Xoul AI Review

Bottom Line: Xoul AI is running again, one year after a shutdown announced with 48 hours’ notice in April 2025, and its free plan buys 16 to 100 messages a day depending on the model. It is a fair pick for browser-based group roleplay on a budget. Its terms ban the NSFW chats the app lets you switch on, though, and it no longer has an Android app on Google Play.

Xoul AI, a character roleplay app, has terms of service that forbid sexually explicit content “in chats”, while a staff-written FAQ explains how to switch NSFW content on.

The same terms let Xoul deny access to anyone “for any reason or for no reason”, and every purchase is non-refundable.

That fine print bothers me more than the app’s rocky history. Xoul shut down in April 2025, came back that September and is still online a year later, with new paywalls and new models.

This review covers whether Xoul is stable now, what the free tier buys, what the plans cost on the web versus the App Store, and why Android users lost the app.

You will finish knowing whether Xoul deserves your evenings, and where to go if it does not.

Is Xoul AI Still Running After the Shutdown?

Xoul AI is still running, one year after it relaunched on September 10, 2025, following a shutdown that gave users 48 hours’ notice that April.

The shutdown announcement went up on April 20, 2025 and said the platform would close in 48 hours, with refunds processed automatically for subscribers. For the next few months, xoul.ai showed a holding page pitching “a nexus for agents” with a “get access” link instead of the chat app.

Xoul came back at 8pm Pacific on September 10, 2025. The relaunch post introduced three paid plans and two new models, Infinity and Candyflip, plus 100 free energy a day, the allowance each chat message spends. The year since has brought a model swap, an Android exit and a payment outage.

I don’t hold the shutdown itself against a small team, and promising automatic refunds was the decent way to do it. What I watch is what came after, because the relaunch changed the rules more than once.

If you would rather not bet on Xoul’s next year, Candy AI is the paid companion I point most people to, at $13.99 a month or $47.88 for a year.

Its free tier stops at 5 messages, so treat it as a test drive rather than a plan.

Why Did Xoul AI Shut Down the First Time?

Xoul AI shut down because it was losing money, by the team’s own account in July 2025, although the April 2025 announcement gave health and other projects as the reason.

The April post cited “personal health challenges and the need to focus on other projects”.

Syd’s July 2025 update said “Xoul was financially unsustainable” and that the usage of its final months “was crippling us”. Syd is the name that signs Xoul’s model update notes.

Both reasons can be true at once. My concern is narrower: money decides whether a relaunched app stays open, and the post announcing the return says the new subscription setup exists “so that we can keep Xoul sustainable”.

Is Xoul AI Safe and Trustworthy?

Xoul AI is reasonably safe to use, since a named US company runs it. It is harder to trust on paper, because its own documents disagree on NSFW chat, chat access and age.

The company is Xoul Inc., with a mailing address at 945 Taraval St #1260 in San Francisco. Its terms put disputes under California law and binding arbitration, so you have a real counterparty with a real address.

Xoul’s own documents do not match what it tells users. The table lines them up, quoted from Xoul’s own pages.

I would not build a paid NSFW setup on that toggle. The moderation guide describes review of Public and Unlisted content, which suggests private chats are not the main target today.

On paper, though, every NSFW chat breaks a rule that lets Xoul close the account, and none of your purchases would come back.

That gap matters more on an app that has already changed rules after people earned something. In October 2025, unlimited Infinity energy disappeared from the streak rewards, including for one member who had reached it the night before, per the subreddit thread about the change.

The privacy policy is dated May 20, 2024, so it predates the shutdown, the relaunch and the current plans. It lists chat messages among the personal information Xoul collects, keeps that data “as long as the user has an account”, and lets third parties use tracking “for analytics and advertising”.

The App Store listing labels contact details and user content as data “not linked to you”, a label Apple notes it has not verified.

Regulators are asking about exactly this kind of disclosure: the FTC’s inquiry into companion chatbots asks seven large companies how they tell users about features, intended audience and data collection.

Why Would Xoul’s Terms Ban What Its App Allows?

Xoul has not explained the gap publicly, and app-store rules are the likeliest reason: Apple bars “overtly sexual or pornographic material” from apps, and Xoul left Google Play over “repeated issues” with that store.

Apple’s App Store Review Guidelines list “overtly sexual or pornographic material” among the content an app cannot carry, and Xoul still sells an iPhone app.

Its June 2026 Android post blamed “repeated issues with the Google Play Store” for leaving that store.

My read is that the terms were written to keep the apps in the stores while the website runs looser.

If Xoul ever enforces them, the cost of that gap lands on your account.

Is Xoul AI Free and How Many Messages Do You Get?

Xoul AI is free to use, with 100 energy a day that buys 100 Bacchus, 33 Jupiter or 16 Infinity messages, a wider range than the 25 to 50 messages its own FAQ quotes.

