How to export your Character.AI chats, and actually keep them
Everything below is about getting your conversations out of Character.AI in a form you can actually use.
Character.AI has filed for bankruptcy
On October 12, 2026, Character.AI announced a Chapter 11 filing to sell the company in a court-supervised process. The app stays up during the sale, which it expects to finish by the end of November or early December 2026. If no buyer agrees to keep the platform running, Character.AI says it will be wound down.
Nothing is closing yet. But the export below is the official way to keep a copy of your chats, and it can take hours to arrive. Request it this week.
Yes, there is an export. It isn't a chat file.
Character.AI lets you request a copy of your account data, and your chats are in it. The steps, from the official help center:
- Android or iPhone app: open your Profile, tap the settings icon, and choose Export my data.
- Web: Profile → Profile Settings → Account → Manage Account & Data → Export data.
That is a request, not a download. Character.AI puts it in a queue and emails you a link later, with nothing in between to show you how it is going. What users report:
- The wait varies. Sometimes an hour, often several hours, occasionally days.
- You get a ZIP of JSON files covering your account, your characters, and your messages.
- The link expires within a day or two, so download it as soon as it arrives.
- Long chats can come back incomplete, missing the oldest messages. Pinned memories may be left out as well.
So request it now, and check what comes back. If a chat you care about is incomplete, the screenshot method in our Chai guide fills the gap. It works on any app.
Why people were already leaving
Since November 25, 2025, open-ended chat on Character.AI has required an age check. Character.AI estimates your age itself, and a third-party service verifies it. Accounts under 18 lost open-ended chat completely.
Adults are not exempt from the estimate. Users report being flagged, asked for identification, and locked out of their own conversations until the dispute is settled. Content filters have also tightened every year. For a lot of people, the export has stopped being a precaution and become the first step of leaving.
Turning the export into a chat you can continue
The export is data, not a conversation. Two things have to happen before you can keep chatting.
The chat. Apps that import history mostly read the Tavern chat format, a plain text file with one message per line. The messages file in your export holds the same information in a different shape. Any capable AI model can convert one into the other in a single request, and LonelyTavern shows the exact format on its import screen so you can check the result first.
On a computer, there is a shortcut. The community CAI Tools browser extension for Chrome and Firefox saves a Character.AI chat straight into the Tavern chat format, which skips the conversion. We don't maintain it, and tools like it break whenever Character.AI changes its site, so check its recent reviews before you rely on it.
The character. Your export holds what you could see of a bot, not its private definition, and bots you didn't create keep theirs private. Rebuild the character from its public description and from the way it spoke to you, using the transcript as your guide to its voice. If you made the bot yourself, copy its definition out of the editor first.
About the model
Character.AI runs its own model, and you cannot change it or its filters. Apps that take your own API key let you choose the model instead, from DeepSeek, Claude, GPT, or anything a router such as OpenRouter offers, including free ones. Most people expect the move to cost them something. The writing usually gets better instead.
Where we'd take it
LonelyTavern is the app we built for this move. It imports Tavern chat history and character cards, connects to any OpenAI-compatible provider under your own key, and keeps everything on your phone. It is free, with no account and no ads.
It is an 18+ app, so it asks you to confirm your age. That is the only thing it ever asks you for. No verification service, no ID, and we cannot read your stories, because they never reach us.
Character.AI is an independent product of its respective company. LonelyTavern is not affiliated with or endorsed by it. The export steps follow Character.AI's help center as of September 2026, and the bankruptcy details follow its announcement of October 12, 2026; delivery details and limits are as reported by users and may change.