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NovelAI is two things sharing one login: a long-form writing tool where the AI continues your story while you steer, and an anime image generator running NovelAI’s own models. One subscription pays for both. Anlatan Inc., the US company behind it, has been at this since June 2021, and it sells the image side with a line I couldn’t have written better: “No restrictions. No compromises.” This is a first look built from what NovelAI publishes as of October 2026 (the homepage, the official documentation, the terms and the privacy policy). Nothing here comes from my own generations, so no scores and no stopwatch.
Does NovelAI allow NSFW?
Funny thing: I didn’t find the word NSFW anywhere on the NovelAI pages I read. What I did find is everything that matters. You must be 18 or older. Stories are end-to-end encrypted, and NovelAI says it can’t read them. The prompts you send for generation aren’t stored at all.
The images are where it gets explicit, literally. The three newest model generations (V4, V4.5 and V5) each come in two versions. Curated is trained on “a somewhat smaller training set of cleaner and more focused images,” and the docs suggest it “if you want to make extra sure you don’t generate any sensitive images on accident” (they also call it the safest choice when streaming). Full “includes a more comprehensive, albeit less curated, dataset.” Translation: if you want hentai with adult characters doing adult things, pick a Full model.
The writing side
“A story generator built to write with you, not for you” is the homepage pitch, and the docs back it up. You write, it continues, you cut what you don’t like and nudge it somewhere else. For long erotica, these are the tools I’d care about:
- Lorebook. Entries for characters, places and backstory, each with activation keys; when a key turns up in the recent story, that entry is fed to the AI. You can even embed a lorebook in a PNG to share it.
- Text Adventure mode. Type an action after a “>” and the AI narrates what happens, game style.
- Text-to-speech, so your story can be read back to you.
- Scripting, for people who like to tinker under the hood.
The homepage says story generation is “powered by GLM 4.6.” Opus subscribers also get Xialong, NovelAI’s own storytelling finetune of GLM-4.6 at 355 billion parameters, plus older models such as Llama 3 Erato and Krake. Memory grows with the plan: Scroll remembers more of your story than Tablet, and Opus goes up to 28,672 tokens.
The anime image side
The current model is NovelAI Diffusion V5, trained in-house on 268,000 B200 GPU-hours and twice the size of V4.5, if you like your numbers big. Per the docs it can place up to 22 distinct characters in one image, render text in English, Japanese and Chinese, output transparent backgrounds, and draw a whole paneled comic page in a single generation. For fixing things there’s inpainting, Director Tools (clothing, lighting, pose, details) and a built-in canvas for quick edits. You can also use the images commercially without paying for a special tier, which isn’t a given in this corner of the internet.
Images cost Anlas, NovelAI’s image currency. Tablet and Scroll include 1,000 a month, Opus 10,000. Opus can also make normal-size images (up to 1024×1024, one at a time, 28 steps or fewer) without spending Anlas: unlimited on V4.5 and older models, while V5 puts a usage limit on those free generations.
NovelAI pricing in 2026
From NovelAI’s documentation on October 3, 2026, in US dollars:
| Plan | Price | What you get |
|---|---|---|
| Paper (free trial) | $0 | 50 text generations, 30 image generations, 100 text-to-speech generations |
| Tablet | $10 a month | Unlimited text and text-to-speech, 1,000 Anlas a month |
| Scroll | $15 a month | Tablet plus a bigger story memory |
| Opus | $25 a month | 28,672-token memory, 10,000 Anlas, Anlas-free normal-size images, extra text models |
Plans renew 30 days after each payment, not on the first of the month. Subscription Anlas only refill up to your tier’s amount, and you can buy paid Anlas on top, but the docs say you can’t buy more once you’ve cancelled. Prices can change, so check the checkout before you pay.
Is NovelAI free?
No, and NovelAI says it out loud: “we’re not a free AI image generator.” What you get instead is the Paper free trial for logged-in accounts with a verified e-mail: 50 text generations, 30 image generations up to 1024×1024 and 100 text-to-speech generations. It’s a tasting menu, not a meal. Stories you write during the trial carry over if you subscribe.
Privacy, refunds and the company
The privacy policy, dated September 10, 2026, is unusually blunt. Stories, lorebooks and scripts are encrypted in your browser with a key derived from your password, so NovelAI stores only data it can’t read. Prompts aren’t kept, and your image history lives on your device. The flip side: lose your password and nobody can get your stories back, so download backups now and then.
Refunds are where I’d slow down. The terms say subscriptions aren’t refunded “unless explicitly granted by the Company.” Cancel and you won’t be charged again, you keep access until the paid period ends, and any unused subscription Anlas drop to zero at that point.
What I’d watch out for
- No refunds by default, so use the trial properly before paying.
- Spend your subscription Anlas before you cancel; they vanish when the plan ends.
- Free image generations are an Opus perk, and V5 caps them.
- Publish an image on NovelAI’s Explore feed and its prompt goes public with it.
- It’s a co-writer. If you want a finished story from one line, it’ll make you work for it.
Who NovelAI is for, and who should skip it
It’s for people who enjoy writing their erotica with the AI rather than ordering it, who want a lorebook to keep a long plot straight, and who’d like anime art from the same account. The encryption is a real reason to pick it, not a marketing line. Skip it if you want instant smut from a two-word prompt, a chat partner who flirts back, or a free plan you can live on.
NovelAI alternatives
Erota is the lower-effort story option: choose acts, themes, point of view and writing style from menus (or type a description) and it writes the whole thing, narration included if you want it.
CreatePorn suits you if images matter more than words. It works from tags or a prompt, covers several styles including anime, and hands out daily free gems with a slower free queue.
More writing tools are in our AI erotic story generator ranking.
Verdict
NovelAI is the pick for people who take their smut seriously as writing: encrypted stories, a proper lorebook, big memory on Opus, and an anime model whose Full version is plainly the one for adult art. It isn’t free, the trial is small, and refunds are at the company’s discretion. Use the trial, start on Tablet at $10 if the writing clicks, and only move to Opus if you’ll be generating images in bulk.
