NovelAI alternatives for stories and images, compared on who can read your writing

The Morse teamPublished October 30, 2026Facts checked October 23, 20268 min read

The best NovelAI alternatives, as of October 23, 2026, are Sudowrite for drafting and editing a novel, AI Dungeon for text adventures with a free tier, KoboldCpp or SillyTavern to run stories and images on your own computer, and Morse for unfiltered models, characters, and image generation in one web app that keeps your history encrypted in your browser. People usually leave NovelAI over its subscription-only pricing or its anime-focused image model, and most also want to know who can read what they write.

We read NovelAI's privacy policy, terms, documentation, and FAQ on October 23, 2026, then each alternative's own pricing, privacy, and help pages the same day. NovelAI deserves credit first. Its privacy policy, effective September 10, 2026, says your stories "are encrypted in your browser before they are saved, with a key derived from your password that never leaves your device," and that "We store only the encrypted data and cannot read it" (NovelAI).

NovelAI alternatives compared, as of October 23, 2026

Who can read your story in each app?

Every app above has to send readable text to a model to write the next paragraph. NovelAI says so itself: requests sent for generation "will contain unencrypted bits of your story that are necessary for our AI to do its work," which it says are "not stored or logged" (NovelAI). AI Dungeon's help center makes the same point more bluntly: "AI language models must be sent prompts in plain text," and "This is true for ALL AI-based services" (AI Dungeon). The apps differ in who holds the key to the saved story, and who reads the text in transit.

Jotform's roundup of NovelAI alternatives, updated August 18, 2026, lists "end-to-end encryption for private projects" among NovelAI's features without that distinction (Jotform). NovelAI's own home page also puts it broadly: "Your prompts are encrypted," it says, while its policy says the part of a story you send for generation "is processed in readable form to produce the output and is not kept" (NovelAI, NovelAI).

Why look for a NovelAI alternative?

Usually price, format, or the image style. As of October 23, 2026, NovelAI has no free plan beyond its Paper trial. Tablet costs $10 a month, Scroll $15 with more context, and Opus $25, which adds the largest context, up to 28,672 tokens, and Anlas-free generation of single, normal-sized images, within a usage limit on models newer than V4.5 (NovelAI). Its current text model, Xialong, is NovelAI's fine-tune of GLM-4.6, which it describes as 355 billion parameters (NovelAI). Its home page calls NovelAI "the #1 AI image generator tool for generating AI anime art or crafting epic stories" (NovelAI), and Jotform's roundup lists that "narrow focus on anime aesthetics" among the reasons people switch (Jotform).

NovelAI's terms say you "retain all rights and ownership" of your content and that refunds aren't offered "unless explicitly granted" (NovelAI). Its FAQ warns that losing your email or password "results in permanently losing access" to stored stories, because of the local encryption (NovelAI). If you publish an image on Explore, its prompt is published with it (NovelAI).

1. Morse

NovelAI encrypts your stories well once they're saved, but the text you send for each continuation is read on its servers. Morse lets you choose, per chat, who reads that text.

Morse is a web app at trymorse.ai with over 30 models, open and closed, plus Characters for roleplay and Studio for images. On Pro and Max, an unfiltered model takes the dark fiction other apps refuse. Your chat history, Studio images, and the characters you write are stored in your browser, encrypted, not on Morse's servers. Unlocking them takes two keys, one that never leaves your device and one Morse's server gives you at sign-in, so a copy of the browser data alone can't be read. Morse doesn't train AI on your writing, sell your data, or show ads. Clearing your browser deletes your chats for good and Morse can't recover them, so save a copy of any chapter you need to keep.

• E2EE, for a draft no one else should read. On Pro, your browser checks a secure enclave's hardware attestation, then encrypts each message so only that enclave can read it, and Morse's servers relay text they can't read. E2EE runs open-weight models with no web search or image generation, and rests on the enclave hardware and attestation working as designed. The enclaves are run by third-party providers, not by Morse. We walk through each check in end-to-end encrypted AI chat.
• Private, for open-weight models and Grok on hosts that keep nothing. Morse has zero data retention agreements with its inference, search, and other providers.
• Anonymous, for GPT, Claude, and Gemini without the provider knowing it's you. The provider may keep a message for a limited time to check for abuse, under its own policy.

