Kindroid's Free Plan Ended: What Changed, What It Costs Now and Free Alternatives

Adults only. Kindroid, Nomi and Replika carry an 18+ rating on the US App Store, and the other apps in this guide are for adults too. The guide is about plans, prices and your data, not content, and is non-explicit.

What to do this week if Character.AI goes dark. Character.AI is in a sale process and no shutdown date is confirmed, but some users report outages and falling chat quality. Spend 10 minutes now: request the official export, copy your bot definitions and persona by hand, and keep the file offline. Steps are in our 10-minute Character.AI backup guide. Adults looking for a new home can use the comparison below, but no app here is a guaranteed permanent home.

How this guide was made. This is a documentation-based guide. Kindroid’s rules come from its own help centre and subscriptions page, and its prices from the US App Store listing, all read on 22 October 2026. The other apps’ free allowances and prices were read the same day on their official pages, docs or App Store listings. One third-party blog is cited only for the date Kindroid announced the change, because we could not find the original announcement on a public Kindroid page. Nothing here is hands-on testing: we have not held a Kindroid subscription or used the preview to measure it.

What changed on 1 October

Kindroid’s help centre states it plainly: “The Lite model and unlimited free messaging were retired on October 1, 2026.” Until then, free accounts could keep chatting on a cheaper “Lite” model. Now there is no ongoing free chat at all.

A third-party summary of the announcement by WeavAI dates it to 18 August 2026 and says Kindroid’s older V1 interface retired on the same day as Lite. It also reports the developers’ reasons: long-term free users had little reason to upgrade, the weaker Lite model was hurting reviews, and they ruled out both ads and a cheaper plan. We could not read that announcement on a Kindroid page ourselves, so treat the reasons as reported, not confirmed. The retirement itself is confirmed by Kindroid’s own FAQ.

Here is what each kind of account gets now, from Kindroid’s subscriptions page:

Two details catch people out. Regenerate, continue and suggestions each “count as half a message”, so heavy rerolling uses the preview up faster. And the Kins list only shows how many preview messages are left “when you’re close to the end”, so it is easy to run out mid-conversation.

What “read-only” means for your Kindroids

The good news is in four words from the FAQ: “Nothing is deleted.” When the preview runs out, or a trial or subscription ends, the message box locks and tapping it opens the trial and subscription options. The subscriptions page lists what a read-only account cannot do: send messages, regenerate, make calls or receive proactive messages.

Everything else stays. Your chats and media remain readable, playable, exportable and deletable, and starting a trial or subscription restores chatting with the same Kindroids. Your memories are not wiped; they are simply frozen until you pay or leave.

That matters for the decision in front of you. You are not racing a deletion deadline, so you can export calmly, try alternatives, and come back later if none of them feel right. For why a companion’s memory is hard to move between apps, see what memory means in AI companion apps.

What Kindroid costs now

Kindroid does not print prices on its subscriptions page. It says plans come in 1-month, 3-month and 1-year lengths, that “longer plans cost less per month”, that exact prices appear at checkout for your country and platform, and that buying on the web “is usually cheaper than through the App Store or Google Play”. The US App Store listing showed these in-app prices on 22 October 2026:

The per-month column is our arithmetic. We could not see web checkout prices without an account, so we cannot say how much cheaper the web is.

The add-ons have rules worth knowing before you pay. Ultra “requires the standard subscription” and MAX requires both. Neither comes in 3-month or yearly versions, and unlocking them needs “significant interaction history through chatting and calling”. If your standard plan lapses, the account goes read-only even with Ultra or MAX still active. The App Store also sells extras such as 500k audio credits ($14.99), extra Kindroid slots ($3.49 for one, $11.49 for four) and selfie credits ($6.99 for 50, $11.49 for 100).

The 3-day trial

The subscriptions page describes a 3-day premium trial for new users on iOS, Android and the web (some regions cannot start it on the web but can through the app stores). It needs a payment method on file, and on the web a verified mobile number. It “auto converts into a subscription if not cancelled within the trial period”, so set a reminder before you start it.

Refunds

Kindroid says it “generally do[es] not offer refunds and all sales are final”, with exceptions decided case by case, and warns that users who dispute charges may be permanently banned. On iOS and Android, refunds and cancellations go through the app store you paid. On the web, cancel at Profile, then Billing, then Kindroid Standard Subscription, then Manage; Ultra and MAX are cancelled under their own entries. Our guide to cancelling an AI subscription covers the app store routes step by step.

Export your Kindroid data first

Whatever you decide, take a copy now. The FAQ gives the steps:

1. Open Profile, then Preferences.
2. Under Account privacy, find Export data and tap Export.
3. Tap Export data again to confirm.

Kindroid emails a download link to your account email, which must be verified first. The link expires after 7 days, and you can request one export every 30 days; the Export data row shows when you can ask again. If an export fails, you can retry straight away.