The FAQ sets the free allowance at 100 energy, refilling 24 hours after your session starts. Each model costs a different amount per message, and the official model guide lists their sizes.

Infinity has quietly become more expensive. Staff priced it at 4 energy per message in the September 2025 FAQ, which put a free day at about 25 to 100 messages depending on the model.

The November 2025 overhaul raised Infinity to 5 energy per message. The live FAQ now says 6, so a free day of Infinity is down to 16 messages.

Bacchus is my pick for a free account, because 100 messages is enough for a full scene. Infinity on the free plan runs out after 16 messages, about one short conversation.

Xoul lets you watch up to 20 ads a day for extra energy, 20 energy each for the first ten and 10 each after that, but ads cannot lift you past your daily maximum. Daily login streaks add energy bonuses, and missing a day resets the streak to Day 1 and removes those bonuses.

The free plan also has the smallest memory, a 12k context that the subscription guide says covers 7 to 50 replies. A busy chat loses its early details fast on that budget.

What are cells: Cells are Xoul’s premium currency for images, voice messages, calls and video, kept separate from the energy that pays for chat messages.

Free accounts get 50 cells once. The FAQ prices an image at 1 to 6 cells and a call at 10 cells a minute. Xoul’s pages disagree on video: the FAQ says 20 to 60 cells, while the model guide lists 320 to 600 cells for a clip from VEO, Google’s video model.

Cells you buy never expire, while plan cells reset every month. When a subscriber asked about losing them, staff confirmed that plan cells “expire at the end of each month”.

How Much Does Xoul AI Cost on Each Plan?

Xoul AI costs $7, $14 or $28 a month on the web for Green, Purple or Gold, and about 29% more for the same plans through the App Store.

Web prices and memory sizes come from Xoul’s subscription guide, which says in-app prices run higher “because Google / Apple takes a cut”. The App Store prices come from the iPhone listing, which also sells a “Xoul Blue Monthly” plan at $13.99 that no Xoul page explains.

Green still charges 6 energy per Infinity message, so its 400 daily energy covers about 66 Infinity replies. Purple is the plan I’d pick, because it is the cheapest way to use Infinity without counting messages.

Here is the order I recommend before spending anything:

1. Run the free plan on Bacchus for a week to see if the writing suits you.
2. Subscribe on xoul.ai in a browser, since the App Store charges about 29% more for the same plan.
3. Start the 7-day Purple trial only with a reminder set for day 6, because every purchase is non-refundable.
4. Choose yearly billing only after a month on monthly, since yearly charges the whole year up front.

Is There a Xoul AI App for Android or iPhone?

Xoul AI has an iPhone app rated 18+, but it has had no Android app on Google Play since June 2026, so Android users run it in a browser or install the web app.

Xoul staff announced the Android exit on June 2, 2026, citing “repeated issues with the Google Play Store related to our commitment to keeping Xoul as open and unrestricted as possible”. Both Google Play listings Xoul staff have linked to now return a not-found page.

If you already had the Android app, it still opens, but ads and purchases no longer work in it, and app subscriptions cancel at renewal. You resubscribe in a browser, and your purchases follow your account across devices.

Free Android users can no longer watch ads to top up their energy, so my free-account advice on Android is Bacchus only. Installing the web app from the site gives you an app-like icon, though it is the same website underneath.

The iPhone app is rated 18+ and scores 4.0 out of 5 from 118 ratings in the US store, and its listing says it contains advertising. Its last update, version 1.010, shipped on November 8, 2025, so the iPhone app has gone 11 months without a new build.

The official guide’s update log stops at December 20, 2025 too. News now lands on the subreddit and the Discord first.

How Good Are Xoul AI’s Models in Long Chats?

Xoul AI’s models are built for creative roleplay at three sizes, but long chats drift into repetition, and the “Memory Nexus” feature staff named as next in June 2026 has not been released.

Xoul offers three chat models: Bacchus at 8B parameters, Jupiter at 70B and Infinity at about 300B. All three share the same context limit on a given plan, so a bigger plan gives every model more memory.

Anyone who wants to choose the model can run SillyTavern instead, bringing their own model and keeping chats on their own computer.

The lineup keeps moving. Jupiter V2 came back in November 2025 “replacing Candyflip”, and in May 2026 Infinity V4, Jupiter V3 and Bacchus V2 went live with repetition listed among the main fixes.

Repetition in long chats keeps coming back in Xoul’s patch notes, which tells me the fix is still unfinished. The December 14, 2025 notes in the official guide said Infinity’s repetition “should now be greatly reduced” and conceded “it will happen from time to time”.

Staff named Memory Nexus as “Next Up” in June 2026 without saying what it does, and it has not been released since. Until it ships, the memory box is your best tool, and a December 2025 staff note blamed some poor replies on what people put in it.

