SextBots review: a huge library, terrible signage

I spent ten January days on it in 2025. In my notes it's "the one with the unfortunate name", and I stand by that. I stayed on the free text tier the whole time and used the character creator a lot.

Four things stood out in my ten days:

• Tens of thousands of community bots, and finding the good ones is the hard part
• A free text tier with no ads
• A genuinely good free character creator
• No memory of you from one session to the next

My quick take: a lovely playground for people who like to write and share characters, and the wrong app if what you want is a single companion who knows you. If you'd rather have a character hub with regular paid plans, my CrushOn AI review covers one in detail.

Today's numbers need a small asterisk. The free plan listing says 50 messages a day, with 75 shown on a new account, on a limited chat model, and no images or voice playback. The Terms only call the free tier "limited daily messages and features", say no API key is needed, and add "subject to availability and rate limits", without publishing a number.

Sources differ, so treat 50 a day as the working figure. You need a free account to chat, which the site says is there to prevent spam.

My view: 50 messages a day is a real evening of chat, not a teaser. "Subject to availability" is the fine print I'd remember on busy nights.

For a very different free start, OurDream AI lists 55 Dreamcoins at 1 Dreamcoin per message, though its help centre says it doesn't currently offer free dreamcoins. My OurDream AI review explains its coins. The SextBots at a glance box just below covers the rest.

You don't need a spreadsheet, but you do need a method. Every SextBot is made by a user, so quality swings from lovingly written to barely started. My advice: decide what kind of scene you want before you browse, keep a short list of the characters that work, and don't be shy about leaving a chat that isn't landing.

Under the Terms, other users can chat with, favorite, fork and edit any public character. That forking is useful: if a character is almost right, you can copy it and fix it rather than start from zero.

Now the limit that shapes everything. According to the official AI Safety page, characters forget you once a session or conversation ends, and memory inside a single chat isn't described. Each new chat starts fresh. For one-sitting scenes that's fine, even freeing.

For a long story, keep your own notes and paste a short recap when you come back, which, honestly, is what my spreadsheet was halfway to anyway.

Writing quality on free comes from a limited chat model. Heavier or better models come through the API tier, with your own key, so the ceiling depends on what you plug in.

If you want to see how SextBots' chat and memory rank against companion apps built for continuity, my full archive of app reviews scores them all the same way.

The character creator is where SextBots shines. It's genuinely good, and it's free. Users can create characters, keep them private or make them public. I published two bots of my own.

A soft-spoken lighthouse keeper found a small audience, and I felt like a small-press author, a feeling I last had at 24.

From an inclusive angle, a user-built library is a good sign. Nothing forces one kind of user or one kind of character on you: if the bot you want doesn't exist, you write it, and someone else might find it later. The official pages don't list gender or appearance options, which fits a text-only free tier, since your character is whatever you write.

There's a catch that comes with that openness. When anyone can publish, you'll meet characters you'd never pick. Your filter is your own browsing, which is another reason I'd keep a personal list of the good ones.

On media, the free tier has no images or voice playback, so the content level lives entirely in the text. Nothing unexpected appears on screen, which some readers will count as a plus.

If you're after one steady companion rather than a library of characters, my list of AI girlfriend apps worth a look is a better starting point.

That's a very different shape from the rest of the category. Candy AI's 1-Month Plan is €13.99, GirlfriendGPT Premium $15.00, Nomi AI's Standard Plan Monthly $15.99 and OurDream AI's Standard Monthly $19.99. Those are subscriptions with renewals and refund rules. SextBots has none of that.

I like the honesty of it. No coins, no upsell ladder, no renewal to forget. In exchange, you miss what paid apps bundle and SextBots doesn't: memory across sessions, images and voice.

If you're tempted by the API tier, remember that you'd be opening an account with a second company, under its own terms, just for this. For most people, free is the plan.

