Janitor AI Alternatives: 4 Sites Like Janitor AI, No Proxies Needed

Janitor AI is not a bad platform. That’s the thing most of these lists get wrong. Its help desk counts over 1.4 million public bots, the platform is free, and with the right model connected it will happily hold a conversation nothing mainstream will. Janitor said back in March 2025 that it had passed 1.4 million daily active users, and that’s for a reason.

The problem is almost never the chat. It’s everything you have to do before the chat.

Be honest about why you’re actually looking

Most people typing “janitor ai alternatives” are not unhappy with the characters. They’re tired of one of these three things. Work out which is yours, because it changes what you should switch to, or whether you should switch at all.

What’s wearing you down	What it really is	What fixes it
API keys, proxy URLs, model names that stop working, “network error” again	The setup, not the app. To go beyond Janitor’s own model, you bolt on an external one.	An app that runs its own model, so there’s nothing to configure.
It’s text and that’s it. No voice, no images, no face to the character.	A feature ceiling. Janitor is text chat for now; it lists voice and images as future plans.	A companion app with voice, images and video built in.
You want it on your phone without a fight	Janitor’s official app only arrived in February 2026, as a public beta with NSFW off by default, and the proxy juggling doesn’t get easier on a small screen.	An app that works the same in a mobile browser, with no setup to redo.

If none of those bother you, and you enjoy tuning proxies and swapping models, honestly? Stay on Janitor. Nothing below gives you a bigger character library or a $0 bill. This page is for the people who just want to talk to a character without opening a settings menu first.

Why the setup keeps biting

Janitor’s own model, JLLM, is free and built in. To run something else, Janitor’s own quickstart walks you through creating an OpenRouter key and pasting in a DeepSeek model, and Chutes is another route it documents. That’s a good setup when it works. The trouble is how often it stops working.

Janitor’s help desk has a guide for each way it breaks. Keys “sometimes bug out” and need regenerating. Free model names get replaced, so a config that worked last month suddenly errors out. API URLs have to be exactly right. Rate limits and network errors look like your fault but often aren’t. If you’ve ever pasted the same key three times wondering why it won’t connect, that’s not you being bad at it. That’s the tax on free.

The apps below make a simple trade: you pay, and in return there is nothing to set up, nothing to maintain, and nothing to debug at 1am. Whether that trade is worth it is the whole question.

The best Janitor AI alternative for each problem

The scores below are the ones in our full review of each app. Prices and policies come from each company’s own pages, and every section lists where the app falls short, because a list that pretends there are no downsides isn’t worth reading. Where something depends on our own testing and we haven’t confirmed it yet, we leave it out rather than guess.

All four run their own model. No API keys, no proxies, no model names. They generate original fictional characters and never real people.

Candy AI — the closest thing to Janitor without the setup

Our highest-rated of the four (4.6/5), with the broadest feature set. Text is unlimited on paid plans; the free version stops at 5 messages. There’s no key or proxy to set up: you sign up and pick or build a character. It also adds what Janitor doesn’t offer yet: images, voice and video of your character.

Where it hurts: the subscription isn’t the whole bill once tokens are paying for images, video and voice, and plan prices only appear after you sign in. Candy itself warns that exact details like hair colour or clothing can be hard to keep consistent, detailed memory is tied to each chat, and it’s a browser app with no confirmed end-to-end encryption.

Switch here if: the setup was your problem and you want the fullest replacement. Budget for tokens on top of the plan.

OurDream AI — the one with its prices on the table

It publishes its prices upfront, $19.99 a month or $119.88 a year, which Candy AI doesn’t. OurDream advertises a four-layer memory system that tracks your preferences and history across sessions, which is the pitch if you want a companion that remembers you rather than a good one-off chat. Chat, images, voice and memory all sit in one app.

Where it hurts: your chats may be used to train OurDream’s AI models, which its privacy policy allows; data is encrypted at rest and in transit, though not end to end, and Candy’s policy allows training on chats too. There’s also a coin tax: you pay the subscription and still ration DreamCoins for images and video. OurDream says a long video can take a few minutes to render, and a generation that times out is cancelled and refunded.

Switch here if: you want prices on the table and value matters most. On privacy it scores 4.0 in our review, just under Candy AI (4.2) and above DreamGF (3.9) and Promptchan (3.8).

Promptchan — for directing the story yourself

If what you loved about Janitor was building a long story with a character, Promptchan’s story mode is the closest in spirit here: it turns the conversation into a scene you direct, one chapter at a time, and you can drop back to normal chat whenever you like. Its Discover feed includes companions built by the community, images can be generated inside the conversation, and a daily allowance of free Gems lets you try it without a card. It’s also the only app in this guide whose safety check raised no warning.

Where it hurts: Promptchan is an image tool first, with chat on the side, and we haven’t yet confirmed how much a character remembers from one session to the next. Custom characters are a Pro feature, and past the free allowance you pay twice: a subscription, then Gems for images, voice messages (1 Gem) and calls (2 Gems).

Switch here if: you’re a storyteller more than a chatter, and the setup friction finally outweighed the freedom.

DreamGF AI — the first-year budget pick

The cheapest way off Janitor for the first year, at $69.99 for the first year on the annual plan (about $5.83 a month), and according to DreamGF, no adult wording on your bank statement. The builder goes well beyond a preset face: DreamGF documents appearance (hair, body type, nationality), personality types and interests, and custom characters with their own traits, scenario and background.

Where it hurts: tokens pay for the extras (10 per image, 3 per voice message, 7 per minute of voice call, with 100 included each month), so heavier use means buying more, and every plan renews at $25.99/month once the intro period ends.

Switch here if: first-year budget decides it, or you want to build a character from scratch rather than pick one off a shelf.

Sites like Janitor AI: what you actually give up by leaving

The lists that don’t mention this are lying to you.

Janitor’s library is huge and community-built, with over 1.4 million public bots, and none of these four documents a community library on that scale. If you’re there for the characters other people made, switching is a downgrade on that specific axis, and paid apps won’t fix it.

You also give up unlimited free text chat. Every app above meters something, whether it’s images, voice, video or credits. “No setup” and “no limits” are not the same promise, and the marketing on all four works hard to blur that.

So the real question isn’t which app is best. It’s whether the time you spend keeping Janitor running is worth more to you than the subscription. If it is, one of these four buys that time back. If it isn’t, you already have the best free option open in another tab.

If your issue was really the filter rather than the setup, our Character AI alternatives guide covers that angle. For the full field, see our NSFW AI chat ranking, or the AI girlfriend and AI boyfriend lists if you want a long-term companion rather than a chat app.