2026.

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Is Janitor AI free?

Yes, genuinely. Browsing, chatting on JanitorLLM, the character builder, and uploads are all free with unlimited messages.

Beyond that, the optional Janitor+ subscription costs $12.99 monthly. The team confirmed the free version “stays exactly the same, and stays completely free” at launch.

How much does Janitor AI cost in total?

Nothing, if you stay on JLLM. Here’s how the routes compare:

• Free JLLM: $0, unlimited messages
• Janitor+: $12.99/month
• DeepSeek proxy: $2 to $3/month, based on community billing receipts
• Claude or GPT proxy: $15 to $50/month

There is no $9.99 “Pro” plan, despite what several reviews claim.

Does Janitor AI have a mobile app?

Yes. Official iOS and Android apps launched 7 February 2026 under publisher JanitorAI, INC.

Currently, iOS holds 4.0 stars and Android holds 3.4 stars. Many reviews still say no app exists, which hasn’t been true since February.

Why does Janitor AI forget what happened earlier?

The context window fills up. JLLM holds roughly 8,000 to 9,000 tokens, so drift usually starts around message 25 to 30.

Trimming your character card under 1,500 permanent tokens and adding Chat Memory summaries every 10 to 20 messages can help noticeably.

Why does the bot keep repeating itself?

It’s a known model-level limitation, confirmed by the team on 30 April 2026 as “a limitation of the model architecture.”

A July 2026 patch reduced detected loops from 6 out of 64 generations to 2 out of 64. Setting repetition penalty between 1.05 and 1.10 may help too, though values above 1.15 tend to make output worse.

Is Janitor AI blocked in the UK?

No, not anymore. The July 2025 block ended on 15 June 2026, replaced by k-ID age verification.

Verification applies to UK, Brazilian, and Australian IP addresses only. Everywhere else, nothing changed.

Can Janitor AI staff read my chats?

Conditionally, yes. Your chats are private from other users, and no other member can open or search them.

That said, safety documentation notes operators may access chat histories to investigate abuse and prevent fraud. There’s no end-to-end encryption, so treat chats as private from people but only conditionally private from the platform.

Does Janitor AI allow NSFW content?

Yes, for verified adults. There’s an opt-in toggle on the web version.

Mobile apps ship in Restricted Mode by default, so NSFW must be enabled at janitorai.com/profile-settings rather than inside the app. That restriction comes from app store rules.

What’s the cheapest good setup for Janitor AI?

A DeepSeek V4 Flash proxy. It costs $0.14 per million input tokens and $0.28 per million output.

Heavy users report $2 to $3 monthly with a far larger context window than free JLLM. Use the model ID deepseek-v4-flash, since the legacy names retired on 24 July 2026.

How do I become a verified creator on Janitor AI?

You’ll need at least five public bots, plus either 10,000 followers or three bots with 50,000+ messages each.

Applications reopened 14 July 2026 under Settings, then Verification. Declined applications may reapply after three months.

When is JLLM v2 launching?

No confirmed date. The team has purchased NVIDIA B200 clusters for training.

The stated timeline remains “when the cluster is operational.” It’s been promised since August 2025, so any specific date circulating online is speculation.

Does Janitor AI have two-factor authentication?

Not yet. It was announced as “coming soon” on 10 May 2026 alongside the new security tab.

You can already view active sessions with device and IP details, and sign out other devices remotely. As of late July 2026, though, 2FA hasn’t shipped.

Janitor AI is an 18+ platform. Pricing and features change often, so you may want to confirm current details at janitorai.com before subscribing.

Verdict: 7.8 / 10

Janitor AI’s the best option available if you want unfiltered roleplay with real control over which model powers it, and you accept that the free experience needs tuning.

Here’s my scoring, based on verified capability rather than impressions.

Category	Score	Why
Character library	9.5	Nothing in the category comes close
Model flexibility	9.5	Swap engines without rebuilding
Creator tooling	9.0	Scripts version control is unmatched
Free tier value	9.0	Unlimited messages, no paywall or ads
Content freedom	8.5	Genuinely unfiltered for verified adults
Transparency	8.5	Publishes benchmarks, admits outages
Default model	5.5	Repetition improving, still the weak point
Memory	5.0	9K tokens is tight for long stories
Beginner friendliness	4.5	Proxy setup confuses newcomers
Multimedia	1.0	No voice, images, or video at all

What earns the score

The platform monetized without paywalling the base experience, which is rarer than it sounds. On top of that, it shipped apps, absorbed three countries worth of age verification law, and published its own repetition benchmarks.

The engineering transparency’s unusual too. After all, publishing that a GPU host sat dead in production isn’t typical corporate behavior.

What holds it back

JLLM’s still the weak link. Version 2 has been promised since August 2025 with no date, and the interim model swap in April 2026 caused a measurable quality regression.

The memory ceiling also forces manual upkeep that other platforms handle automatically. And two-factor authentication remains pending.

My practical recommendation

• Casual users: stay on free JLLM, and turn on Shorter responses.
• Heavy roleplayers: price out a DeepSeek proxy before Janitor+, since it’s usually cheaper and stronger.
• Non-technical users who want more memory: Janitor+ at $12.99 is a reasonable zero-setup fix.
• Anyone wanting voice or images: this isn’t the platform. Look at Candy AI instead.

The broader point this review earns is pretty simple. In a category where half of page one is factually stale, the useful habit is checking the changelog yourself.

I’ll re-verify this article monthly and update the date at the top.

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Janitor AI is an 18+ platform. This review covers its features, pricing, and policies from a product evaluation perspective, and doesn’t include explicit examples. Pricing and features change often, so you may want to confirm current details at janitorai.com before subscribing.