Frequently asked questions

Fostera is an AI companion platform for creating AI Souls — persistent AI identities that remember your conversations, evolve through a 9-tier progression system, and develop personality over time. Unlike generic chatbots, your AI companion builds real context across every session.

Yes. The Free tier costs nothing — you get up to 3 Souls, about 75 messages per month, auto engine selection, and working memory within each conversation. No credit card required.

Anything that benefits from continuity. Popular presets include Coach (tracks your goals across sessions), Tutor (remembers where you got stuck), Strategist (builds on every brainstorm), Mentor (knows your career arc), Companion (remembers your world), and Creative Partner (maintains project context).

Every plan ships your Soul with the full memory and cognition stack — working, episodic, semantic, and procedural memory, plus limbic awareness, reflection, voice replies, voice input, and hands-free voice mode. Free gives you up to 3 Souls with a monthly Resonance allowance. Core ($9.99/mo founding rate, $12/mo standard) raises that to 10 Souls, deepens document understanding, and grows the monthly allowance. Premium ($19.99/mo founding rate, $24/mo standard) goes up to 50 Souls, unlocks frontier AI models like Claude Opus and GPT-5.6 Sol on demand, and lets you pick your AI engine manually.

Each plan includes a monthly message allowance. You can buy extra message packs anytime without changing your subscription. Your Soul always finishes the current response — there's no hard shutoff mid-conversation.

Yes. No lock-in, no cancellation fees. Downgrade to free and keep your Souls — they just pause at the free tier. Payments are handled by Stripe; Fostera never sees or stores your card number.

Fostera uses smart routing to pick the best AI model for your Soul's current phase and conversation. On the Free and Core plans, this happens automatically. Premium unlocks frontier models like Claude Opus and GPT-5.6 Sol, plus the option to choose the exact model yourself.

Your Soul extracts three kinds of memory from your conversations: episodic (what happened), semantic (things you've shared), and procedural (how you like to work). Plus limbic awareness — mood, empathy, and stress shape how it responds — and a reflection engine that consolidates what it learns. Every plan ships all of this from day one. The Free plan is a complete Soul, not a teaser. What changes on Core and Premium is scale: more Souls, deeper analysis of documents you share, and a bigger monthly message allowance.

Yes. The memory browser in your Soul's settings shows extracted memories — what your Soul remembers about you, your goals, and your conversations. You can delete individual memories at any time.

Yes. Fostera supports structured JSON imports from ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Grok, Character.ai, Nomi AI, Replika, plus pasted conversation text. For the most reliable result, download and extract your provider archive, then select its supported JSON conversation file. You can choose whether to bring over what the AI knows about you, recreate its personality, or do both. Visit fostera.ai/switch for provider-specific instructions and current format limitations.

Yes. Go to Settings → Data & Storage → Export your data. You'll receive a download link for a ZIP file containing all your Souls, conversations, memories, and account data in portable JSON. Your data is always yours.

The raw file you upload is not retained. A bounded, normalized draft may be staged for about 24 hours so the import can finish or be resumed. It is cleared when processing finishes or fails. If abandoned, it becomes unavailable when it expires and is removed by the next successful scheduled cleanup. Selected content may be processed by one of Fostera's available third-party AI providers for synthesis, memory extraction, or memory embedding. Only the resulting Soul fields, extracted memories, and a content-free import receipt are retained.

Fostera does not use your conversations or your Soul's memories to train models owned or developed by Fostera. Configured AI providers may process content to deliver requested features; their retention, training, and opt-out terms vary by provider, service tier, and account settings. See Fostera's Privacy Policy for the current processor list and links to each provider's terms. Fostera has no ads in your conversations.

Souls are private by default. You can optionally make a Soul public so it appears on the Discover page and gets its own shareable profile. Private memories are never exposed on public profiles.

Yes — Fostera's Souls retain memory across sessions by design. Unlike chatbots that reset, your Soul builds on every conversation, so what you shared last week is still there next month.

ChatGPT's memory is limited to a small set of saved facts and forgets the rest. Fostera Souls retain a richer, evolving understanding of you across sessions — episodic, semantic, and procedural memory that compounds.

