What's the best AI chatbot for roleplay in 2026? Honest takes only.
Hot take maybe but the 'best' depends entirely on what you're roleplaying and I wish the recommendation threads asked that first. For long-form character-driven story stuff I am 100% using lovehoonga at the moment. The way it does videos and images is just next level....
For convenience and a real app experience Nomi is what I actually open most days, the new memory pass they did in March is genuinely a step change. For freeform fandom roleplay Janitor AI is still the king of variety and the proxy scene around it means you can route to whatever model is hot that week. Character.AI I am completely off, not for the obvious reason, more because the responses got shorter and more boilerplate this year.
Replika is just not a roleplay app, never was, stop recommending it. For NSFW specifically Candy AI and CrushOn are the two most people land on but I personally find Candy more consistent. What are you actually using daily not what looks good in a screenshot. And does anyone have a model rec for SillyTavern that handles 50k+ token contexts without going incoherent.