Chub AI Review: The Best Card Shop, If You Build Your Own Setup

My verdict comes from four months in 2024, and it fits in two sentences. After those four months I went back to plain SillyTavern, with Chub for cards only. It's the best hardware store in town, even if I build the furniture myself.

That is praise, and it is also a warning. If you already know what a context template is, Chub is the place where the good cards, lorebooks and flat-rate big models live. If you want an app that says good morning and remembers your week without any setup, this is the wrong shop.

One number made me pause before recommending any paid time here. Site traffic is reportedly down about 65% over recent months. I can't say why from the outside, but I'd factor it in before paying, and I'd keep my favourite cards downloaded rather than trusting any single site to hold them forever.

Key takeaways

• The library and the card format are the reason to come: cards and lorebooks behave like tabletop modules, and they download for use anywhere.
• The chat is better than its reputation: long, literary replies that keep details straight, plus tools to steer a scene like a director.
• It is a toolkit for tinkerers, with a steep learning curve and a lot of jargon before the first decent reply.
• One plan at $20 a month now covers every Chub model, but payment is crypto only and refunds are at the company's discretion.
• The terms name no legal entity or jurisdiction, and the content switch does not hide everything.

In editing terms, Chub was the stock footage site and somebody else's model was the camera. I would grab a card that looked promising, drop it into my own setup and see whether the character held up. It felt less like dating an app and more like shopping for props, which says more about me than it does about Chub.

From library to subscriber

The library habit never went away, but it got company. Later I paid for Chub's own models, first the cheap tier and then the big one, and those stories sit in the pricing and memory sections where the numbers live. The short version is that the paid models made the long campaigns hold together, and the payment side made me miss my bank.

What did not change was how I thought about the site. Chub was always the shelf first and the chat window second. Even at my most invested, the thing I opened most often was a character page, not a conversation.

Phones, then and now

The device story was simple and a little clumsy. There was an Android APK but no iOS app. The APK went on my old Android test phone, and on my iPhone Chub stayed a browser tab.

My main phone treated it like a website, and my second phone treated it like a science project, which is roughly how I felt about it on bad nights too.

The picture in September 2026 is muddier rather than clearer. Patch notes 0.5.7 say Chub is live on the iOS App Store again, but the store link itself was not collected. Apple's lookup on 22 September 2026 shows zero published apps under Chub AI Inc's developer account.

I think that is the honest answer for anyone asking whether they can put Chub on a phone: use the browser and treat any store listing with care until Chub itself links to it. A lookalike app in a store is the kind of continuity error I would catch in a client edit, and I'd rather not catch it with a card number.

Two timelines on this page

Two timelines run through this review, and they are kept apart on purpose. Everything in the past tense is my own story from 2024. The present-tense facts come from a hands-on check of the web version with a free account on 24 September 2026, after a first check on 23 September 2026.

The second day covered the main Venus chat interface, the subscription page and a live chat first-hand. Where my notes and today's site disagree, I give both, with their dates, and let you decide which one you are buying into.

How it ended

The ending is in the verdict above, and it was quiet. There was no fight with support and no dramatic cancellation story, just a slow drift back to my own front end. Chub stayed on the bookmarks bar as a place to shop, which is where it started and, I suspect, where it does its best work.

My first Saturday

I sat down with the confidence of a man who learns editing software for a living. That confidence did not survive the morning. Every guide I opened assumed I already knew half the vocabulary, and every setting I changed produced a reply that was worse in a new and interesting way.

Looking back, the vocabulary was the whole barrier. A jailbreak prompt and a context template are not hard ideas once someone explains them, but nothing on the way in explained them to me.

How sign-up looks today

The sign-up itself is the easy part, and it is fast. The legacy interface at www.characterhub.org is reachable. Registration there, at www.characterhub.org/register, uses the same Chub account system as chub.ai.

The form asks only for an e-mail address, a username and a password. There is no captcha on the page. Registration takes under 1 minute from an empty form to a finished account.