My opinion: it's worth it for one kind of person. If you already pay an AI provider and want to use that model for roleplay, it's a neat way to get more from money you're spending anyway. I stayed on the free tier for all ten days, and it covered my browsing, building and publishing.

For everyone else, I'd stay on free. Opening an API account only for this adds a second bill and a second set of terms. And remember, a better model still won't give characters memory between sessions.

If what you really want is a paid plan with images and a companion who sticks around, Candy AI is a more conventional choice, whose 1-Month Plan costs €13.99. My Candy AI review walks through its plans and refund rule.

• Stay with SextBots if you want free text roleplay with nothing to cancel.
• Pick the partner if being remembered matters to you.
• Stay with SextBots if building and sharing characters is the fun part.
• Pick the partner if images or voice matter.

My opinion: SextBots is at its best as a creative hobby. Building a character and watching strangers find it is a small, real pleasure, and I've had it. As a relationship app, it can't compete, because nothing carries over between sessions.

The partner route costs money and adds a subscription to manage, so read its refund rule first. Many readers will be happiest using both: SextBots for writing and browsing characters, and a paid companion app for the ongoing relationship. That split costs you no more than the companion plan, since SextBots stays free.

The API tier works differently, and it's worth understanding before you add a key. The Terms say to "manage subscriptions through your API provider", and that "cancellations and refunds" are handled by that provider. They also say there are "no refunds for API subscriptions" through SextBots, so you'd contact the provider directly.

The good part: you can "remove your API key anytime", which returns your account to the free tier. So leaving SextBots' paid side takes two steps, removing the key here and then cancelling with the provider if you no longer want that plan. Removing the key alone doesn't stop the provider's billing.

My advice: if you add a key, note which provider you used and where its cancel page is. It's easy to forget a second account you opened for one app.

A service that charges nothing still gets scored on how clear its money rules are. The page on how I check the apps explains that, and the billing note below quotes the Terms exactly.

On the free tier nothing is charged at all, and if you use the API tier, the charge comes from your AI provider under that provider's name, not from SextBots. So the unfortunate name stays off your bank line.

Training is the trade-off. The policy says your chats may help train better AI responses and safety filters, and that chat data is aggregated and anonymized before training. Clear, but it means your words may feed the models.

Is it legit? The site has detailed Terms and a privacy policy, but the company isn't named on its public pages, and there's no launch date or country on record. That's the part that keeps me cautious. I'd use it happily for free roleplay and hesitate to hand it anything personal.

My advice: set the shortest auto-delete that suits you, and leave real names out of anything you build. For other apps with clear content policies, my list of NSFW AI chat apps compares them side by side.

The plan I'd use is the free tier, exactly as I did for ten days. The API tier only makes sense if you already pay an AI provider.

What bothers me most is the missing company name, with the lack of memory between sessions a close second. And be ready to dig: the library is huge and discoverability is the whole battle. If organising chaos sounds like fun, you'll enjoy it here.

• You want memory across chats: Nomi AI is built around conversation, and you get 50 free messages every day.
• You want images and video: Candy AI covers both, from €13.99 on the 1-Month Plan.
• You want adult content with a named company: OurDream AI is run by Dream Studio USA, Inc.
• You want a daily free drip with a clear plan ladder: GirlfriendGPT adds 10 messages a day from Daily Login.

For most readers who leave SextBots because nothing sticks, I'd start with Nomi AI. Other reviewers report fluid, human-like chat with proactive long-term memory there, which is the exact thing SextBots lacks. The catch is that all Nomi payments are nonrefundable, so try the free plan before paying.

If the community library is what you'd miss, another character-first hub makes more sense than a companion app. My SpicyChat review covers one with a big shared library. Whichever way you go, check memory first, then the refund rule, because those two decide whether you'll still be using the app a month from now.

My tip: keep SextBots for what it does best, free character building and browsing, and use a card here only for the gap that really matters to you. You don't have to give up your published bots to add a companion app on the side.