Chai cut free messaging: what changed and how to save your chats

Chai has been narrowing its free tier in 2026. This page says what we could confirm, how to keep your chats, and how to bring your characters to Castmanor.

Checked on 2026-10-21.

Bring your chats to Castmanor

Paste a chat or add screenshots, and your character picks up where you left off. It is free, for adults.

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Free. Adults only. Everyone here is an AI character.

What happened

In late January 2026 Chai turned off ad-funded free messaging in 22 countries: Algeria, Bangladesh, Belize, Bhutan, Bolivia, Cambodia, Egypt, Fiji, India, Iraq, Kyrgyzstan, Lebanon, Mongolia, Morocco, Pakistan, Senegal, Sri Lanka, Tajikistan, Tunisia, Uganda, Venezuela and Zimbabwe. People there see a notice that free usage is blocked in their country. ¹
Chai's founder, Will Beauchamp, said the change was needed because computing costs had risen. When PiunikaWeb reported it, free messaging with ads continued in the US, Europe, Canada and Japan. ¹
On 29 May 2026 PiunikaWeb reported that free users were hitting a "Message Removed" pop-up and token limits that lock chat for between 1 and 24 hours, with a prompt to pay for a higher plan. Chai had not responded publicly. ²
The list of countries and the limits can change. We could not find an official list from Chai. ³

Keep your characters and chats

We could not find an export option in Chai's help pages. ³
Open the chats you care about and copy the text, or take screenshots. Write down each character's name and creator.
Castmanor reads pasted text and up to 30 screenshots, and your character picks up where you left off.

How to bring your Chai characters

Open Chai, then the chat you want to keep. Scroll to the very top. If you see the character's first message, the whole chat is still on your phone. If you do not, older messages may already be gone, and Castmanor can only bring what you can see.
Take screenshots from the top down, overlapping each one with the last by one message.
For a short chat you can also tap a message, choose Select all, tap Copy and paste it into Castmanor. Chai copies one message at a time.
In Castmanor open Import, choose Screenshots or Paste a chat. Type your name as it shows in the chat.
To keep the character's name handy, tap the three dots at the top right of the chat, then Share. The link only names the character, so type the name in Castmanor.

Good to know: Chai has been trimming older messages in some chats, so a long chat can be incomplete.

Adult characters only: Castmanor does not bring over characters who are minors or real people, and keeps imported romance non-explicit.

Bring them to Castmanor

Open Castmanor. It is free today and for adults only (18+), and every character is an AI.
Paste a chat, add up to 30 screenshots, or upload a character card or an export file.
Nothing saved? Answer a few short questions about your character and Castmanor builds them from your words.

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