After registering, the browser lands on the /profile page straight away, already logged in. No e-mail verification is needed to log in. I like that: a character shop should let you look around before it asks for anything.

The account page

The profile is bare at first, and the account page has a small catch. It warns that an unverified e-mail may restrict rating and commenting, in these words: "Your email is unverified. Your ability to rate/comment may be restricted."

So you can browse and download freely, but joining the conversation in the comments may wait until the e-mail is confirmed.

Account settings hold the display name, the username, the e-mail address, the content filters and a change-password option. The username field carries a short line of text: "This can't be changed." If you lose the password, a reset works for getting back into the account.

That username line is the one I'd take seriously. The username is what appears on every card and comment, and it stays with the account for good. I'd pick something I would be happy to see printed under a public review in a year, not the joke handle that seemed funny at midnight.

A jungle with good stock

My first impression was not tidy. The front page is a jungle, though. Tags are inconsistent, and searching for 'noir detective' also turned up a sentient parking meter and three things I closed immediately.

I was looking for a trench coat and a rainy city, and the search engine handed me street furniture with feelings. The parking meter was funnier than it had any right to be, and the other three results taught me to use the back button quickly. It was like browsing a flea market where the good table sits right next to the one you walk past without eye contact.

Part of the mess has a rule behind it: "characters with fewer than three tags are hidden from search". I think that rule is sensible, but it rewards creators who tag generously rather than accurately, and generous tagging is how a parking meter ends up in a detective search.

The home page today

After logging in, the home page is a "Timeline", described as "The latest updates from people and tags you follow". It is a grid of character cards, each showing ratings, downloads and tags. The mix runs from anime and fandom characters to original ones.

I like a feed built from follows, because it turns the jungle into a garden you plant yourself. It only works once you follow a few creators whose taste you trust, so the first visits will still feel like the jungle described above.

Buttons offer "Chat with…", Import Chat and Download. Collapsible panels hold the Definitions, with "Total 247 tokens, Permanent 75", plus Discussion, shared public chats and a Gallery. Every character page shows its tags and a download count.

Those counts are the closest thing Chub has to a star rating, and I'd trust chats and messages over favourites. A card that 110 people actually talked to has been road-tested; a favourite costs one click. Each card also has a direct link that opens it in KoboldAI Lite, which is useful if you want to try a character without setting anything up.

Cards and lorebooks have git-like versioning and forks. The legacy "New Characters" feed shows fresh uploads as they arrive, for example a BBC-style Sherlock Holmes card next to Fire Emblem, Overwatch and Pokemon characters. That mix is the library in miniature: fan fiction, games and literature, all on one shelf.

The people behind the cards

The part I did not expect was the community. The community vibe is creative and a bit feral. Creators take feedback seriously, and the comments under a popular card read like book reviews.

I read those comments the way I read reviews of a used lens: slowly, looking for the one person who mentions the flaw. More often than not, the creator had already answered and pushed a new version. For a site with this little polish, that level of care surprised me, and it is the main reason I still shop here.

Why the card format works

A good module gives you a setting, a few ways into it and notes that only matter when the players wander somewhere. That is exactly what a Chub card does, and it is why I stopped thinking of characters as profiles and started thinking of them as scenarios.

The format follows the V2 spec, with an embedded character book, a depth prompt and alternate greetings. On the legacy interface, a character page shows a V2 card badge, so you know at a glance which spec you are getting. It also shows the token count, for example about 901 tokens, 570 of them permanent.

That token count is the budget line I wish every app printed. Permanent tokens are the part of the card the model carries in every message, so a lean card leaves more room for the actual story. It is like knowing a clip's bitrate before you drop it on the timeline.

Under the hood of a card

A Tavern tab shows the full raw card fields: description, personality, first_mes, mes_example, scenario, system_prompt, post_history_instructions, alternate_greetings, depth_prompt, linked lorebooks and the embedded character book. The character creator covers the name, avatar, tagline, description, initial message, scenario, example dialogs, system prompt and post-history instructions, plus a content rating and public, private or unlisted visibility.