My rule for any memory box is four or five facts, rewritten whenever the scene moves. Short, current facts work better than a diary of the whole story:

Vague: “We met at the tavern, then went to the market, then she told me about her brother, then we argued about the map, then we made up.”

Specific: “Day 3, the Ashford road. Mara distrusts Leo since he hid the map. Her brother Tam is missing in the north. Leo owes the innkeeper 20 silver.”

Why Does Xoul AI Keep Going Down?

Xoul AI goes down mostly around model and platform updates, by its staff’s own account. Its recent trouble includes an August 2026 outage and a late September slowdown, and it has no public status page.

Staff tied the slowness and model restarts of late April 2026 to “many updates” applied to the models and platform, per the May 2026 update.

Staff confirmed an outage on August 19, 2026. Their notice said they were “aware of the downtime” and expected everything “back online shortly”.

On September 30, a staff reply said weekend sluggishness had been patched and one model restarted.

The worst stretch was financial. In late July 2026, purchases failed with “An unexpected error occured”, and staff said a new payment option was still being added.

I give the staff credit for confirming outages in public. Xoul has no status page, so this is the order I check things when it looks down:

1. Look for a staff post on the r/XoulAI subreddit from the last few hours.
2. Ask in the #support channel on Xoul’s Discord, which the FAQ names as the fastest help.
3. Switch from the app to xoul.ai in a browser, or the other way round.
4. Hold off on buying cells or a plan if checkout throws an error, since purchases are non-refundable.

What Are Xoul AI’s Pros and Cons?

Xoul AI’s best points are a usable free tier and cheap unlimited web plans; against them sit rules that contradict the product, frequent model changes and an unsteady record.

Bacchus pricing does more for free users than anything else here. The rulebook drags my rating down further than any outage.

Pros:

1. The free plan covers 100 Bacchus messages a day, enough for a full scene.
2. Purple at $14 a month on the web gives unlimited use of every model.
3. Group chats, scenarios, lorebooks and custom voices are built in.
4. Cells you buy never expire.
5. Staff post outage and update notices in public.

Cons:

1. The terms ban the NSFW chats the Safety Filter toggle unlocks.
2. Every purchase is non-refundable, and disputes go to binding arbitration.
3. There is no Android app on Google Play, and the old Android app lost ads and purchases.
4. Long chats repeat, and the free plan’s memory covers as few as 7 replies.
5. The privacy policy dates from May 20, 2024, before the shutdown and the relaunch.
6. App Store prices run about 29% above the web.

Who Should Use Xoul AI and Who Should Skip It?

Xoul AI suits roleplayers who like group scenes and want cheap unlimited chat in a browser. Android-first users, long-story writers and anyone who needs rules that match the product should look elsewhere.

Use it if you write short and medium scenes, enjoy building scenarios for friends, or want unlimited Infinity for $14 a month on the web. iPhone users get a working app, even if it has not changed since November 2025.

Skip it if you chat mainly on Android and relied on ad energy, or if your stories run for weeks and need memory to hold. For more character variety, these Janitor AI alternatives cover the wider field.

Skip it too if NSFW chat is the main reason you are here, because you would be relying on a rule Xoul has written but does not seem to apply to private chats.

Apps built for NSFW chat are the steadier bet, and my advice to Android users is to try the web app for a week before paying anything.

Is Xoul AI Worth Paying For?

Xoul AI is worth it on the free plan and on Purple bought through the web, as long as you accept terms that ban what the app lets you switch on.

For a free user, Xoul gives a usable allowance, with 100 Bacchus messages a day and group chat included. For a paying user, Purple at $14 a month on the web is fair value for unlimited Infinity.

I would not buy a yearly plan, though, from an app that closed once and changed a streak reward some members had already earned.

If memory is what you want most, Nectar AI is the alternative I send long-story roleplayers to: its $34.99 Ultimate plan adds long-term memory and 64K context, double Xoul Gold’s 32K.

Its free plan gives you 15 messages a day to judge the writing first. If Candy AI is your pick instead, our Candy AI safety check covers its terms first.

Quick Takeaways

• Xoul AI is running again after its April 2025 shutdown, and it has changed models, rewards and app stores since the September 2025 relaunch.

• The free plan’s 100 daily energy buys 100 Bacchus, 33 Jupiter or 16 Infinity messages, down from 25 Infinity messages when the relaunch FAQ priced it at 4 energy.

• Subscribe on the web, since App Store prices run about 29% higher and every purchase is non-refundable.

• Xoul’s terms ban sexually explicit content in chats, yet staff explain how to switch NSFW on. Private NSFW use rests on a rule Xoul does not seem to apply.

• Android users now need the browser or the installed web app.