AI Dungeon is a text adventure game where a language model writes the world around whatever you type. The thing it charges for is not messages. Play is free on web, iOS and Android, with no cap on how many actions you take, on any tier. What money buys is memory: a bigger context window, more slots in an automatic memory store, and credits that pay for pictures and for stretching that window further. The name runs at 201,000 searches a month at keyword difficulty 20 in the DataForSEO pull for this site on 24 September 2026, against 1,600 for "text adventure game," the generic phrase for the same thing. Everything below comes from Latitude's own help center, its membership table and its App Store listing, opened on 24 September 2026.
My position, which the last two sections defend: the free tier is generous precisely because memory is the expensive part, and memory is the part it holds back.
YourCrush.AI pins memories you write yourself and branches a story into separate timelines, which is the comparison this review keeps returning to.
What is AI Dungeon, and who makes it?
AI Dungeon is a text adventure game for web, iOS and Android, published by Latitude Inc. A language model writes the story in response to whatever the player types, and players can build, publish and play each other's starting scenarios. The game's own home page describes it as "a free AI text adventure game where players create open-ended stories, explore interactive worlds, and guide every choice online or in the app," and the footer points to latitude.io for the company behind it.
The store listing is where the numbers live. AI Dungeon: RPG & Story Maker on the US App Store, read 24 September 2026, is published by Latitude Inc., rated 4.4 stars across 27K ratings, filed under Adventure, and age rated 13+. Its privacy label lists data linked to the user, including purchases, location, user content, identifiers and usage data, used among other things for third-party advertising and developer marketing. Read that last line twice if you assume a paid subscription means your data stays out of marketing.
How YourCrush.AI holds a world together when the adventure runs long
YourCrush.AI takes the opposite trade to AI Dungeon: it starts from one character you own rather than a world you explore, and it is free to join, with no conversation limit for signed-in members and a short guest session on any character in its explore library before you sign up.
YourCrush.AI pins memories as a list you write and edit yourself, rather than summarising your last six turns into a slot a ranking model may or may not retrieve. YourCrush.AI splits a story into separate branches, so a scene can run two ways without losing either. YourCrush.AI builds a character from a name and an image in the character creator, generating the description, backstory, greeting and 3 to 7 traits from a list of 32, and it sends voice messages and generates images inside the chat. YourCrush.AI is free to join, and signed-in members chat without a message or conversation limit.
Is AI Dungeon free, and what does a membership cost?
Yes, and the free account is not a trial. The help center's answer on free play is "Yes, AI Dungeon is a free-to-play game, no matter what device you're playing on! Your free account grants you access to all of AI Dungeon's basic features," and the page on excessive usage states that AI use is unlimited on every tier, with limits in place only "to prevent the abuse of AI Dungeon, particularly from suspected botting behavior," enforced by reduced usage or suspension.
Play is free with no cap on actions on any tier; what a membership buys is memory.
Paid tiers are on the memberships page, read 24 September 2026, which sells 12-month, 6-month and month-to-month terms with a discount on the longer ones.
Tier | Price a month | Credits a month | Memory Bank | Context |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Wanderer | $0 | 0 | 25 memories | up to 4k tokens |
Journey | $14.99 | 760 | 100 memories | 8k tokens |
Legend | $29.99 | 1,650 | 200 memories | 16k tokens |
Mythic | $49.99 | 2,750 | 400 memories | 32k tokens |
Ultimate | $99.99 | 5,200 | 800 memories | 32k tokens |
Read down the columns. From free to $49.99 a month the context window goes from 4k tokens to 32k, an eightfold rise, while the memory store goes from 25 slots to 400, a sixteenfold rise. The $99.99 tier adds no context at all over the $49.99 one; it buys 800 memory slots and 5,200 credits. The page says a one-week trial comes with the $14.99 and $29.99 tiers.
