Backyard AI vs Pyre
Backyard AI
backyard.aiPyre
pyrechat.appSide by side
| Figure | Backyard AI | Pyre |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | $12/mo | Free |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | Yes | — |
| Open source | — | Yes |
| Web | Yes | Yes |
| Windows | Yes | Yes |
| macOS | Yes | — |
| Linux | — | Yes |
| iOS | Yes | — |
| Android | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | — | Yes |
| Plans published | 7 | 2 |
| Spec score · AI Roleplay Chatbots | 9.5 (#1) | 8.5 (#24) |
| What it does | Backyard AI provides AI-powered character chats for text adventures, interactive stories and roleplaying. | Pyre is a local-first roleplay frontend for characters, worlds and long-running stories. |
Plans
Backyard AI
- Desktop AppFree
- FreeFree
- FreeFree
- Standard$12 a month
- Standard$12 a month
- Pro$35 a month
- Pro$35 a month
In their own words
Backyard AI
Backyard AI offers AI-powered characters for fictional text and voice chats, including text adventures, interactive stories, and roleplaying. Its Community Hub lets users explore thousands of characters, which can be customized with lorebooks, an author's note, grammars, and model parameters. Group chats can include up to four characters, and voice calls are listed as a feature. The Free plan costs nothing and includes 300 messages per week, one model, and 16k maximum memory. The free desktop app runs local models offline; the listed download is for macOS Intel. Local models can also be accessed from a mobile browser or iOS app through opt-in tethering. Cloud subscriptions provide hosted models, with choices and limits varying by tier. Standard costs $12 a month and includes unlimited messages with Standard models; Pro costs $35 a month and includes Standard and Pro models with a 100,000-token maximum context. Backyard AI supports GGUF models, but not FP16, GPTQ, or AWQ files. Its listed platforms are Android, iOS, macOS, and web.