HammerAI review: free local chat, cloud plans and final sales

We read HammerAI's pricing page, terms, content guidelines, privacy policy and FAQ from a US connection, browsed the public catalog, opened the character builder and the desktop download page, and looked up the app in the US App Store.

We then tried to create a free account by email. The sign-up form showed a Cloudflare "Verify you are human" check, and we stopped there. That means we did not chat, measure reply speed or memory, or see the settings and deletion screens. Free limits below come from HammerAI's own pages. No payment was made.

HammerAI is a character chat and roleplay site with a large community catalog, tagged by genre, role and fandom. You can also write stories with AI, run group chats with up to ten characters, and generate images and voice clips.

What sets it apart is the desktop app for Windows, macOS and Linux. It bundles Ollama, so you can download a model and chat with no internet and no account. On the web and in the iOS and Android apps, every model is a cloud model and you need to sign in. The pricing page says one developer builds HammerAI; the App Store lists the seller as Sunspot LLC.

Free accounts get 600 cloud messages a day with a short 8,192-token context, so long roleplays lose earlier details sooner. Paying removes the daily cap, adds more cloud models and a longer context, and gives you monthly credits for images and voice. The jump from Starter to Ultimate is mostly about context length and model choice.

Credits are simple to price: 10 per image, 5 per voice clip. Plan credits reset each month; packs you buy never expire. Web payments go through Gank, and the page is blunt that "all purchases are final". If you subscribe inside the iOS app, Apple's prices apply instead, and they are slightly different from the web, including weekly plans.

Characters are marked Safe or Mature. Mature characters can include adult themes, but the main profile picture must stay PG-13. The guidelines ban underage characters with no exceptions, characters that let the user be portrayed as a minor, childlike art styles, blood incest, gore and sexual violence.

The rules also ban characters that use or represent real people and celebrities, and treat any photo-realistic AI image as a real person. On the day we looked, the public catalog still had a Celebrity tag and some photo-style portraits, so enforcement and the written rules don't fully match.

Local chats in the desktop app stay on your computer. Cloud chats are where the wording gets inconsistent. The terms say conversations "exist only on the device", the FAQ says cloud messages reach HammerAI's servers but are not stored, and the privacy policy (updated October 16, 2026) says third-party model providers reached through OpenRouter "may process and retain your messages", including for their own training. HammerAI itself says it does not train on user data.

The FAQ says you delete your account from the Account tab of your profile, and that deletion is permanent. Publicly published characters and stories may stay on the site without your name. An App Store subscription has to be cancelled separately in your phone's settings.

Pick it if you have a capable computer and want private, unlimited roleplay for free, or if 600 cloud messages a day is enough and you'd rather not pay at all. Paid plans make sense if you want longer context and stronger cloud models.

Skip it if you need refunds or a trial of the paid tiers, if you want an all-in-one companion with calls and video, or if you need clear, consistent wording on what happens to cloud chats.