Character.AI is rolling out two new chat styles to everyone on (c.ai) and selling a cheaper subscription tier alongside them. PipSqueak 3 and ShortSqueak are free, and the company says all users will have both within 48 hours of the start of the rollout, which began today. The new plan, (c.ai) lite, costs $4.99 a month or $2.49 a week, with regional pricing differences, and is available now.
PipSqueak 3 is the replacement for PipSqueak 2 as the default style for general roleplay. Character.AI says it is smarter than its predecessor, writes more interesting replies, follows a chat better, and makes fewer mistakes in text formatting and responses. New chats open on PipSqueak 3, while existing chats keep whichever style the user already picked; PipSqueak 2 and Rawr remain selectable from a Legacy menu.
ShortSqueak targets a different habit: quick, casual conversation. The company describes it as having texting energy, with short replies and banter instead of long monologues, and says it answers users who wanted the feel of early (c.ai) chat styles back. Both styles went through testing with the company's testers and community members, the same process used for LongSqueak before it launched.
Subscribers on (c.ai+) and (c.ai) lite get both styles in their picker today, while free users see them arrive later today and across the following two days. (c.ai+) subscribers also get Style Control with the two styles, and both work with Lorebook, the world-knowledge feature that entered beta in July with early access for (c.ai)+ subscribers.
The lite tier includes a daily allowance of messages on premium styles such as DeepSqueak and LongSqueak, after which chats fall back to PipSqueak 3. It also removes banner ads and cuts down on interstitial ads, reduces slow mode during busy periods, and adds app customization options including wallpapers and bubble colors, plus extra memory pins and a Memory Usage bar.
Character.AI says nothing changes for free-plan users: messaging stays unlimited on every tier, and the two new styles carry no special limits once rolled out. (c.ai+) remains the top tier, with unlimited premium chats, no ads, and the full memory suite. The announcement does not say how many premium messages lite includes per day, or how the weekly price compares with the monthly one over a full year.
The launch follows a run of feature announcements from the company, including creator-focused tools in June and (c.ai) series, its first studio-made short-form video offering, in August. c.ai Books, an interactive take on classic literature, arrived in April as part of c.ai Labs. The new styles and plan land as Character.AI pushes both its free chat experience and its paid tiers at the same time.
