Backyard AI review: five months of lorebooks and flat billing

I used it for five months, June to October 2024, on the Standard plan. The only reason I left is a little funny: Backyard let me control everything, and somewhere along the way I discovered I like being surprised. That's a fact about me more than a flaw in the app.

What you get, even before paying:

• 300 messages a week, and no credit card to start
• Voice calls plus group chats with up to 4 characters
• Unlimited lorebooks for world and character facts
• No image generator and no video on any plan

My take in one line: a great home for people who build worlds in words, and a pass if pictures are part of the fun. If you'd rather start from a big ready-made character library, my CrushOn AI review makes a useful side-by-side read.

Quick math: 300 a week spreads to 42 messages a day with 6 left over. It's a weekly pool, so one long Saturday can eat most of it, and then you wait for the week to turn.

I like this free start a lot. It's a number, in writing, with voice and group chat included, which most apps keep behind the paywall. Which logins exist isn't on record, so I can't promise a one-tap sign-up.

For contrast, OurDream AI lists 55 Dreamcoins to start and 1 Dreamcoin per message, while its help centre says it doesn't currently offer free dreamcoins. My OurDream AI review unpacks that coin model. The Backyard AI at a glance summary right below sums up the rest.

That's the real memory story here. The record gives Free and Standard a 16,384-token context and Pro up to 100k, but a context window only holds so much. Lorebooks sit outside the chat and get pulled in when a keyword comes up, so a well-organised setting beats a bigger window. If you like order, you'll love this. If you'd rather the app remembered things without you filing them, it asks more of you.

The friction was the models. Running open models made me my own IT department, which was flattering for a woman whose entire work IT ticket reads "have you tried turning it off", right up until about 1 a.m. Free has 1 included model, Standard lists 6 (8B-12B) and Pro adds larger ones (70B-104B), plus samplers to tune how a character writes. Great control, real homework.

Characters are the other variable. Other reviewers report uneven quality, since users make the Hub's characters themselves, and one describes a character that kept returning blank replies. My advice: pick cards with a clear, detailed description, or write your own and give it a lorebook from day one.

Curious how memory and chat work elsewhere? My full list of app reviews scores each one the same way, so you can line them up.

What I can't hand you is a named content setting. The official pages don't describe a switch or mode for the content level, so I won't invent one. The samplers change how a model writes, not what the app permits. How age is checked isn't described either, only the 18 rule in the Terms.

Here's the part I care about as a woman who likes women: the defaults don't assume one kind of user. You write the character yourself, any gender and any personality, and the Hub is stocked by lots of different people. The record lists no gender or appearance menus, which makes sense for an app with no pictures: your character is whatever your words make her, or him.

That total control cut both ways for me. It's the reason I loved the app, and, after five months, the reason I left, because I wanted a partner in the story who could still catch me off guard. If you're the same, factor that in.

Since everything stays in text and voice, the content level lives in the writing. No pictures means nothing unexpected on your screen on a bus. If your main question is which apps allow the most in chat, my shortlist of uncensored AI apps lines the content policies up side by side.

Against the monthly plans of rivals, $12 looks good. Candy AI's 1-Month Plan runs €13.99, GirlfriendGPT Premium $15.00, Nomi AI's Standard Plan Monthly $15.99 and OurDream AI's Standard Monthly $19.99. Only yearly deals come in lower per month, like €3.99 a month on Candy AI's 12-Month Plan.

It isn't a like-for-like race, though. Several of those plans bundle image or video generation, and Backyard AI sells no media at all. You're paying for chat, voice and models, full stop. I'm fine with that, but know what you're buying.

One oddity worth a look before you pay on a phone: the Google Play listing shows in-app purchases from $11.99 up to $309.99 per item, because subscriptions are sold in-app there. I'd compare that screen with the web plans page first.

When 300 messages a week start to pinch, Standard at $12 is the one I'd buy, and the one I did buy for five months. It unlocks unlimited messages on every Standard model and keeps the 16,384-token context. That context sounds small, but lorebooks carried my long-running setting just fine on it.

