Reviewed by Eric Moore, Editor-in-Chief AI Dungeon is the platform that launched the AI-powered interactive fiction category in 2019, and it remains the most recognizable name in open-ended text adventure gaming. With over one million Android downloads, a 4.4-star rating from 26,000+ iOS reviewers, and availability across iOS, Android, Steam, and web browsers, the app draws a large, engaged audience. But AI Dungeon isn’t a companion app. It’s a narrative engine that generates stories in response to your prompts, across any genre you can imagine. We’re reviewing it here because its open-ended nature means users routinely create romantic storylines, build persistent AI characters, and develop emotional connections through long-running adventures. If you’re comparing it against dedicated companion apps like Character.AI or Kindroid, understanding what AI Dungeon actually does well, and where it falls short on safety, is worth the read.
What AI Dungeon Actually Is
AI Dungeon is an interactive text-based adventure game built by Latitude (formerly Oasis Tech, Inc.), based in Salt Lake City, Utah. You type actions, dialogue, or story prompts, and the AI generates narrative continuations. Think of it as a choose-your-own-adventure book that never ends and never repeats. The app launched in December 2019 using GPT-2, later upgraded to GPT-3, and now offers multiple AI models depending on your subscription tier.
The platform covers every genre: fantasy, sci-fi, mystery, romance, horror, and anything else you can describe. You can play through pre-built community scenarios or start from a blank page. That flexibility is the core selling point. It’s also the core safety question, because the same open-ended design that enables creative storytelling also allows users to steer narratives toward content that wouldn’t fly on most companion platforms.
On Google Play, AI Dungeon carries a Teen content rating with over 105,000 reviews and a 4.0-4.2 average. The iOS App Store rates it 12+. Neither rating reflects the full range of content the AI can generate in private adventures, which is something parents should factor in. We cover this in depth in the safety section below.
What the Free Tier Delivers
The free Wanderer tier gives you a functional but heavily restricted version of AI Dungeon. You get zero monthly credits, a 4,000-token context window, 25 Memory Bank slots, and access to limited AI models. Context window size directly controls how much of your current adventure the AI “remembers” when generating its next response, so 4K tokens means the AI loses track of earlier story events relatively quickly.
Is it enough to decide whether you like the platform? Yes. Is it enough for a satisfying long-form adventure? Not really. Users on Reddit and in app store reviews consistently cite context limitations on the free tier as the most frustrating aspect of the experience. The AI forgets character names, drops plot threads, and sometimes contradicts what happened three paragraphs ago. That’s not a bug in the AI. It’s a direct consequence of the 4K context ceiling. If you’re evaluating AI Dungeon, the free tier tells you whether you enjoy the format. It doesn’t show you what the platform can actually do.
The Full Pricing Breakdown
AI Dungeon runs on a four-tier subscription model, with pricing confirmed from Latitude’s official membership page:
- Wanderer (Free): $0/mo, 0 credits, 4K context, 25 memories
- Champion: $14.99/mo, 760 credits, 8K context, 100 memories, one-week free trial
- Legend: $29.99/mo, 1,650 credits, 16K context, 200 memories, one-week free trial
- Mythic: $49.99/mo, 2,750 credits, 32K context, 400 memories, no trial
Discounts are available for 6-month and 12-month subscriptions. Credits are spent on image generation and Ultra context mode. “Shadow Tiers” unlock more powerful AI models at higher context windows for users who want the best narrative output the platform can produce.
Champion at $14.99/mo is the realistic entry point for serious users. It doubles the context window to 8K tokens and quadruples Memory Bank capacity. Whether Legend ($29.99/mo) or Mythic ($49.99/mo) justify their price depends on how aggressively you push the platform’s narrative capabilities. Community complaints about tier restructuring and periodic price increases are common on r/AIDungeon, so verify current pricing before subscribing.
Memory and Storytelling Tools
Memory is where AI Dungeon separates itself from simpler AI chatbots. The platform offers five distinct tools for maintaining narrative continuity:
- Memory Bank: 25 slots on free, scaling to 400 on Mythic. Store facts the AI should remember across sessions.
- Story Cards: Persistent character and world-building details that stay active throughout an adventure.
- Plot Essentials: Key story elements the AI prioritizes when generating new content.
- Author’s Notes: Style and tone guidance that shapes how the AI writes.
