NovelAI is two products under one name: an anime image generator and a story writer. This page is about the story side. There, its site describes an editor where the AI writes with you, not for you. You write some, it continues, you steer. Its documentation describes a Lorebook that holds your characters, places and factions and feeds them to the AI when they come up, and a text adventure mode where you type what your character does. The site also stresses privacy, and says your prompts are encrypted.
So an alternative has to replace one of those: the co-writing, the world memory, the adventure, or the privacy. We make Hemmingway, which is on the list below. We have not tested NovelAI or the other story apps here, so this page does not rank them, and what each one does is taken from its own website.
Who looks for a NovelAI alternative
- You are writing a novel. You want chapters, an outline and a plan, more than an open-ended story.
- You play more than you write. You want a game that answers your actions.
- You want everything on your own computer. Your own model, your own rules, nothing sent anywhere.
- You want to pick the model. A tool that handles your world notes while you connect the AI you prefer.
- You want the strongest prose you can get. You will keep track of the story yourself.
- You want a finished short story. One idea in, one story out, no settings.
The kinds of alternative
Novel tools keep a manuscript, world notes and AI help in one place. Adventure games narrate while you act. Local setups join a front end on your computer to a model you run yourself. Chat models have no story tools but can write strong prose. Short-story writers turn one idea into a finished piece.
The tools at a glance
| Tool | What it is | Good for | Watch out for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sudowrite | An AI writing tool for novelists | Drafting and revising a book, with a story bible | Built around a manuscript, not open-ended play |
| Novelcrafter | A novel workspace where you connect the AI model you choose | A codex of your world, and control over the model | You bring and manage the AI yourself |
| AI Dungeon | An AI text adventure game | Playing through open-ended stories and community scenarios | A game first, a writing tool second |
| SillyTavern | A chat front end you install on your own computer | Full control, with local models or an API of your choice | Setup, and a local model needs strong hardware |
| Claude | Anthropic's general assistant | Long scenes and chapters from a chat window | No lorebook, so you manage continuity |
| Hemmingway | An AI for short writing that sounds like a person | Complete short stories, scenes and poems from one idea | No lorebook or adventure mode, and no images |
Sudowrite
Sudowrite's site describes an AI writing tool for fiction writers, with tools that continue your text in your voice, add description, rewrite and expand, and a story bible that takes a book from idea to chapters. Where NovelAI is open-ended, Sudowrite is built around finishing a manuscript. Sudowrite alternatives covers the novel tools as a group.
Novelcrafter
Novelcrafter describes a writing platform with a codex: a record of characters, places and lore that it tracks and links as you write. That is the nearest thing here to a Lorebook. It differs in that you connect an AI provider of your choice, or a model running on your own machine. It suits writers who liked NovelAI's world memory and want to choose what does the writing.
AI Dungeon
AI Dungeon calls itself an AI text adventure game, where you create open-ended stories, explore worlds and guide each choice, with scenarios made by its community. If the part of NovelAI you used was text adventure mode, this is the product built entirely around that. AI Dungeon alternatives goes further into that kind.
SillyTavern with your own model
SillyTavern's documentation describes a locally installed interface for talking to text models, aimed at people who want a lot of control over their prompts. It connects to models you run yourself and to OpenAI-compatible APIs. With a local model, nothing leaves your computer.
The catch is hardware and patience. A model small enough for an ordinary laptop usually writes weaker stories than a large hosted one. The best local LLM for writing goes through the options.
Claude
Claude is Anthropic's general assistant. It has no story tools of its own, but in our own story test, StoryBench, its model Fable 5.1 scored highest of everything we have tested. You paste in your notes on the world, ask for the next scene, and keep the thread yourself.
Hemmingway
Hemmingway is ours. It is a writing app built for text that sounds like a person wrote it, and for fiction that means short, finished pieces. You give it one situation and a length, and it writes the story and stops. The story generator does this from a short form.
On our own StoryBench, Hemmingway-1 scored 1197, level with Kimi K3 and behind Fable 5 Max at 1277 and GLM-5.3 at 1254. In our Human-Likeness test, where a judge picks which of two texts a person wrote, it came first. Both are our benchmarks, and NovelAI was not in them, because they compare models and not story apps.
Hemmingway-1 also has open weights under CC BY-NC 4.0, free for non-commercial use. It is a large model, so running it at home needs serious hardware. How to run Hemmingway-1 locally has the sums.
Where Hemmingway fits, and where it does not
It fits when you want a story you can read in a few minutes: a bedtime story, a piece of flash fiction, a scene in a character's voice, a poem.
It does not fit when you want what makes NovelAI what it is. There is no Lorebook and no text adventure mode. It does not make images. It is a chat, so in a long story you keep track of the details. And in our own tests, larger models write better long fiction.
If you came to NovelAI for adult fiction, that is a separate question with its own page: uncensored AI story writer.
How to choose
- Decide whether you are writing, playing, or both.
- For a book, look at the novel tools, and check whether you want to choose the model.
- For play, look at a text adventure game.
- If privacy is the main thing, look at a local setup, and be honest about your hardware.
- If you keep a lot of world notes, write three scenes in each tool and see whether it remembers a detail from the first.
- For short stories, try Hemmingway. There is a free trial with no card needed, and the plans are on pricing.
Try HemmingwayDownload the app
Common questions
What is the best alternative to NovelAI for writing stories?
It depends on how you use it. For a planned novel, Sudowrite or Novelcrafter. For text adventures, AI Dungeon. For full control on your own computer, SillyTavern with a model you run. For a finished short story from one idea, Hemmingway. We have not tested these story apps, so we do not rank them.
Is there a free alternative to NovelAI?
Hemmingway has a free trial with no card needed. SillyTavern's documentation says it is open source, though you still need a model to connect it to. For the others, check each one's own site.
Can I run something like NovelAI on my own computer?
Yes, with a front end such as SillyTavern and an open-weight model. Nothing leaves your machine. Models that fit on ordinary hardware usually write weaker stories than large hosted ones, so test first.
Does Hemmingway have a lorebook like NovelAI?
No. Hemmingway keeps a Memory of things you tell it to remember, which you can read and edit, but it has no lorebook that works the way NovelAI's does, and no text adventure mode. It is built for short, complete pieces.
Do these alternatives make images like NovelAI?
This page compares them for story writing only, so we have not looked at their image features. Hemmingway writes text and does not make images. If the image generator is what you use NovelAI for, you need an image tool.