Those fields are the difference between a character and a costume. I'd spend more time on the example dialogue than on the avatar, because that is what the model copies.

A Fork button on each character page copies the card to your own account. Character pages keep a version history. The docs also ask creators to avoid racy avatar images, for a very practical reason: "it spooks the payment processors".

Forking is the feature that makes the library improve over time. A good card rarely starts good; it becomes good after someone fixes the greeting or tightens the personality, and the version history keeps the credit visible.

Chub AI lorebooks, and my Denver moment

Lorebooks are where the format goes from clever to useful. They have keyword-triggered entries, a scan depth, a token budget and recursive scanning. Lorebooks can also be linked to cards, so one world can serve many characters.

It meant typing entries that nobody else would ever read, like logging B-roll for a project with no client. Then one line of dialogue proved every entry worked, and my city came back at me in the mouth of a fictional detective. I have delivered wedding films that made me less proud.

Personas, Stages and the API

The built-in Venus front end supports personas, presets and lorebooks. "Stages" are sandboxed iframe mini-apps and extensions, for example expression packs and mini-games. Checked Stages carry a "Verified" badge.

Chub's public API is on GitHub as well. I'd call that the clearest sign of who the site is built for: people who want to build, not just visit. For those people the creation tools are the best on offer, and for everyone else they are a very long manual.

Directing instead of arguing

On a film set, when an actor misreads a line, you do not argue with them for ten minutes. You say "again, a bit softer" and roll. That is what regenerate felt like, and edit was the equivalent of fixing a line in post.

Impersonate was the one that took me a while to value. It writes your side of the scene, which sounds lazy until a scene stalls and you need someone to hand the story a push. Delete did the rest: a bad branch disappeared and the scene carried on as if it never happened.

I think this toolset matters more than any single model. A better model gives you better first takes, but tools like these let you keep the good takes and cut the rest. Other apps treat every reply as final, and after Chub that feels like editing with the undo button removed.

Branching is the proper version of steering by hand: every regenerated reply becomes a path you can come back to.

A short scene on 24 September 2026

Chats in Venus live at their own address under chub.ai/chats and are marked "A private chat". On 24 September 2026 a 3-message chat played a scene in which a travelling cartographer arrives at a snowy inn. Each reply arrived in under about 10 seconds.

The replies were the best quality of any app checked that month: long, literary and full of rich side characters. They brought in an innkeeper with a gray braid and a one-eyed trapper called Harnic, described "green lights like copper in a fire" and produced a map with "small x marks inked along the ridgeline".

Read with an editor's eye, that passes the colour-grade test. The light has a source, the props are specific, and nothing melts between shots. A gray braid and ink marks on a map are what make a set feel lived in, and they cost the writer nothing but attention.

The bot never spoke for the user. That is the line I'd underline, because my own group scene went wrong in exactly that spot, and a model that leaves your character alone is worth more than any pretty sentence.

Group scenes

The group chat was the best and the worst evening I had on Chub. The group chat with three characters was a lot of fun, until the bartender started answering for everyone and I had to fix turn order by hand.

For a while it was a proper scene. Three voices, three agendas, and a bar that felt like a place rather than a text box. Then the bartender started speaking for the other two, which is funny once and exhausting the fourth time, like a wedding guest who grabs the microphone at every toast.

Fixing it meant going back through the chat and nudging who spoke next, the way I would re-sync a multi-camera edit after one angle drifts. It worked, but it turned a fun scene into a job.

I'd keep the cast small and give each card a clear reason to speak, because a bartender with nothing to do will always find something to do.

Live multiplayer

Venus also has a multiplayer mode called "Go Live". Go Live, which hosts multiplayer chats, is a subscriber-only beta.

I like the idea of a shared scene with real people, but given how one bartender could derail three bots, I'd expect it to need a firm hand from whoever hosts. I'd wait for it to leave beta before planning an evening around it.