- Story Summary: Compressed context that helps the AI maintain continuity in long adventures.
When these tools work together, the result is genuine narrative depth. Users who invest time configuring Memory Bank entries and Story Cards report adventures that maintain character consistency and plot coherence over weeks. Our experience analysis scored memory at 3.7/5, the second-highest category score behind app quality.
The failure cases are well-documented, though. App store reviewers report the AI “hijacking” user characters by having them take actions the player never prompted. Others describe the auto-summary feature producing inconsistent results that confuse the narrative rather than stabilizing it. A recurring complaint on r/AIDungeon involves the AI generating repetitive responses or ignoring user prompts entirely when context gets crowded. These issues are more pronounced on lower tiers where context windows are smaller, but they’re present across the platform.
Safety and Content Moderation
AI Dungeon uses a four-tier content rating system for publicly shared scenarios: Everyone (E), Teen (T), Mature (M), and Unrated (U, 18+ only). An AI Rating Tool suggests appropriate ratings for published content, and AI Safety Settings let users restrict how explicit the narrative output can get.
The critical detail is what happens outside published content. According to Latitude’s Community Guidelines, private and unlisted adventures are NOT moderated. The company’s “Walls Approach” prevents content involving sexual exploitation of children but otherwise allows open-ended private content generation. That means the content rating system and moderation tools apply only to what users choose to make public. Everything else runs on user discretion plus the Walls Approach floor. For a platform accessible to users as young as 13 (per the Terms of Service), this gap between public moderation and private freedom is the single biggest safety concern we identified. The platform explicitly bans sexual content involving minors, non-consensual sexual content, incest, bestiality, hate speech, glorification of real-world violence, and self-harm promotion in published scenarios. Those are meaningful content floors. They just don’t extend to private play in any systematic way.
Crisis support is minimal. The Community Guidelines link to the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline under the prohibition against glorifying self-harm, and Latitude explicitly disclaims that AI Dungeon is “NOT calibrated or trained as a tool capable of providing professional, financial, legal, medical, or mental health advice/therapy.” There’s no in-app crisis detection, no automated wellness checks, and no proactive intervention system. Compare that to Replika’s built-in crisis protocols with a Get Help button, CBT-designed scripts, and keyword-based routing, and you can see the gap.
Privacy and Data Practices
AI Dungeon’s privacy record includes three documented security incidents that anyone considering the platform should know about. In April 2021, an API vulnerability allowed unauthorized access to user adventure data. A security researcher demonstrated the flaw between April 15 and 19, and Latitude fixed the vulnerability but delayed public disclosure until the researcher forced the issue. In May 2021, approximately 100 text clippings from AI Dungeon stories were posted to 4chan, traced to a Taskup contractor working for OpenAI on content labeling. And in August 2022, S3 storage buckets were accessed without authorization, prompting an immediate disclosure and CEO Q&A on Discord. Latitude has been transparent about each incident after the fact, but the pattern of three breaches in 18 months is significant. According to Latitude’s own disclosure, the 2021 API vulnerability was “promptly fixed” once identified, though the company acknowledged delayed notification.
The privacy policy (last revised September 2023) collects standard account data plus device identifiers, IP addresses, browser type, timestamps, clickstream data, and ad impressions. It shares data with payment processors, analytics vendors, and security vendors. Two critical gaps stand out. First, no data retention periods are specified anywhere in the policy. The company isn’t telling you how long they keep your stories, account data, or usage logs. Second, the policy explicitly states that transmitted data “may not be secure” and does not mention end-to-end encryption. For a platform that stores user-generated creative content, including potentially sensitive or personal narratives, the absence of both retention limits and encryption commitments scored 1/5 on both sub-dimensions in our safety review.
The age requirement creates additional confusion. According to the Terms of Service, users must be at least 13, with certain features restricted to 18+. The privacy policy says users must be 18 or older. Two official documents, two different minimum ages. Age verification relies entirely on self-reported date of birth with no additional checks. For a platform where the AI can generate any type of content in private mode, this scored 1/5 for age verification in our safety review.
How AI Dungeon Compares to Companion Apps
AI Dungeon isn’t competing directly with Replika or Nomi AI. It’s a narrative tool, not an emotional companion. But the overlap is real: users create persistent AI characters, develop storylines with romantic and emotional elements, and form attachments to characters they’ve spent hundreds of hours building. If you’re choosing between AI Dungeon and a dedicated companion app, here’s what actually differs.