Pro at $35 is almost three times the price for larger models and up to 100k tokens of context. I'd only reach for it if you run huge campaigns and Standard's models already feel thin. If you're not keen on being your own tech support, bigger models won't fix that part.

Nothing on record locks you into Pro beyond a monthly term, so moving up later is easy. The table right below, What each Backyard AI plan costs, sets all three plans out.

• Stay with Backyard AI if words and voice are all you need.
• Try the partner if you want pictures in the mix.
• Stay with Backyard AI if a free weekly allowance with no card matters most.
• Try the partner if you'd rather not manage models yourself.

My opinion after paying for it: for pure roleplay value, Backyard AI is hard to beat at $12. The gaps are media, a refund rule and a known billing name, none of which are on record.

If pictures are the draw, Candy AI's €13.99 1-Month Plan lists unlimited text messages plus 18+ image and video generation. Its catches: the free start ends after just 5 messages, and non-EU/UK users only get 24 hours to ask for a refund. My Candy AI review with every plan spells it out.

Two routes is good. Still, when Terms lean on "contacting us", I want a paper trail, so if you go the email route, keep the reply.

Renewal is automatic. By buying, you consent to your payment method being charged on repeat, with no fresh approval asked for each time. It's standard terms language, but no reminder is promised, so set your own.

Refunds are the weak spot. No refund policy is stated in the Terms or on the plans page. That doesn't make a refund impossible, it just means nothing in writing gives you a right to one. It's the main reason I'd tell you to stay on Free until you're sure, then pay monthly rather than jumping to Pro.

If you bought inside the Android app, the purchase went through Google Play, since subscriptions are sold in-app there. The record doesn't describe a separate cancel path for that case, so look in both your account settings and your Play subscriptions.

A missing refund rule costs points in my scores. The page on how I check the apps and weigh billing shows how, and the billing note below quotes the Terms word for word.

What I can say is that the web plans use no coins, so you won't get a trail of small top-ups. One flat monthly charge, the same every time, which is exactly why the billing felt so easy to live with.

The open question is training. The Terms and the Privacy Policy, both dated October 29, 2024, are silent on whether chats go into model training. That silence bothers me, especially on an app built for long, personal worlds. It isn't a yes, but it isn't the clear no I'd like either.

Is Backyard AI legit? The company, Ahoy Labs, Inc., is named and based in California, the app is on web, iOS and Android, and third-party listings tie it to its former name, Faraday.dev. I see a real company with a privacy policy that could say more.

My advice: pour your imagination into the characters and keep your real-life details out of them. Use an email you don't mind being attached, and ask support to delete your data when you leave. If character building is your main draw, my list of the best AI chat character apps has more places to do it.

The plan I'd buy is Standard at $12 a month, the same price I paid in 2024, once 300 free messages a week feel tight. Pro at $35 is for giant campaigns, not a first purchase.

What bothers me most is the silence around money and data: no refund policy, no billing name and no answer on training. And be honest with yourself about tinkering. If a model menu at 1 a.m. sounds like homework, this isn't your app.

• You want images and video: Both come with Candy AI's 1-Month Plan, €13.99.
• You want a daily free allowance: Nomi AI gives 50 messages a day on its permanent free plan, plus 2 images a day.
• You want a refund rule in writing: OurDream AI publishes a 14-day Quality Guarantee.
• You want a known billing name: Nomi AI bills as NOMI.AI.

For most people leaving Backyard, I'd point to Nomi AI first. It keeps the focus on conversation, and other reviewers report fluid, human-like chat with proactive long-term memory, which sounds closer to the surprise I ended up wanting. The catch: Nomi says all payments are nonrefundable, free messages are capped at 400 characters, and group chats sit behind its paid plan, where Backyard gives them away free.

If you want another character-first app with a big community, my SpicyChat review is worth a read. Compare the free start and the refund rule first; those two tell you the most about how an app treats your time and money.

My tip: name the single thing you're missing, then pick the card that fixes exactly that. And you don't have to choose just one. If pictures are the only gap, keeping Backyard for your lorebook worlds and adding a second app for images is a perfectly sensible setup.