The chat menu

The chat window is a cockpit rather than a text box. The menu's Configuration holds presets, Prompt Structure, Generation Parameters and Text-to-Speech. It also holds Secrets for API keys, Chat Settings, Character Settings, Chat Memory, New Chat, All Chats, View Full Chat Tree and View Discussion.

The input box supports "/" commands and a microphone. The chat supports themes too. Per the docs, chat configuration presets can be public, private or unlisted, and model-specific.

Preset sharing is the most useful line in that menu for a newcomer. Someone else's tuned settings for a model can save you the kind of Saturday the first-night section describes, and I'd start from a popular public preset before touching a single slider.

Bring your own model

A large share of Chub's value is that the chat does not care whose model sits behind it. Users can bring their own API: OpenAI, Google, OpenRouter, NovelAI, Kobold and Ooba, reverse proxies and other major providers. A "Secrets" setting stores the API keys.

A newer frontier model from a major provider has also been added to the model list.

This is the part that keeps Chub useful even for people who never pay it. The chat window, the editing tools and the branching all work with a model you already rent elsewhere, so the subscription becomes an option rather than a gate.

Export is the feature I'd check first in any app, and Chub gets it right. A long story is a project file, and a project file you cannot take with you is a hostage.

Before the upgrade, that detective had the memory of an intern on a first shoot. Every so often the case file lost track of its own victim, and I spent more time correcting the record than playing the story. After the upgrade the case held together, which for a murder mystery is the whole job.

What today's chat kept straight

The short chat on 24 September 2026 points the same way. Details stayed consistent across the replies. An out-of-character memory check passed cleanly: the bot stepped out of the story, restated the name, age and profession given for the user's character earlier, and then went back to the scene.

A few messages is a scene, not a campaign, so I'd read that as a clean first take rather than proof. Still, stepping out of character, answering correctly and stepping back in is exactly the continuity discipline my detective lacked before the upgrade.

The memory tools on offer

The big models are only one layer. Venus also offers chat memory summaries. Chat Memory is a running summary, written by hand or generated by the AI, that is sent along as extra context.

I think the manual option is underrated. A summary you write yourself is like a continuity sheet on a shoot: boring to keep, priceless when someone asks what happened three scenes ago.

The second layer is the lorebook. Lorebooks and character books inject keyword-triggered background without using permanent character-definition tokens. Mention a place or a name, and the right note slides into the context without costing space in every message.

What the plan promises

On paper the media side is generous. The single subscription tier gives "Unlimited access to voice". It also gives "Unlimited access to multimedia generation".

Unlimited is a strong word on a plan card, and the rest of this section shows what sits behind it.

Images

An "Imagine" feature generates images. A reviewer calls Imagine images photorealistic but visibly AI-made on a close look, with inconsistent character likeness.

Inconsistent likeness is the flaw I'd care about most. In video work, a face that drifts between shots is the first thing a client notices, and it breaks the illusion faster than a bad line of dialogue. On a text platform, pictures like that work as a garnish, as long as nobody expects the character to look the same twice.

Voice

The chat has text-to-speech settings. A reviewer describes the voice output as a "polished audiobook narrator": functional but not natural. No two-way live voice-call feature was found; only text-to-speech is mentioned.

So unlimited voice means unlimited narration, not unlimited phone calls. If calling a character is the point for you, Chub does not offer it.

Video

No video-generation feature is mentioned on any readable docs.chub.ai page. No working video generation was confirmed, and a claimed "Wizard" video capability is listed but untested. I'd treat video as absent until the docs say otherwise.

What free gets you

The free tier includes the full character library. Free accounts can create cards. Free accounts can also chat, either through their own API key or with light, free models.

The chat part works without a wallet. On 24 September 2026 a 3-message chat on a free account ran without paying anything. For a card collector, free is not a trial, it is the whole product.

There is also no advertising in the way. The legacy interface shows no ads.

