AI Dungeon vs NovelAI

Both services let a model continue your story, and both are priced by what the tier holds. They differ in how you play and in what you pay for. AI Dungeon is a game where you type actions and the AI answers, free to start. NovelAI is a writing environment with the model beside you, sold only by subscription. The table sets out the fields both records carry, as checked in October 2026.

"Not confirmed" means the pages we read do not say, which is different from "no". Two rows need a reading note. The "Branching choices" answer is "No" for both because neither offers authored branches: the reader types, and the model continues. And "Explicit content" is "yes" for AI Dungeon, from its Mature setting, and "not confirmed" for NovelAI, whose Terms restrict nothing but do not say adult content is permitted.

How you play: a typed adventure or a shared document

AI Dungeon's home page calls it "a free AI text adventure game where players create open-ended stories, explore interactive worlds, and guide every choice online or in the app". You can build a custom scenario or play community-made adventures, and the pricing page adds "the AI responds to your choices as the story unfolds". Public adventures must be rated; private and unlisted ones fall outside the Community Guidelines, as covered below.

NovelAI's home page says "Build stories, worlds, and characters with an AI that writes with you", and describes the generator as built "to write with you, not for you". You write in a document editor and the model continues it. Its docs also describe a Text Adventure mode with Do and Say commands, so both play styles exist. Neither is a menu of fixed branches. Our page on apps with AI-generated stories lists the services that say they write with a model.

AI Dungeon vs NovelAI on price

AI Dungeon prices are monthly on its web pricing page. NovelAI prices are US dollars from its docs, renewing every 30 days. The tier table on NovelAI's docs page is published as an image; the same figures are in its docs text.

At the entry point NovelAI is $4.99 cheaper, $10 against $14.99, and the two sell about the same memory: 8,192 tokens against "8k". Higher up they diverge. NovelAI's $25 Opus tier lists 28,672 tokens, where AI Dungeon lists 16k at $29.99 and 32k at $49.99. Token counts from different models are a rough yardstick, since models do not count alike, so read these as scale and not as a ruling. Over a year, twelve payments of $14.99 for Journey come to $179.88, while NovelAI's 30-day cycle means about 12.2 payments, which puts Tablet at about $121.67 (our arithmetic). AI Dungeon's help page says 6 and 12 month terms are discounted, but the pricing page shows no such prices, so we record none.

The meters differ in kind. AI Dungeon's tiers sell context, Memories and a monthly bundle of credits that buy extra context on some models and image generation. The credits refresh each billing cycle, do not expire and accumulate, per the pricing-page FAQ, and extra credits can be bought separately at a price we did not record. NovelAI makes text unlimited on every paid tier and sells Anlas for images and other metered actions. Subscription Anlas refill on the renewal date only up to the tier amount and reset to zero when the subscription ends; purchased Anlas do not expire, and can only be bought while subscribed. Anlas pack prices were not recorded. The full detail is on what AI Dungeon costs and what NovelAI costs, and our guide to how story app credits work explains the model.

Where each company's own pages disagree

Each record carries contradictions between pages the company itself published. We print them as found and resolve none. If one decides a purchase, check the live page first.

The address conflict matters most to anyone who wants to know which entity holds their data: the NovelAI Terms and Privacy Policy give different answers, and the pages we read do not reconcile them. The AI Dungeon context conflict matters most to anyone considering the top tier. On the help page's number, the extra $50 that Ultimate costs over Mythic buys credits and Memories, not context.

Adult content and the rules on characters under 18

AI Dungeon controls adult content through an account-wide AI Safety Setting with three levels, Safe, Moderate and Mature. The wording for the top level is: Using the Mature level will not limit the AI from generating mature, violent, or triggering content. You must confirm that you are 18+ when enabling this level. That confirmation is a declaration, and whether Mature works on the free tier is not stated. Published adventures follow the Community Guidelines, which rate explicit sexual content Unrated (18+), and private and unlisted adventures are not moderated beyond what the guidelines call the Walls Approach. Some content stays unpublishable on public adventures whatever the rating, including bestiality, necrophilia, incest and non-consensual sexual content.

