privstory vs Nomi AI
Nomi AI has a reputation for strong memory and a lighter touch on content than the big mainstream apps, which is a large part of its appeal. It's still a hosted service, though: an account, conversations on their servers, and a subscription. privstory keeps the lighter-touch idea but moves the whole thing onto your machine, where nothing is hosted and nothing is metered.
| Feature | Nomi AI | privstory |
|---|---|---|
| Where it runs | Nomi AI's cloud servers | Your own computer |
| Account | Required to use it | None needed, no sign-up |
| Where your chats are stored | On their servers, tied to your account | A local database on your disk, fully private |
| Pricing | Free tier, plus a subscription | One-time license |
| Message limits | Some capacity and features gated to the paid tier | None, your hardware is the only limit |
| Content moderation | On their servers, under their policy | No server-side filter; the module you pick decides |
| Works offline | No, it needs a connection | Yes, after a one-time model download |
| Image generation | Cloud-side selfies and images | Local portraits and scenes on your GPU |
Why people go looking for a Nomi AI alternative
People who like Nomi usually like the memory and the freedom, so the reasons they look elsewhere tend to be structural rather than about the chat itself: it's a subscription, and the companion, memories and all, lives on Nomi's servers under an account.
For something this personal, that hosting is the sticking point. However light the content policy is today, it's still a policy on infrastructure someone else runs, and the memory that makes the companion feel continuous is stored there rather than with you.
What privstory does differently
Everything is local. Characters, scenes and full transcripts live in a database on your own disk, so the continuity is yours, it's not a memory held on a server, it's a file you control. There's no account, no subscription, and after the one-time model download it works offline.
The lighter touch on content isn't a setting we grant, it's a consequence of the architecture: there's no server-side filter because there's no server. What a character will and won't say comes from the module you choose, which you can swap or build yourself. privstory is intended for adults, and illegal material is illegal wherever it's generated.
Who should stay on Nomi AI
Nomi runs anywhere, syncs across your devices, and has invested heavily in long-term memory as a hosted feature that just works, with no hardware demands on your end. privstory runs on one machine you control, needs that machine to be capable enough to run the models, and doesn't sync your library across devices on its own.
If you want a companion that follows you across phone and web with server-side memory and no hardware to think about, Nomi is built for that. privstory is for people who would rather that continuity, and the conversation, live on their own machine.
Common questions.
Does privstory remember across sessions like Nomi?
A character and its scenes persist in a local database, so you can reopen a scene and continue it later. The persistence lives on your own disk rather than on a server, and how much context the model holds in one scene depends on the module's model.
Is privstory less filtered than Nomi?
There's no server-side filter at all, because nothing leaves your machine. Behaviour is set by the module you choose. privstory is for adults, and content that's illegal to create or possess is off-limits regardless of where it's generated.
Is there a subscription like Nomi's?
No. privstory is a one-time license. The free version needs no account and includes the full local chat and image generation for one character and one scene.
Does my companion sync across devices?
Not automatically. The library lives in a local database on the machine you made it on. You can copy that database to another machine yourself, but there's no cloud account syncing it, because there's no account.