Janitor AI vs Character AI: filters, cost, and model control

Quick answer: convenience vs control

Pick Character AI if you want to open an app and start chatting in under a minute, on your phone, for free. It has an enormous character library, voice calls, group scenes, and zero configuration. The trade is that you chat with whatever proprietary model the platform runs that week, under a content filter tuned for a general audience, with no way to change either. Pick Janitor AI if you care about which model writes your replies. It is an 18+ platform that ships no model of its own: you paste an API endpoint, a model ID, and a key into its proxy settings, and every message is generated by the provider you chose. That means per-token pricing instead of a subscription, model swaps whenever you like, and content boundaries defined by the provider's published policy rather than a single platform-wide filter. Neither is strictly better. They share the "chat with characters" surface but are built on opposite assumptions: Character AI owns the whole stack, Janitor AI hands the most important layer to you.

Feature comparison at a glance

Two rows deserve extra attention. Model control is the structural difference everything else follows from: Character AI trains and serves its own models, while Janitor AI in proxy mode is a frontend for any OpenAI-compatible chat completions endpoint. And the filter row is often misread: Janitor AI does not remove content rules, it delegates them to whichever model provider you connect, and both the platform ToS and the provider policy still apply.

The BYO-API advantage, explained

Character AI is vertically integrated: the app, the characters, and the model are one product, which is why it is smooth and why nothing about it is adjustable. Janitor AI took the opposite bet. The site stores character cards and renders the chat UI, but generation happens wherever you point its proxy settings. Three practical consequences follow. Model control: if replies feel repetitive or the style drifts after a platform update, on Character AI you wait. On Janitor AI you change one field and the next message comes from a different model. Cost transparency: you can read a per-token price list and know exactly what a message costs, instead of guessing what a subscription is worth. Policy clarity: each provider publishes its own usage policy, so you can pick a model whose documented rules fit the fiction you write, rather than reverse-engineering an unexplained filter. You can point Janitor AI directly at a single provider, or at a gateway that fronts many providers behind one key. APIsRouter is one such gateway: deepseek-v4-flash, deepseek-v4-pro, glm-5, kimi-k2.6, claude-sonnet-4-6, claude-opus-4-7, gemini-3.5-flash, gpt-5.5, and grok-4.5 share one OpenAI-compatible endpoint, billing is pay-as-you-go with no subscription (global models run 20% below official list prices, Chinese models below official rates, and the first top-up doubles your balance), and checkout at /topup needs no account: pay first, the key arrives by email. Whatever endpoint you use, Janitor AI wants the full URL including the path:

API type:     Proxy
Model name:   deepseek-v4-flash
Proxy URL:    https://api.apisrouter.com/v1/chat/completions
API key:      sk-...

What each actually costs per month

Character AI's math is simple: the free tier works with queue and speed limits at peak times, and c.ai+ costs about $10 a month for priority access. Flat and predictable, the same whether you send fifty messages or five thousand. Janitor AI's math depends entirely on the model behind your proxy. A typical roleplay message carries roughly 2,000 input tokens (character definition plus recent chat history) and about 300 output tokens. On those assumptions:

Which model to run behind Janitor AI

The DeepSeek V4 family is the approximate community favorite on Janitor AI boards: strong character-card adherence at the lowest rates in the table, with V4 Pro holding long chats together better than Flash. GLM-5, Kimi K2.6, and MiMo are the other value picks, all with policies that accommodate fictional content. Grok 4.5 is a common choice for darker or mature fictional themes because xAI's published policy explicitly allows them in fiction, though its flagship token rates put it well above the value picks for chatty sessions. Claude Sonnet 4.6 and Opus 4.7 write the best prose of anything listed, with the most natural dialogue and scene continuity, but Anthropic's usage policy prohibits explicit content, so treat Claude as a strictly SFW creative-writing option. Two rules hold regardless of model: Janitor AI's 18+ ToS applies in proxy mode, and so does the content policy of whichever provider generates the text. Choosing a model with a flexible fiction policy does not suspend either one.

Migrating from Character AI to Janitor AI

Character AI has no character export, so migration means rebuilding, not importing. The process: 1. Rebuild the card. Copy the character's visible greeting and description, then rewrite the personality into Janitor AI's personality, scenario, and initial message fields. For popular characters, check Janitor AI's library first: a community-made card probably already exists. 2. Get an API key from your provider or gateway of choice. 3. Verify the key, the endpoint, and the model ID outside the app before touching Janitor AI's settings. Its error messages are thin, so a curl test isolates problems fast:

curl https://api.apisrouter.com/v1/chat/completions \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer sk-YOUR_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "model": "deepseek-v4-flash",
    "messages": [{"role": "user", "content": "Introduce yourself as a grumpy librarian."}]
  }'

Migrating from Janitor AI to Character AI (or sideways to SillyTavern)

The reverse move makes sense when what you miss is the packaging: native mobile apps, voice calls, group chats, and a platform that needs zero maintenance. Recreate your character in Character AI's editor (greeting, short and long description, example dialogs), and set expectations accordingly: the platform filter applies to everyone, tone targets a general audience, and there are no proxy settings to tune. For casual, all-ages-appropriate chats on a phone, it is genuinely the smoother product. If your real complaint about Janitor AI is the interface rather than the bring-your-own-API model, the usual move is sideways to SillyTavern, not back to Character AI. It is the same BYO-endpoint approach with far more local control, and your settings carry over almost unchanged: SillyTavern takes the base URL ending at /v1 (https://api.apisrouter.com/v1) and auto-populates its model list from /v1/models with your key, instead of the full endpoint URL Janitor AI requires. Janitor AI cards also export in formats SillyTavern reads, so this direction preserves your characters, unlike a move to Character AI.

Who should pick which

If you are still unsure, the setup cost decides it. Anyone unwilling to manage an API key should stay on Character AI. Anyone who has ever pasted a key into any tool will find the Janitor AI side of this comparison takes one evening to master.

• Choose Character AI if you chat casually on your phone, want voice and group features, spend nothing, and are fine with a curated general-audience experience.
• Choose Janitor AI if you are 18+, want to pick the exact model behind each chat, prefer per-token economics over a subscription, and do not mind a ten-minute API setup.
• Choose Janitor AI if long-form fiction is the point: model choice plus custom prompts gives you levers Character AI simply does not expose.
• Run both if your use splits: Character AI on the phone for quick chats, Janitor AI on desktop for long sessions where model quality and cost per message matter.

FAQ