Chub AI trial credits and daily caps

Chub's own big models are a different story. The official subscription FAQ puts it plainly: "One-time free trial credits amounting to a few dozen messages are sent out to new users regularly." Official patch notes 0.5.7 say the same about the Soji model: "Non-subscribers will have a few trial messages".

Third-party reviews on roborhythms.com, which are unverified, mention one-time trial credits for new accounts, with the amount varying by account. The same unverified reviews mention a rotating free model with a daily cap that resets every 24 hours.

The official line and the reviews do not quite match. I'd plan around the one-time credits the FAQ promises and treat any daily allowance as a bonus if it shows up, not as a plan.

Where free stops

Free stops at the big models. If you want Soji without paying a third party, the trial is a taste, not a meal. If you are happy to pay OpenRouter or run something locally, free Chub is enough for a long time, and I think that is the smartest way to start.

That is a fair summary of what $5 bought in July 2024. The replies were smart enough to enjoy, but anything older than a few scenes fell out of the notebook. I later moved up to Mars at $20, and the memory section explains why that was the better money.

One plan on 24 September 2026

The subscription page at chub.ai/subscription, seen logged in on 24 September 2026, offers one tier only. It is headed "SUBSCRIBE for smarter bots" and costs $20 a month. The tier gives unlimited access to all LLMs, including Soji 1.6T 60K.

It adds early access to new models and access to any future models.

The older Mercury and Mars multi-tier setup is no longer offered; the page now shows one plan. The official docs, on the API Connections page, still speak of Mars: "A Mars subscription is $20 a month with unlimited messaging as well as total integration into the Chub ecosystem."

The Mars page calls Mars the first subscriber tier, with unlimited access for one person to the largest models for $20 a month. It works inside Chub or as an OpenAI API mimic in another chat front end.

Mercury, then and now

Mercury is where my $5 went, and it is not on the subscription page today. Third-party sites, roborhythms.com and aicompanionguides.com among them, still give Mercury a headline price of about $5 a month, unverified. The same sites put Mars at about $20 a month, also unverified.

Mercury reportedly runs smaller models of up to about 13B with about 8K context, unverified. It reportedly includes a Mistral 7B finetune and a MythoMax 13B finetune, an 8K-token context, image generation and future models up to 13B. That matches my small notebook exactly, which is more agreement than third-party pricing pages usually manage.

I paid $5 for Mercury in July 2024; on 24 September 2026 there is no $5 option on the official page, and the one plan costs $20 a month. Reviewers report no annual discount, unverified.

What the models are

Chub runs its own uncensored models, Mercury and Mars, including Soji 671B. Per the patch notes, the Mars models include Soji, Chub AI's DeepSeek finetune: 671B, based on DeepSeek V3 0324, with 60K context. The subscription page says Soji is "multiple times the size of the models used on similar platforms".

The patch notes' 671B and the plan card's 1.6T do not match, so I'd treat the exact size as a moving target. What matters to me is the 60K context, which is the whole notebook rather than a few loose pages.

The small print on unlimited

Unlimited has a precise meaning here: "Unlimited for a single user, similar to Netflix." Concurrent requests from the same account return a 429 error.

Among the reasons to subscribe, the page lists not having to manage API keys. It also says a subscription supports "free as in freedom, uncensored models". The subscription API can be used anywhere that accepts an OpenAI-compatible API.

That key-management line is the exact reason I bought Mercury, so the pitch clearly still works on people like me. Subscriptions have been around since June 2023.

I understand the argument. I also know what it costs in convenience, and the friction section has that story.

Is it worth it?

Here is the money math. At $20 a month, someone who runs a long story most nights pays a flat fee instead of watching a meter, and the fee buys the biggest models Chub has. Someone who chats twice a week is probably better off on their own key.

My advice: pay only once a long campaign needs the big models, and one month at a time, since refunds are not on the table. Before that, the library, the free card creator and your own key cover a lot of ground.