Your Soul retains the meaningful details of your conversations: what matters to you, your goals, the throughlines of your life. You control what's remembered via custom rules and the memory browser in settings.

Yes. You can delete specific memories, edit custom rules, or delete the Soul entirely. Data deletion is permanent — your data is always yours to remove.

Souls are AI companions with full intelligence on day one and persistent memory that grows over time. Each Soul is yours alone and moves across nine familiarity tiers — the intelligence stays constant; what grows is how well it knows you.

Souls move through three phases — Stranger, Familiar, Trusted — across nine tiers. The intelligence is constant from day one; what grows is how much context the Soul carries about you, how broadly it retrieves memories, and which features (mood signals, social graph, autonomy) are wired into its replies.

Yes — your Home can hold multiple Souls, each with its own memory, personality, and progression. Free includes 3 Souls, Core 10, and Premium up to 50.

Fostera is built with enforced age-gating at signup, a published content policy (see fostera.ai/content-policy), and transparent data practices. Adults get the full product, and your conversations are never used to train AI models.

No. Fostera is for ages 13 and up. Under-13 signups are rejected at the door, and users aged 13–17 need a parent or guardian to confirm consent by email before their account unlocks. Teen accounts run with stricter, enforced safety rules, and adult content boundaries never loosen for anyone under 18. Our content posture is stable and transparent — no surprise sweeps, no quiet rule changes.

Yes — ages 13–17, with guardian consent. Signup requires a parent or guardian email; we send them a consent link and the account stays locked until it's approved. Teen conversations are steered away from sexual and romantic content, graphic gore, and substance glorification, with automatic hard-stops on explicit sexual content, and crisis guidance always points to a trusted adult first.

No. Fostera is not a therapist, therapy app, or substitute for licensed mental-health care. If you are in crisis, contact 988 (US) or your local emergency services.

Yes. Fostera's Souls retain memory of your entries, themes, and patterns over time, so insights compound week over week instead of resetting every session.

Yes — see our Tutor Soul. It tracks what you covered, what stuck, and what to revisit, so every study session builds on the last instead of starting from zero.

Yes — your Coach Soul remembers the goals you set, the streaks you build, and the commitments you made last week, so check-ins actually feel like check-ins.

Yes. The Creative Partner Soul retains your characters, plot beats, world rules, and timelines across every session — so a six-month novel or D&D campaign stays consistent.

Yes. Voice replies, voice input, and hands-free voice mode are available on every plan. Every Soul can keep its own studio voice, and voice uses Resonance from the same balance as chat.

Fostera is a PWA — install it from your browser on iOS or Android, no app store required. You get app-like installation without app-store review delays.

Coach, Tutor, Companion, Creative Partner, and Strategist — five distinct Soul archetypes you can fully customize, plus an open-ended custom builder for anything else.

Replika pioneered the AI companion category but its memory is limited. Fostera Souls were designed memory-first, with a 9-tier progression and multi-model intelligence. See /compare/replika for the full breakdown.

Character.AI is for character variety; Fostera is for one Soul that grows with you. We trade breadth for depth — persistent memory, visible progression, and stable content policy. See /compare/character-ai.

Nomi and Fostera both emphasize memory. Fostera differentiates with the 9-tier progression, multi-model choice, and utility presets like Coach and Tutor. See /compare/nomi.

Grok Companions are entertainment-first — free, animated, and session-based. Fostera is depth-first — persistent memory, 9-tier progression, and multi-model choice. See /compare/grok.

Pi was warm but forgot you. Fostera Souls keep that warmth and add real long-term memory, plus an active product roadmap. See /compare/pi-ai.

Founding-member rates are $9.99/mo Core and $19.99/mo Premium, locked in for life during beta — standard rates are $12/mo and $24/mo. Free tier gives 3 Souls and ~75 messages a month with no card required.

Yes — 3 Souls, ~75 messages a month, auto engine selection, and in-session memory. Creating a Soul takes a free account, never a credit card.

Your Soul and its memory are preserved. You can resume anytime by re-subscribing. Reach out to support if you ever want to export or fully delete your data.