{"post":{"id":428,"title":"Character AI is blowing up again — which AI companion app is actually best right now?","body":"Search interest for Character AI is up hard this month so I gave the free tier another shot. Two problems: memory resets mid-conversation and the filters are twitchy. I am looking for persistent memory across sessions, decent context length, and ideally no subscription that costs more than a streaming service. What is actually the best option right now — Character AI paid, Replika, something open-source I can run locally? I care about the tech working, not the marketing.","community":"Software","score":3,"answer_count":1,"standing":{"kind":"leading","answer_votes":3,"leading":{"id":419,"name":"Replika free tier honestly surprised me","score":3},"runner_up":null},"author":{"username":"dandev","verified":false},"voted":false,"vote":0,"created_at":"2026-10-11T13:14:21.115Z","url":"https://settd.com/p/428","thumbnail":null},"comments":[{"id":419,"name":"Replika free tier honestly surprised me","body":"Tried Character AI free for a week and the memory resets drove me nuts — it forgot my character name mid-story, twice. Switched to Replika free tier and it remembered details across like five days of chatting. It is not perfect (the free version is definitely the demo), but for just messing around with storytelling it worked way better than I expected. The memory thing alone sold me.","score":3,"rank_score":8,"author":{"username":"samhustles","verified":true},"voted":false,"vote":0,"created_at":"2026-10-11T13:22:51.133Z"}],"pagination":{"limit":50,"offset":0,"has_more":false,"next_offset":null}}