I think that is one of the most user-friendly decisions on the site. Most companion apps sell coins that turn into messages, images or voice minutes at rates you need a calculator to follow. Chub skips the exchange office entirely.

Either you pay Chub a flat subscription and use its models, or you pay a third-party provider for the tokens you actually use.

The catch is that a third-party bill can be less predictable than a flat fee. A long evening on a large model through your own key can cost more than a week of light use. It is like renting gear by the day instead of paying for a monthly membership: fair, but only if you watch the clock.

My view: pay-as-you-go through your own key suits people who chat in bursts. A flat plan suits people who run long stories most nights. Chub lets you choose, and I'd rather have that choice than a coin shop.

No daily reward was seen on either one.

The welcome side is just as quiet. No welcome popup appears on the legacy interface. No welcome e-mail arrived after registration, and no e-mail from Chub arrived at all.

After enough companion apps, a signup without a countdown timer feels strange. Most of them greet you with a flashing "today only" discount and a clock that resets every time you reload. Chub greets you with a profile page and silence, like a hardware store with no sale posters in the window.

I count that in Chub's favour. A discount timer is a pressure tactic, and I'd rather decide on a subscription with a clear head than with a ticking clock in the corner. The flip side is that there is nothing to wait for: waiting for a Chub sale is like waiting for a hardware store to discount its screws.

Where the real savings are

The real savings on Chub are structural rather than promotional. The library and the card creator are free, and your own key or a local model can replace a subscription entirely. If you do pay, I'd pay for one month only after the free route has shown you which models you actually need.

The age check

Registration asks for no birthday. Instead, the registration form shows a notice: "This site is not for minors. Do not register if you are less than 18 years old."

There is no document check of any kind on the way in. The site relies on the visitor's word, and I think readers should know that plainly.

What the rules allow and forbid

The terms put no restrictions on the content of character definition files: "There are no restrictions on the content of character definition files." The same terms draw one hard line: "However, this site cannot host illegal content."

Abuse imagery involving minors is removed, and that includes drawn or generated images. Characters who appear to be minors and depictions of real people are also reportedly banned, although that comes from a web-search synthesis rather than a page anyone can quote.

The switches you get

The legacy header has a content toggle, and it is set to off by default. A click on the toggle does not visibly change its state. Tag filters include the label for mature content and a separate label for disturbing material.

The account's content filters cover blocked tags, blocked users and a default sort order. Blocked tags are the tool I'd set up on day one. The header toggle looks like a master switch, but on this site the blocked-tag list does the real filtering.

A sensible setup takes a few minutes. Add every tag you never want to see to the blocked list, block uploaders whose work you dislike, and choose a default sort that favours popular cards, since those come with comments that warn you what is inside.

What still gets through

On the current interface, mature-content tags are visible on the logged-in timeline. With the content toggle off, lorebook browsing on the legacy interface still surfaces lorebooks built around hypnosis and mind control. It also surfaces a fetish-themed lorebook with a degrading tagline.

Patch notes about merging duplicate tags show that some public tags cover themes most readers will want to avoid as well. The point for a reader is simple: "off" on Chub does not mean hidden, and the only dependable filter is the one you build yourself.

Who runs it

The Terms of Service name the operator only as "Chub (AKA CharHub)". The terms state no company legal name and no jurisdiction. The legal entity, per Apple's App Store developer directory, is Chub AI Inc: "Developer: Chub AI Inc".

No registered address or country for Chub AI Inc was found on any readable source.

In plain English, if something goes wrong, you would not know which court to go to or which country's law applies. For a site that takes money, I think that is the biggest gap on this page. A company name in an app store directory is better than nothing, but it is not an address for a letter.

Changes to the terms

The Terms of Service were last updated on June 25th 2023. They may change "at anytime and without notice". Changes to the terms are also "retroactive".

Retroactive means a new rule can apply to what you already did under the old one. In my trade that is a client changing the brief after the shoot has wrapped, and nobody enjoys it. Combined with no notice, the practical advice is simple: read the terms again before every renewal, because nobody will tell you they changed.

