Backyard AI

Backyard AI is an AI character roleplay platform built around deep customization and local/self-hosted-style model control, letting users tune character behavior far beyond a typical chat app's settings.

Core Capabilities

Character Library Access to thousands of pre-made characters through a community hub, alongside tools to design and publish original characters.

Dynamic Voices & Audio Characters can respond with generated speech, adding a voice dimension to text-based roleplay.

Deep Customization Tools "Lorebooks" enrich character context and backstory, "Author's Note" guides scene-setting and narrative direction, and "Grammars" control response formatting — giving power users far more control over model behavior than typical companion apps.

Multi-Platform Access Available on web, Android, and iOS, with support for a range of open and premium underlying models.

Positioning

Competes with Janitor AI and SillyTavern (both in this catalog) on customization depth and content freedom, differentiated by its emphasis on selectable underlying models and fine-tuned parameter control (grammars, lorebooks) aimed at more technical roleplay hobbyists.

Pricing

Freemium — free tier with 300 messages/week, 7 models, and 16k token context. Standard ($12/month) unlocks unlimited messaging with premium models and extended memory. Pro ($35/month) adds up to 100k token context and access to larger models (up to 104B parameters) plus premium support.