One thing to know before you shop: the tier names disagree across Latitude's own surfaces. The memberships page calls the $14.99 tier Journey, the same help center's memory article calls it Champion, and the App Store sells it as "AI Dungeon Champion $14.99" alongside three items marked Legacy. Those legacy items have a history: the Steam and Traveler article says the game launched on Steam in July 2022 as a $30 one-time Traveler purchase, went free-to-play there in December 2022, stopped selling Traveler as a $10 in-app purchase in September 2023, and retired the Steam app in early 2024. Latitude's summary of that arc is that "everything that used to come with the Traveler tier is now given to our free tier by default."
What are credits, and when do they actually get spent?
Credits aren't a per-message currency, and ordinary play costs none of them. The credits article describes them as "one of AI Dungeon's in-game resources," spent on two things: AI-generated images, at a price per image that "your membership tier determines," and a temporary increase to the base context window on models that support it.
The second use is what empties a balance. While extended context is switched on, every action costs credits, "including retries and continues." The article's own example is a model reaching 32.0k tokens at 1 credit per 2,000 tokens used beyond 4,000 every turn, which is 1 credit an action at a 6,000-token context and 14 credits an action at the full 32,000. On those published figures the $14.99 tier's 760 monthly credits buy about 54 actions at that maximum stretch, before any pictures. Top-ups are sold separately: the App Store listing, read 24 September 2026, shows 800 Credits at $9.99 and 1700 Credits at $19.99.
How does AI Dungeon remember a story?
Two systems handle memory in AI Dungeon, one automatic and one hand-written, and both sit on top of a fixed set of always-included fields. The automatic one is the Memory Bank, described in the memory system article: every six actions, after the first twelve, the game takes six of your previous actions and the AI's replies and runs them through a summarisation model to write one memory. Retrieval works by embedding. The bank ranks stored memories against the current action and puts the most relevant ones into the context. Capacity is the tier number, 25 memories free through to 400 on the $49.99 tier, and when the bank is full "the least used memories" are dropped.
The hand-written one is Story Cards, which the Story Cards article calls "notes for the AI about characters, locations, concepts, or any other elements of your story," capped at 5,000 per Adventure or Scenario. A card enters context when one of its trigger words appears in your input or the AI's output, then stays active for a variable number of turns depending on context size. Two details in that article change how you write them. Triggers are not instant, so a card triggered halfway through a reply has no effect until the next one. And the AI never sees the card's name, only its entry, prefaced with "World Lore:" in the context. A card called Marisa whose entry opens "she is a smuggler" tells the model nothing about who "she" is.
Under both sits a set of Plot Components, AI Instructions, Plot Essentials, Story Summary and Author's Note, which the help center says are always in context, with Auto Summarisation appending new memories to the Story Summary. A free player is fitting all of that plus recent chat into a 4k window, which is the real reason long stories drift.
What are scenarios, and does AI Dungeon have multiplayer?
A Scenario is a reusable template. An Adventure is one playthrough of it. And yes, multiplayer exists, with an 8-digit join code. The scenarios article defines Scenarios as "templates players can use to start a new Adventure from," carrying the prompt, plot components and story cards the creator set up. Every Scenario starts life as an unpublished Draft, and edits to a published one have to be published again before they show up. Unlisted sits in the middle: reachable by direct link, absent from search and public profiles. Latitude's own advice on writing them is to keep each component "under 400 characters."
A Scenario is a reusable template, an Adventure is one playthrough of it, and multiplayer joins by an 8-digit code.
Multiplayer, per the multiplayer article, runs from the Play menu. The host creates a game, generates an 8-digit code, and everyone else enters it to join. No player cap is stated anywhere, though the interface suggests four. The rule that matters for a group: only the host needs a subscription for everyone in the session to get the membership benefits, and the host's model and safety settings apply to every player in the room.
What happened with AI Dungeon's content filter in 2021?
In April 2021, Latitude switched on a content filter after it and OpenAI, then its only model provider, found the game being used to write stories depicting the sexual exploitation of children. The company's own account sits on its OpenAI and Filters page, which says OpenAI "chose to change their content policy to prohibit content depicting the sexual exploitation of children, which was a decision we agreed with." The alternative on the table, OpenAI's own filters, was "too restrictive for AI Dungeon (for instance, not allowing topics like sex or fantasy violence common in adventure games)."
