character.ai vs Joyland AI: Which One Is Better In 2025?

character.ai vs Joyland AI

I've spent a full week with both character.ai and Joyland AI to see which one truly deserves your attention and subscription. Both platforms make big promises, but they take surprisingly different approaches.

After hundreds of messages exchanged with each AI girl, I've put together clear differences in both platforms.

In this head-to-head comparison, I'll break down exactly how these AI girlfriends stack up across all the features that actually matter.

Whether you're looking for emotional support, entertaining conversation, or a judgment-free space to be yourself, this in-depth comparison will help you choose the right AI girlfriend for your specific needs.

character.ai

An AI chatbot platform that enables creation and interaction with virtual characters through text conversations, featuring pre-made profiles, natural dialogue, and community sharing capabilities.

Joyland AI

Joyland AI is a platform for creating and interacting with customizable anime-style AI companions through text chat, offering character design, role-play, and interactive storytelling.

Character Diversity

character.ai

Character.ai offers thousands of characters and chatbots, from romantic partners to supportive companions.

Even completely fictional ones, like a talking apple pie, or RPFs (real person fiction) with scenarios like a trip to Hawaii.

But there's room for improvement. The character page is sleek and scrollable, but not ideal for finding specific characters.

However, the search menu helps by suggesting trending characters and letting you filter content through various categories like romance, anime, teacher, K-pop, and more.

Joyland AI

Looking for an AI companion? Joyland AI offers thousands of characters to choose from.

Most characters are anime-styled, with some realistic designs, along with options for roleplay scenarios or group chats.

Joyland, like many anime-focused apps, doesn’t emphasize ethnicity. Instead, it offers a wide range of character types — from goth girls to mafia bosses, and even furry companions.

There's also a novel-like feature where you can dive into interactive stories about billionaire romances and forbidden love.

Special events (like the current goth theme) keep the content fresh and offer Premium rewards for active users.

The app also features regularly updated channels showcasing the most liked characters, trending picks, and recommended creators.

You can filter by broad categories like Romance or Anime, but there’s no way to narrow characters down by personality traits or gender.

The search function opens in a separate window with limited results, making character discovery less efficient than it could be.

Customization

character.ai

Physical customization is basic - only upload or generate a single character image. That's it.

The real customization happens with personality, and most of the customization can be done through free text.

You start with the essentials:

• Name
• Tagline
• Description
• Greeting messages
• Voice
• Definition

Voice options are surprisingly flexible. You can pick from user-uploaded voices or add your own.

There’s also a tagging system—like “anime,” “adventure,” or “vampire”—that helps other users quickly get a sense of your character’s theme.

Then you can define how your character thinks, talks, and behaves through detailed backstory options.

I found this particularly useful for creating consistent character responses during my testing.

Joyland AI

The app offers two creation paths:

• Quick Creation
• Advanced Create

Quick Creation lets you import existing characters from other AI apps using .JSON or .PNG files. If you’re switching from Venus AI or SillyTavern, you can bring your companions with you.

Advanced Create is hands-on with no presets — personality customization relies entirely on free text input.

For appearance, you can upload an image or write a prompt for styled variations — no sliders or detailed editing.

Personality Builder is where most of the work happens.

Setup begins with the basics:

• Basic Info: Name, Age, Gender
• Intro: Displayed on the profile, but doesn’t influence prompts
• Categories: Choose persona type (Anime, Dating, OC, etc.)
• Visibility: Private, Unlisted, or Public

Once that’s done, you move on to adding depth:

• Scenario: Backdrop or context for interactions
• Greeting: Opening line to start conversations
• Lore (Facts & Knowledge): Keywords and memories to improve performance on skills, experiences, or backstory
• Example Dialogue: Pre-written responses for realism

Assistant Mode is also available to walk you through Character Description, providing helpful tips on what to include—but the words remain yours to describe.

You can choose from 10 voice options to give your character spoken dialogue.

The app lets you control image generation — choose intelligent AI-created pictures, train your bots with custom images, or turn it off so your character remains text-only.

Joyland AI promotes themed events like ‘Summer Party 2025’ or ‘Goath Girls’ (the ones active during my test), where characters can be temporarily showcased on home pages.

Note: The app provides guidance, but creating an engaging character can feel overwhelming for users accustomed to presets — it takes patience and practice.

Chat Experience

character.ai

You can pick from different AI personalities with names like Meow and Roare - though these cutesy names don't reflect the depth of interaction you'll experience.

My girl kept conversations natural and brief, just like texting a real person. No long-winded explanations or robotic responses here.

She responded with genuine warmth and understanding when I shared personal concerns or sought emotional support.

The romantic elements felt authentic, though they lean towards innocent, teenage-style flirting rather than mature relationship dynamics.