Your private chats

Private chats and characters "will not ever be distributed to a third party, unencrypted, used for training an AI model". Private content "may not be plainly viewed by any agent ... of Chub without express written permission".

The docs add that Mars models are not trained on public or private Chub chats. If you use the API outside the Venus UI, the docs say "none of the content of the inputs or the outputs ... are at any point logged or stored". For that API use, only metadata is kept: user id, time, lengths, model and milliseconds.

What you give up when you publish

Public uploads grant Chub and every user a perpetual worldwide licence. In plain English, a card you publish can be downloaded, forked and reused by anyone, forever. I'd keep anything personal, like a lorebook about your own life, private or unlisted.

Sharing, refunds and liability

One subscription is one person: "Obvious key sharing ... will result in restrictions". Lending your key to a friend is the quickest way to lose it.

Chub does not offer refunds unless the company itself decides to grant one. Liability is capped at the lesser of 6 months' payments or $50. With crypto-only payment, there is no card company to appeal to either.

The privacy policy and your data

The privacy policy is 5 short paragraphs. It says only what is necessary is collected, for example usernames. It promises no disclosure to third parties without consent.

Five paragraphs is short even for a small site. Short is not bad in itself, since long policies often hide more than they say, but it leaves questions like retention and location unanswered.

Per the docs, the account e-mail is used sparingly, only for password recovery and the subscription service. The contact address is [email protected].

How long account data is kept is not disclosed, according to a stale secondary source: "They keep this data, but for how long? They won't say."

My summary: good promises on content, weak answers on who, where and how long. I'd keep private stories private and treat any payment as money that may not come back.

Paying for it

My worst Chub memory is not a bad reply. It is a declined payment. Then my card payment failed two months in a row.

The subreddit was full of people with the same problem, and the answer was always 'use crypto'.

Today the barrier is there by design rather than by accident. Crypto-only payment is a real barrier for many users. I agree with that line completely, and I say it as someone who crossed it grudgingly and still resents the toll.

When Chub AI is not loading

On 24 September 2026 chub.ai loads normally in an ordinary home browser, with no block. That is what most visitors should expect.

There is an exception worth knowing about. chub.ai and its API subdomains sit behind a Cloudflare firewall that shows some IP addresses a hard block page, "You are unable to access chub.ai", with no challenge to pass. For a blocked IP address the main product is unusable.

If you ever meet that page, there is no button to press and no appeal link, the digital version of a bouncer who will not tell you the dress code. I'd not pay for a month from a connection that has shown it even once.

The old interface

The legacy interface is still up, and it says what it is.

It shows a banner: "This UI is deprecated and not maintained. Please use the latest UI for sharing and chatting." Its browse listing sometimes sticks on "Loading... 0 Total Results".

I'd use it for sign-up and a quick look, and do everything else on chub.ai.

Small annoyances

After a click on "Verify Email", no Chub e-mail arrives within about 5 minutes, and none arrived later either. Given the warning about restricted comments, that is a small but real barrier to joining the community.

The model used by default on a free account is not shown in the chat interface. For an editor that is like getting footage with no camera metadata: it may look fine, but you cannot tell what shot it. On a site where the model is the whole product, I'd want that label on screen.

Where help lives

A status page exists: status.chub.ai redirects to chub.ai/status. The footer carries a Ko-fi donation link. There is a Chub AI Discord server at discord.gg/chubai.

There is a GitHub organisation, CharHubAI, with the API repo CharHub-API and feature-request discussions. A public Trello roadmap also exists.

No Chub AI Reddit, X, Instagram or TikTok links were found on the legacy and docs pages on 23 September 2026, and the main site footer was not checked then. So the subreddit that talked me into crypto is not something those pages point to.

My view: none of these is a bug in the usual sense. They are the costs of a site that chose independence over convenience, and each reader has to decide whether that trade is theirs too.

