NovelAI Review

What Is NovelAI?

NovelAI is a subscription service from Anlatan Inc. that pairs an AI storyteller with an anime image generator. Its home page describes a story generator built to write with you, not for you. You write in a document editor and the model continues what you have started, or you play in a Text Adventure mode where you type "Do" and "Say" commands. Our glossary entry on AI story generators explains the general idea.

NovelAI is a generator, not a library, and it publishes no catalogue figure. A public Explore gallery exists for user uploads, with the "No NSFW" rule described below; we did not record what it holds, and we make no claim about it.

NovelAI review: who it suits

On the published pages, NovelAI suits a writer or player who wants to produce a lot of text for a fixed monthly price. Unlimited text generation on every paid tier is the headline feature, and the tiers are separated by memory and bonus credits, not by a cap on how much you can write. It works in a browser, and can be installed as a web app on a phone.

It is a weaker fit if you want a free tier to settle into, a native app, or a service that states plainly what content it allows. It is also not a place to read stories someone else wrote. If you are an author looking for a drafting tool, our pages for writers start at the best erotica platforms for writers.

Whose model is it, and what is allowed

The content rules at an AI story service follow whoever supplies the model. NovelAI's home page says its story generation is powered by GLM 4.6. The docs list further models that only Opus subscribers can use: the tier table names Llama 3 Erato 70b, and the docs text names Xialong, Krake and Llama 3 Erato. Those two lists do not match, and we cannot tell you from the pages we read who trained or hosts each model.

On adult content, NovelAI says less than most of its rivals. The Terms of Service, effective December 8, 2025, require users to be 18 or older and contain no clause restricting adult content. No sentence we found states that adult content is permitted, and an absence of a ban is not a permission, so we record the answer as not confirmed. The home page markets image generation with the line No restrictions. No compromises. That is a claim about images, not about text.

The only NSFW rule we found sits in the docs page for the public Explore gallery, which says No NSFW. for uploads. It governs what you share publicly, not what you write privately. The in-app upload guidelines sit behind a login and we did not read them. For the wider question, see our guide to NSFW rules at AI story apps.

What the tiers hold: memory, Anlas and models

Memory here is the amount of your story the model can see when it writes the next passage. Anything beyond it is invisible to the model unless you keep it in front of it some other way, so memory decides whether a character introduced an hour ago is still there. Among the services here, NovelAI is alone in publishing the figure in both tokens and characters: Tablet's memory is about 32,768 characters or 8,192 tokens, Scroll's about 49,152 characters or 12,288 tokens, and Opus's about 114,688 characters or 28,672 tokens. That is four characters to the token at every tier.

Put against price, Tablet and Scroll cost the same per token of memory, about $1.22 per thousand tokens ($10 for 8,192; $15 for 12,288). Opus comes to about $0.87 per thousand ($25 for 28,672). The step from Scroll to Opus costs $10 more and gives 16,384 more tokens, nine thousand more bonus Anlas a month and access to the Opus-only models.

Anlas are the currency for images and other metered actions. Tablet and Scroll each include 1,000 a month; Opus includes 10,000. The FAQ says the 10,000 Anlas in Opus would cost $14 on their own, so on NovelAI's own numbers $14 of the $25 is credit and about $11 pays for the memory and the models. Subscription Anlas refill on the renewal date, only up to the tier amount, and reset to zero when the subscription ends, including when it is cancelled early. Anlas you buy do not expire, but extra Anlas can only be bought while subscribed, at a 20 percent discount on every tier. We did not record the pack prices.

Image generation is pay-as-you-go on Tablet and Scroll. On Opus it is listed as "Unlimited*", for single images up to 1024x1024 and 28 steps, with usage limits on models above V4.5.

Where NovelAI's documents disagree

Three discrepancies, none resolved here.

• Memory size. The docs FAQ still gives a context window of 3072 to 8192 tokens, while the subscription page and the models page give 8,192, 12,288 and 28,672. We use the tier table, which is published as an image on the subscription page; the same figures also appear in the docs text.
• Opus-only models. The tier table lists one model and the docs text lists three, as above.
• The company's address. The Terms call Anlatan a Delaware-based limited liability company with a mailing address in Sheridan, Wyoming. The Privacy Policy, effective September 10, 2026, names Anlatan Inc. of Boston, Massachusetts as the controller. If you need to know which entity holds your data, the two documents give different answers.

How much NovelAI costs

Checked October 27, 2026. Source: docs.novelai.net. Prices change with region, promotions and the store you buy through.

Subscriptions renew exactly 30 days after payment, according to the docs, and the Terms say all subscription services are based on 30-day intervals. That is slightly more often than monthly. A year contains about 12.2 thirty-day periods, so Tablet comes to about $121.67 over twelve months of continuous renewal, Scroll about $182.50 and Opus about $304.17, against $120, $180 and $300 for twelve calendar months. The pages we read list no yearly price or annual discount.

NovelAI has no iPhone or Android app, so there is no store price to set beside the web price. The web price is the only one. The free route is the Paper trial, which is one-time and does not refresh, though the docs say it may reset on big releases. The docs FAQ states that there are currently no plans for a free version. For the tier-by-tier view, see what NovelAI costs, and for the general mechanics of credit systems, how story app credits work.

Audio, interactive play and custom stories

Text-to-speech is unlimited on every paid tier and the trial includes 100 generations. It is AI-generated, not human narration, so it belongs with the services on our page about voice narration only in the loosest sense. Text Adventure mode works on typed commands, so it is open-ended play and not authored branching, much as at AI Dungeon.

The "custom story" is the whole product: you supply the premise, characters and world, and the model writes along. See apps with custom stories for the others.

Cancelling, refunds and what the privacy policy says

Tier privileges stay in place until the paid period ends. Cancelling is done through the payment processor or NovelAI's payment center. Terms 4.2.1 put the responsibility on you to contact the billing agent, either directly or through the payment center, and the FAQ says to email support if cancelling fails. Refunds are not offered unless explicitly granted by the Company (Terms 4.1.2).

The 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 as published and have not tested. Our page on whether erotica apps are private sets this beside what other services say.

The age rule and what we did not find

Terms section 5.2 says: 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. No age check is described.

On sexual content involving characters under 18, we found no published rule in the Terms of Service, the Privacy Policy, the docs FAQ, the docs Subscription page or the docs Explore page, all read on October 27, 2026. The addresses novelai.net/guidelines, /rules and /content-policy return HTTP 404. This describes the pages we read, not a claim that NovelAI has no policy. We also found no sentence saying that all characters are adults; the Terms bind the user, not the characters.

Mobile app and web version

The docs FAQ answers the question "Will there be a NovelAI phone application?" with the mobile browser and an installable Progressive Web App, installed from the website on Firefox or added to the home screen on Chrome. We did not search the stores for third-party listings, so the "No" above reflects what NovelAI itself publishes. An account is required, even for the trial.

Best NovelAI alternatives

If a free tier matters, AI Dungeon has one and sells its tiers on context from 4k to 64k tokens; our page on AI Dungeon against NovelAI sets them side by side. For an author who wants a fiction-tuned tool, Sudowrite is a writers' tool with its own model and credits, compared on NovelAI against Sudowrite. DreamGen offers a free tier of credits, and Erota generates explicit stories to a form with a small daily free allowance.

The full list is on NovelAI alternatives, and every service of this kind is in the AI story section. More reviews sit under platforms.

Final verdict