The Free plan gives 15 messages a day, unlimited character messages, and 3 images a day. Pro, at $19 a month, adds unfiltered text and image models and E2EE chats.

2. Sudowrite

Sudowrite is built for authors writing a book. Its pricing page lists Hobby & Student at $10 a month, Professional at $22, and Max at $44, with a monthly or yearly toggle promising "up to 50% off," and a free trial with no credit card (Sudowrite). It runs "dozens of AI models, including the latest Claude models by Anthropic, multiple open source models," its own fiction model Muse, and models from OpenAI.

Its FAQ makes two promises: "We claim no rights over anything you put into Sudowrite," and "we do not use your writing to train Sudowrite or OpenAI's AI models" (Sudowrite). Its privacy policy, last updated October 6, 2020, keeps personal information "for the period necessary to comply with our legal obligations" and doesn't describe AI models or how manuscripts are stored (Sudowrite).

3. AI Dungeon

AI Dungeon, from Latitude, is the closest match to NovelAI's text adventure mode, with a free tier. Wanderer is free with 4k tokens of context, Journey is $14.99 a month with 8k, Legend $29.99, Mythic $49.99, and Ultimate $99.99 (AI Dungeon). Users must be 18 or older under its privacy policy, last revised September 25, 2023 (AI Dungeon).

Latitude says its team "does not read or otherwise modify your unpublished content" except for support or feedback you send (AI Dungeon), and that story text is used to improve its models only if you opt in to "Improve the AI," which is off by default (AI Dungeon). It chose the opposite of NovelAI on keys: "server side storage of encryption keys best serves the needs of our players," because it lets Latitude recover a forgotten password (AI Dungeon).

4. KoboldCpp and SillyTavern

These are the local route. KoboldCpp is "free and open-source software for running GGUF large language models (LLMs) on your own computer," in "one executable file, no installation required," with a story mode, world info, and image generation from models such as Stable Diffusion, SDXL, and Flux (GitHub). It doesn't include model files, so you download them yourself, and its README warns that koboldcpp.com "is a malicious fake site."

SillyTavern is "a locally installed user interface" for text models, image engines, and voices, free under AGPL-3.0, and it needs a separate backend to write anything (SillyTavern). NovelAI is one of the backends it lists, so you can keep NovelAI's model while changing the front end (SillyTavern). For local generation, its docs recommend "a 3000-series NVIDIA graphics card with at least 6GB of VRAM." We compare other character front ends in Chub AI alternatives.

How we compared them

We read every page linked above on October 23, 2026. NovelAI's own encryption write-up, which its FAQ links on Medium, refused our request, so we relied on its privacy policy and FAQ. We took each company at its written word and didn't create accounts, pay for plans, or generate stories or images for this page. For character chat specifically, see Character.AI alternatives.

Choose NovelAI or an alternative

• Choose NovelAI if you want anime-style images and long stories with lorebooks, and you value stories encrypted with a key only your password unlocks.
• Choose Sudowrite if you're writing a novel and want drafting, rewriting, and editing tools built for that.
• Choose AI Dungeon if you want text adventures and community scenarios, with a free tier and password recovery.
• Choose KoboldCpp or SillyTavern if you have a capable GPU and want your stories to stay on your own computer.
• Choose Morse if you want unfiltered models, characters, and images in one web app, history kept encrypted in your browser, and E2EE chats that only a verified enclave can read.

Start free with no card, or send a message from the home page without an account first.

Morse publishes this comparison. We've tried to keep it fair; if something's wrong or out of date, email hello@trymorse.ai.

NovelAI is a trademark of Anlatan Inc. Morse is not affiliated with or endorsed by Anlatan Inc.