The third group is the one Chub's own models are built for. It is best for uncensored long-form roleplay fans who want cheap flat-rate large models. If you run one long story most nights, the flat fee for big models is the part of Chub that makes sense.

Who should skip it

The list of people who should look elsewhere is longer. Chub is not for beginners who want a polished plug-and-play companion app. It is not for anyone who wants strict content moderation.

It is also not for users who need a clear company identity and jurisdiction. It is not for users who need refunds. And it is not for users on IP addresses or in regions that Cloudflare blocks.

Cancelling is reportedly self-serve via Profile > Subscription > Cancel, with access to the end of the billing period, according to a secondary source. I'd note the renewal date the day you pay and cancel well before it, because nothing about crypto makes a slipped renewal easy to undo.

What shows on a statement

Reviewers say card statements show "Postcron.com", unverified. That sits oddly next to crypto-only billing, since a crypto payment should not produce a card statement at all. My reading is that the descriptor dates from a time when cards still worked, and I'd not expect to see it on a new subscription.

Deleting the account

Account settings include a "Permanently Delete Account" button. Account deletion reportedly removes chat history, characters and conversations permanently, per a stale secondary source.

Permanently means permanently. Before pressing it, I'd export every chat worth keeping and download every card you made, because there is no undo, and public cards stay out in the world anyway.

What to do before paying

• Try the free route first: the library, the creator and your own key.
• Note the renewal date the day you pay.
• Remember that refunds depend on the company's goodwill, and crypto payments cannot be charged back.
• Export chats and cards regularly, not just before you leave.

Read the manual before the first chat

The official documentation at docs.chub.ai, a GitBook, is reachable. It covers the basics, character creation, API connections, prompting and lorebooks. An hour there could save a whole day of guessing, and that is the cheapest upgrade on the site.

For the technical crowd, inference Swagger docs live at inference.chub.ai. If you plan to use Chub's models from another front end, that is the page to bookmark.

Start free, pay later

Begin with the library and your own key, and treat Chub as a shop rather than a destination. Pay for the single plan only when a story gets long enough to need the big models, and pay one month at a time.

Build something of your own

Write a small lorebook about a place you know well. A handful of entries on streets, bars and landmarks teaches the format faster than any guide, and the first time a character uses one of them, you will understand why people stay.

Protect your work

Export chats and download your cards often. A card saved as PNG or JSON outlives any website, and a fork keeps your own version when a creator changes theirs. Set up blocked tags on day one, because the header toggle does not do the job alone.

Value for money is mixed. One flat plan for every model is fair for long stories, but crypto-only billing and no refunds lower the score. Images and voice score weak, because they are extras on a text platform and live calls or video are missing.

Privacy and terms are mixed: strong promises about private chats, no named jurisdiction behind them. Cancelling and billing are weak, mostly because of how you pay. Content settings are weak for anyone who wants a filter they can trust, because the off switch does not hide everything.

That difference shows best in one feature. The Mars and Mercury API works as an OpenAI-compatible endpoint in third-party interfaces such as SillyTavern, with a no-logging claim. In other words, you can pay Chub for its models and never use its chat window at all.

I can't think of a mainstream companion app that offers that. They want you inside their app, where their coins and upsells live. Chub is content to be the engine under someone else's hood, and I respect that more than any feature list.

Where Chub is better

Chub wins on cards, lorebooks, exports and editing control. It also lets you swap the model behind the chat for one you already pay for, which no finished companion app on my list allows.

If you want a companion, pick one of the others. If you want the parts to build your own, Chub is the shop, and the other apps are showrooms.

More on this site: Chub AI alternative, Chub AI status, Chub AI vs Janitor AI, Chub AI vs Character AI.

Its weaknesses are just as real. A site that only takes crypto, names no jurisdiction and keeps refunds at its own discretion asks for a lot of trust.

So I keep it where it belongs: a bookmark for cards, a shop to visit with a list, and a lorebook I still think about. If you like building things, go in with patience and your own key. If you don't, admire the craftsmanship and choose something easier.