The Register reported the rollout on 30 April 2021, quoting Latitude that "explicit content involving descriptions or depictions of minors is inconsistent with this value." The filter targeted sexual or suggestive content involving minors, child sexual abuse imagery and related fantasy content, while other adult content stayed permitted. The same report carried a figure from a security researcher who analysed 188,000 adventures collected between 15 and 19 April 2021: 46.3% involved lewd role-playing and 31.4% were purely pornographic.
Latitude's page is direct about what went wrong next. The filter wrongly flagged innocent players, and the company read flagged stories by hand, which players objected to as an invasion of privacy. Unsafe material in both AI Dungeon's own training data and OpenAI's base model meant the AI sometimes generated the prohibited content itself, and players were banned for text they had not written. What changed since, per the same page and the content moderation article: Latitude moved to other model providers, ended manual moderation of private content, and now states that "unpublished, single-player content is never moderated" and that humans never review the cases where the AI's boundaries are triggered. Published Scenarios still pass an automatic rating check labelling them Everyone, Teen, Mature or Unrated, with human review on request, and the boundary the model keeps is content that "promotes or glorifies the sexual exploitation of children."
Who is AI Dungeon for, and who should look at alternatives?
AI Dungeon suits someone writing a long, world-heavy story on a small budget. It suits them less if what they want is one character who knows them. The free tier is the strongest argument: unlimited actions, a community library of published scenarios, image generation through credits you can buy without subscribing, and a scenario editor other games charge for. A group gets more again, because one $14.99 subscription covers the whole multiplayer table.
Who should look elsewhere. AI Dungeon alternatives split into two shapes, and which one you want depends on what is failing. If your story runs for months and you want the model to hold characters steady, the free 4k context and 25 memory slots will not do it, and the tiers that will do it start at $29.99 a month and reach $99.99, more than most companion apps charge for unlimited chat. AI Dungeon has no voice. The App Store rates the app 13+ while the published library carries Mature-rated scenarios, so the age gate content label rather than a door. And if what you want is a persistent character to talk to rather than a world to explore, a companion app built around one relationship is a different product; the comparison on memory and policy is in Character.AI alternatives compared on memory, policy and price.
Frequently asked questions
Is AI Dungeon free?
Yes. AI Dungeon is free to play on web, iOS and Android, and every tier gets unlimited AI use, including the free Wanderer tier. That tier comes with a 4k-token context window, 25 Memory Bank slots and no monthly credits.
How much does AI Dungeon cost?
Paid tiers run $14.99, $29.99, $49.99 and $99.99 a month, billed monthly, every 6 months or every 12 months, with a discount on the longer terms. Credit top-ups are separate: $9.99 for 800 and $19.99 for 1700.
Do you need credits to play AI Dungeon?
No. Credits pay for AI-generated images and for temporarily extending the context window past your tier's base. While that extension is on, every action, retry and continue costs credits, up to 14 an action at a 32,000-token window on the help center's example model.
How does AI Dungeon remember things?
Three layers. Plot Components stay in context at all times, Story Cards enter context when a trigger word appears, and a Memory Bank writes one summary every six actions and retrieves the most relevant by embedding similarity. The bank holds 25 memories free and 400 on the $49.99 tier.
What happened with AI Dungeon in 2021?
In April 2021 Latitude turned on a filter after it and OpenAI found the game being used to generate child sexual exploitation content. The filter misfired on innocent players, and the manual review alongside it was ended. Latitude has since changed model providers and says private single-player content is never moderated.
Does AI Dungeon have multiplayer?
Yes. A host creates a game and shares an 8-digit code. There is no stated player cap, and only the host needs a subscription for the whole session to get membership benefits.
Latitude has spent four years moving what used to be paid into the free tier, and what is left behind the paywall is almost entirely memory: context tokens, Memory Bank slots, and credits to stretch both. A text adventure game that gives away the writing and charges for the remembering is a fair description of where this whole category has landed.