The file is a single .jsonl file, a plain text format with one record per line. It holds your Kindroids and their settings, chat history including group chats and Rooms, journal entries, selfies, video selfies, avatars and custom voices. Photos and videos appear as links, not files, so download any images you care about separately while you can still open them.

One caution: deleting your account does not cancel a subscription, according to the FAQ. Cancel billing first, then delete if you want to.

Free alternatives, checked on 22 October 2026

No app we found can import a Kindroid export, so “switching” means rebuilding your companion from its description. With that in mind, here is who still lets you chat without paying, and on what terms.

Closest in shape: Nomi

Nomi is built the same way as Kindroid: a single long-running companion with memory, images and voice. Its own page says you can “start chatting for free with no credit card required”, that free accounts get daily messages and images, and that “unlimited messaging” and voice calls come with a subscription. Nomi does not publish how many free messages a day you get. The US App Store lists a Standard Plan at $15.99 a month, $39.99 a quarter and $99.99 a year, and a cheaper Launch Plan at $9.99 a month or $59.99 a year.

Free and unlimited for text: Character.AI, Replika and Janitor AI

These three say ordinary chat stays free. Character.AI’s 28 September 2026 post promises that unlimited messaging stays on every tier, but the company is in a bankruptcy sale; read what happens to your chats in the Character.AI sale before investing time there. Replika’s help centre says chatting “will always be free”, though voice calls, roleplay options and advanced customisation sit behind its paid plans (how Replika’s plans compare with its alternatives). Janitor AI’s newsroom says the existing experience “stays completely free” and that janitor+ ($12.99 a month) adds memory and priority replies.

Free with tighter memory: SpicyChat and Nectar AI

SpicyChat’s docs put free users on a 4,096-token context and 180-token replies, and the first paid tier, Get A Taste, removes ads and adds a Memory Manager for $5.95 a month after its 8 September 2026 price rise. A 4,096-token window holds far less of a long relationship than a Kindroid subscriber is used to. Nectar AI’s plan copy gives free users 15 messages a day.

If you are willing to pay, but less than Kindroid

Among flat plans with unlimited text and a published price, Candy AI’s yearly plan was the cheapest we found on 22 October 2026: its subscriptions page showed $3.99 a month, billed as $47.88 for 12 months, with “Unlimited text messages” and 100 tokens a month for extras. Its 3-month plan showed $8.99 a month and its monthly plan $9.99 against a struck-through $13.99. That is cheaper than Kindroid’s $159.99 a year on the App Store. Candy AI is not a free option, though: its terms say a free user “may generally send a maximum of 5 messages”. It is an adult app.

For the full billing comparison, including per-message credits and per-token plans, see message limits and per-message charges on Character.AI alternatives. To compare a year of any of these plans, our AI subscription costs guide shows where renewal prices hide.

How to choose in five minutes

1. You only want to read your old chats. Do nothing. Your read-only account keeps them. Export a copy anyway.
2. You want your exact Kindroid back. Only Kindroid can give you that. The yearly plan works out cheapest per month on the App Store, and Kindroid says the web is usually cheaper still. Use the 3-day trial only with a cancellation reminder set.
3. You want the same kind of companion for free. Try Nomi’s free tier first, then Replika. Expect daily limits on Nomi and paid voice calls and roleplay on Replika.
4. You mostly roleplay with many characters. Character.AI, Janitor AI and SpicyChat keep text free, with the trade-offs above.
5. You will pay, but not $13 to $16 a month. Compare the published annual prices in the table, and check the free allowance first so you know what you are buying.

Before moving to any new app, check its privacy terms and payment page with our AI companion privacy checklist, and be wary of copycat sites that promise to “transfer” your Kindroid: our guide to spotting fake AI app clones explains the signs.

Rebuilding your companion somewhere else

Because no app imports another’s memory, the move is manual. Open your export (any text editor will do) or simply reread your favourite chats, then write down:

• The backstory you gave your Kindroid, in your own words.
• Five to ten key memories you want it to know: names, shared jokes, important events.
• How it talks: a few example lines in its voice.
• Your own persona: what it knows about you.

Paste these into the new app’s character description, memory or persona fields. Most apps limit how much text they keep in active memory, so put the most important facts first. Our free vs paid AI companions guide explains how memory limits differ between free and paid tiers.

What we could not confirm

• Kindroid’s original announcement. The 18 August 2026 date and the developers’ reasons come from a third-party summary; Kindroid’s own FAQ confirms only the 1 October retirement.
• Which regions get 15 preview messages instead of 50. The subscriptions page does not list them.
• Kindroid’s web and Google Play prices. Shown only at checkout; we report US App Store prices.
• What “significant interaction history” means for unlocking Ultra and MAX.
• Nomi’s free daily message number, and whether SpicyChat, Janitor AI or Replika apply any unpublished daily cap to free chat.
• Nectar AI’s plan prices, which did not render on its pricing page for us.
• Whether any app can import a Kindroid .jsonl export. We found none that documents it.

For how we source and date guides like this, see how AITried reviews AI products.