AI Dungeon’s roleplay depth scored 4/5 in our experience analysis, higher than most companion apps we’ve reviewed. The reason is simple: the entire platform is built for open-ended narrative generation. You aren’t limited to chatting. You’re building worlds, running scenarios, and directing multi-character stories. Character.AI (F/22 safety, 35/100 experience) offers thousands of pre-built characters but less narrative freedom. Kindroid (C/40 safety, 60/100 experience) matches AI Dungeon’s customization depth for single characters but doesn’t support the multi-character, multi-scenario storytelling that AI Dungeon enables.
Where AI Dungeon falls behind is emotional intelligence. Our experience analysis scored it 3/5 for conversational naturalness and 3/5 for emotional intelligence, which is expected for a storytelling tool rather than a companion designed to mirror emotional states. It doesn’t remember your mood across sessions. It doesn’t adapt its personality based on your emotional cues. It tells stories. If you want a persistent emotional relationship with an AI, dedicated companion apps do that better. If you want a creative playground where you happen to develop character attachments, AI Dungeon is the stronger choice.
On safety, AI Dungeon’s C/40 rating places it above most dedicated companion apps in our index. Character.AI earns an F (22/100), and Dopple AI scores even lower at F (13/100). Most companion apps score in the D or F range. AI Dungeon’s advantage comes partly from its nature as a game rather than a relationship simulator: it doesn’t use emotional manipulation tactics, it’s fully transparent about being AI-powered, and it explicitly disclaims therapeutic capabilities. Its safety weaknesses, the data practices and age verification gaps, are real, but they’re different in character from the emotional dependency concerns that drag down dedicated companion apps.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is AI Dungeon safe?
AI Dungeon earns a C safety rating (40/100) on the CompanionWise Safety Index. According to Latitude’s privacy policy, no data retention periods are specified and transmitted data “may not be secure.” Three documented security incidents occurred between 2021 and 2022. See our full AI Dungeon safety rating for the complete breakdown.
Is AI Dungeon free?
Yes. The Wanderer tier costs nothing and provides basic adventure generation with a 4,000-token context window and 25 Memory Bank slots. According to Latitude’s membership page, paid tiers start at $14.99/mo (Champion) and scale to $49.99/mo (Mythic), with trials available on Champion and Legend.
What’s the difference between AI Dungeon and Character.AI?
AI Dungeon generates open-ended text adventures where you control the story. Character.AI provides pre-built fictional characters for conversational roleplay. Our experience analysis shows AI Dungeon scoring higher for roleplay depth (4/5 vs. Character.AI’s 3/5 equivalent) but lower for conversational naturalness in a one-on-one setting. Character.AI is free but earns an F safety rating (22/100).
Can kids use AI Dungeon?
According to AI Dungeon’s Terms of Service, users must be at least 13, with some features restricted to 18+. The privacy policy contradicts this, stating 18+. Private adventures are not moderated, meaning the AI can generate any content type regardless of the user’s age. Parents should review our AI companion safety guide for parents before granting access.
Is AI Dungeon worth paying for?
That depends on how you use it. The free tier’s 4K context window causes the AI to forget story details quickly, per user reports across Google Play and Reddit. Champion ($14.99/mo) doubles context to 8K and is the minimum tier most serious users recommend. Legend and Mythic deliver better models and larger context windows, but at $29.99 and $49.99 per month, they’re among the most expensive subscriptions in the AI storytelling category.
Does AI Dungeon store my stories?
Yes. According to Latitude’s privacy policy, user-generated content is stored and may be “reproduced, transmitted, displayed, published, distributed, and modified” under an irrevocable, sublicensable license. The policy does not specify retention periods, and the Terms of Service state the company “may, but is not obligated to, delete any of Your Content” upon account termination.
Has AI Dungeon had data breaches?
Yes, three documented incidents. According to Latitude’s disclosures, a 2021 API vulnerability exposed user adventure data, a Taskup contractor leaked story excerpts to 4chan in May 2021, and S3 buckets were accessed without authorization in August 2022. Latitude disclosed all three incidents and patched the vulnerabilities.