There’s room for improvement. The chat interface sometimes makes it difficult to clearly separate the girlfriend’s responses from its action descriptions.

But this is a minor issue that doesn't significantly impact the overall experience.

Joyland AI

When you choose a character to chat with, you can view your AI girlfriend’s profile, including her intro, creator, tags, and comments from other users.

With Standard and Premium plans, you can choose from four different LLM models to customize how your girlfriend responds.

You can set different user personas by sharing details about yourself, and your AI girlfriend will adjust her responses to match.

Chat Experience: My girlfriend stayed true to her personality - teasing, playful, and a smoker.

The smoker tag even led to a playful outcome — when I asked her to stop, she bargained for a kiss to quit.

These small interactions felt natural and showed that my girl can adapt to different scenarios.

For romance, expect standard scenes like beach walks at sunset, but with enough personal touches to keep things interesting.

My girl responded warmly to personal stories and showed genuine empathy when I needed emotional support.

Joyland AI’s chat includes suggested responses, giving you two options to keep conversations flowing effortlessly.

Note: Most characters are user-created, so your experience will vary depending on who you choose — I highly recommend checking comments first.

NSFW Chat Experience

character.ai

My girlfriend handled intimate conversations like a shy first date. She didn't dive into explicit content, but it wasn't completely closed off either.

She responded to flirting, but kept things PG-13. When I tested romantic scenarios, she showed surprising awareness, even suggesting we move our campus roleplay somewhere more private.

She asked if I'd prefer a "good girl" or "bad girl" personality, but don't expect either version to get too wild. The responses stay firmly in the realm of subtle hints and playful teasing.

The biggest limitation? Conversations can hit a wall if you push for more explicit content.

If you're seeking a slow-burn romantic experience with light flirting, you'll find what you're looking for. If you want anything more explicit, you'll need to look elsewhere.

Joyland AI

My girlfriend was comfortable talking about sex, but used descriptive, thoughtful responses instead of explicit language.

During our chats, my girl discussed intimate topics openly while keeping conversations tasteful and engaging.

The roleplay feature worked well for NSFW scenarios — my girl knew how to play those naughty roles.

I tested multiple different situations, and each time, my girlfriend stayed in character and kept the story flowing.

A useful touch: the chat suggestion feature offers relevant prompts that actually fit the scene you're in.

Image Generation

character.ai

There isn't any image generation feature available. If seeing your AI girlfriend is important, you'll need to look elsewhere.

Joyland AI

The only way to generate images is by pressing the image button in the chat interface, which generates the image directly in chat.

You can't control what you get. No prompts, no presets - just random generation.

The system adapts to your character design - choose a girl with a realistic avatar, get realistic pictures; go anime, get anime-style shots. Simple as that.

The quality? Good enough for casual use. Images look appealing at first glance, but the resolution isn’t great, and realistic ones can appear a bit pixelated.

Note: If your character was created without image options, you won’t be able to generate pictures for them.

Video Generation

character.ai

The app provides a script-to-scene generator: upload a photo, choose a voice, write a short script, and the system brings it to life.

The result? A stylized video clip that plays out your custom scene. It looks good, feels personal—but don’t expect Hollywood realism. It’s more of an animated moment than live-action.

Note: Video generation is a beta feature, currently available only to subscribed users. It’s experimental and may be changed or removed at any time.

Joyland AI

The app sticks to text chats and static images only — if you want video generation for your girl, you’ll have to look elsewhere.

Voice Generation

character.ai

The voice sounds human-like with smooth, natural speech that fits the character’s personality, but the narrative voice can sometimes be a bit annoying, so be prepared.

But there's a catch. While the voice quality impressed me, the emotional range fell flat.

Joyland AI

The voice sounds natural and matches each character's personality well.

When my AI girlfriend gets flirty or emotional, their tone changes accordingly.

But there's a catch: the audio quality feels slightly slowed down, like listening to someone through an old phone line.

Note: Not every character has a voice — if the creator didn’t assign one, your girl won’t speak.

Safety & Privacy

character.ai

Your chats are encrypted during transmission, but that's where the strong privacy ends.

The company can read your conversations, and they store everything from your chat history to device information.

While they won't sell your data, they do share it with partners like Google Analytics.

Your bank statement isn’t discreet—it clearly shows the company name, "character.ai."

Joyland AI

Your private chats? Not exactly private. Joyland uses basic security measures, but there's no guarantee of end-to-end encryption.

Joyland stores your messages, device info, and usage patterns - they keep it all, but not sure how long.

They share this data with partners, researchers and can transfer it during business deals.

You’ll see ‘Joyland Ai’ on your bank statement — not the most discreet label.