On characters under 18, AI Dungeon publishes a detailed rule that bars sexual content involving people under 18, fictional characters included, and an in-play filter called Sexual Content Involving Minors that shows a "content not supported" popup even on the Mature setting. We found no sentence saying all characters are adults; the rule works from the other side, by saying what cannot be written.

NovelAI says less. Its Terms, section 5.2, say You must be 18 years or older and be capable of entering a legal contract in the United States of America in order to use the Services. They contain no clause restricting adult content, and no sentence says it is permitted, so we record the answer as not confirmed; an absence of a ban is not a permission. The home page markets image generation with No restrictions. No compromises., a claim about images. The one NSFW rule we found is No NSFW. for uploads to the public Explore gallery. On sexual content involving characters under 18, we found no published rule in the Terms, Privacy Policy, docs FAQ, Subscription page or Explore page. The addresses /guidelines, /rules and /content-policy return a 404, and the in-app upload guidelines sit behind a login we did not use. That describes the pages we read, not a claim that NovelAI has no policy. Our guide to whether AI story apps allow NSFW sets the wider picture out.

Audio, apps and whose model it is

NovelAI includes text-to-speech: unlimited on every paid tier, with 100 generations in the trial. It is AI voice technology and not human narration. Audio is not confirmed for AI Dungeon. On the model, NovelAI's home page says its story generation is powered by GLM 4.6. AI Dungeon names models in its pricing columns, among them DeepSeek V4 Flash, GLM, Dynamic Large, Madness, Hearthfire and Harbinger, without saying who supplies each, so we cannot say whether a provider's limits sit under its own.

AI Dungeon runs on the web, on iPhone (rated 13+) and on Android (also 13+), under the name "AI Dungeon: RPG & Story Maker" from Latitude, Inc. Its App Store items carry legacy names and cannot be matched to the web tiers, and the Shadow Tiers are not sold in the apps. NovelAI has no native app: its docs FAQ points to the mobile browser and an installable web app, so there is no store price to compare. Offline use is not confirmed for either.

Cancelling, refunds and privacy

AI Dungeon's help page puts cancelling under the profile picture, then Settings, then Membership on the web. Refunds are discretionary: users who unintentionally keep a subscription without using it may email a request, and the Terms say "There are no refunds for partially used periods." Apple payments can only be refunded by Apple. NovelAI's subscriptions renew exactly 30 days after payment and are cancelled through the payment processor or NovelAI's payment center; tier privileges stay until the paid period ends. Its Terms say refunds are not offered "unless explicitly granted by the Company".

NovelAI's Privacy Policy summarises itself this way: your stories are end-to-end encrypted and we cannot read them, and we do not store the prompts you send for generation. That is the policy's own statement, which we report and have not tested. AI Dungeon's privacy policy is linked from its home page, and we did not record its contents. Neither card descriptor is recorded.

Which one should you pick?

• Best for starting free: AI Dungeon, whose free tier has no time limit. NovelAI offers a one-time trial.
• Best for the lowest paid entry price: NovelAI, at $10 against $14.99.
• Best for unlimited text on a flat price: NovelAI, on every paid tier.
• Best for a large memory at a lower price: NovelAI Opus, with 28,672 tokens at $25, by its tier table. AI Dungeon lists 32k at $49.99.
• Best for iPhone and Android apps: AI Dungeon.
• Best for a documented adult-content setting and a written rule on characters under 18: AI Dungeon.
• Best for built-in text-to-speech: NovelAI.

For the wider field see AI Dungeon alternatives and NovelAI alternatives, or NovelAI vs Sudowrite for the writers' side. The AI stories section covers all nine services, and free AI erotica stories lists the free routes. Every pair is in the comparisons section.