Chub AI in Russian: What It Is, What It Costs, and Does It Open From Russia

Everything about Chub below comes from its official documentation and an access test run on September 29, 2026. Other people's opinions are credited to their source. The site changes fast, so keep the date in mind.

Chub is a control panel, not a chat partner

The main thing to understand before you sign up: Chub has no built-in "brain" by default. The docs say plainly that characters run on language models via API, and connecting a model is a required step before your first message. Here's what the service itself gives you:

• Character cards: description, scenario, first message. Users write and upload them.
• Chat with branching, so you can go back to any line and take a different path, plus lorebooks, group chats and export to the SillyTavern format.
• Prompt knobs: system instructions, temperature and other settings.

But the price, the language and the quality of replies all depend on what you plug in. If "API" and "tokens" still sound fuzzy, check out what tokens are in AI.

Three ways to get a character to reply

• Your own keyAn account with OpenAI, Anthropic, Google or OpenRouter and an API key. You pay the provider per token. Good for people who already work with APIs and can keep track of spending.
• A Chub subscriptionThe Mercury and Mars plans. Per the docs, Mars costs $20 a month, about 1,690 rubles at the Central Bank of Russia's rate at the end of September 2026. For people who don't want to deal with keys.
• A local modelYour own or a rented graphics card and programs like Kobold. Free if the hardware is yours. For people who love tinkering.

In the code of the old version of the site, Mercury was listed at $5 a month with a smaller model and short context, and new users were sometimes given one-time trial credits for a few dozen messages. We couldn't check whether those terms still apply: the site is behind protection against automated requests.

Chub's own docs advise against "free" proxies running on someone else's keys: their owners can see your data and IP, and the keys there are often stolen.

Does Chub open from Russia?

On September 29, 2026, we tested access from home and mobile networks in Russia, including MTS, Rostelecom, ER-Telecom and regional providers, with eight probes per address over two runs. The main domain chub.ai responded once out of sixteen, and that was from a Moscow data center, not a home network. www.chub.ai and venus.chub.ai redirect to the same place, and the old characterhub.org never responded at all.

Why that is, whether it's a block, a filter or routing, nobody knows. For the user the result is the same: on that date the site effectively didn't open from a home network without a VPN.

Russian: what you actually get

The interface and docs are in English, and there's no Russian version of the site. The catalog is made of user cards, and most of them seem to be written in English. Whether a character replies in Russian depends on the card and the model. A review on mybf.bot (also a competitor, August 2026) notes that Russian sounds more convincing when the card spells out the language and speaking style directly. That's true for any interface like this: the character was invented in one language, you ask it to answer in another, and you can see the seam.

• Start with the formal Russian "you," then a couple of lines later suggest switching to the informal one. An English card doesn't know the difference.
• Drop in an idiom like "nu ty i frukt" (roughly "you're a real piece of work") and see if it gets the meaning.
• With a female character, watch the gender of past-tense verbs: Russian marks it, and English-built cards often slip into the masculine form.

Payment and rules

According to the old site code, card payments go through Stripe, with crypto as the alternative. Ruble options like SBP (Russia's fast payment system) or Mir cards aren't mentioned in the docs. Search results turn up sellers offering Mercury and Mars subscriptions on marketplaces, and that's a separate risk: you're paying a third party. Per the rules, the service is adults only, 18+.

Where Chub really shines

• Freedom of model choice: from GPT and Claude to a local network on your own graphics card.
• A huge user catalog that grows thanks to every author at once.
• Storyteller tools: branching, lorebooks, group chats, full control over the prompt.

If that's what you need and you can reach the site, it's a powerful roleplay tool. How to squeeze a lively scene out of any model is covered in how to write a prompt.

Is Chub right for you? Four questions

1. Are you ready to deal with an API key or a subscription in dollars?
2. Are you fine with an English interface?
3. Do you have a reliable way to open chub.ai?
4. Do model choice and branching matter more to you than a character's voice and ready-made scenes?

Three or four yeses: give it a try. Two or fewer: a ready-made service with the model already inside is a better fit. On my-idol.ru the characters reply in English or Russian, whichever you choose: heroes from anime, TV shows and books like Frieren, Gojo or Dean Winchester, plus original characters. They remember the conversation, you can listen to replies by voice, and you can bring several heroes into a group chat, much like a group scene on Chub, just without setting up an API. More options are in our roundup of Character AI alternatives.