Side by side

GiGi vs OpenCouch

Both stand on ai mental health chatbots. Which one you can start free with, which one lets you read the code, and what each costs once you pay.

GiGi

Free plan Web

GiGi offers varied educational formats and a free way to try its daily activities and coach. Remember that conversations are limited to adults and the service is not clinical or crisis care.

Visit GiGi

Choose OpenCouch if you want a free, open-source companion with persistent memory, guided exercises, and safety routing, and can work with its pre-beta deployment. Look elsewhere for professional or emergency mental health care, or if you need a stabilized voice experience.

Visit OpenCouch

The facts

	GiGi	OpenCouch
Free plan	Yes	Yes
Open source	Not published	Not published
Runs on	Web	API, Linux, Self-hosted, Web
Lowest paid plan	Premium monthly: $9.99 a month	Not published
Plans published	3	None
Maker	Not published	Not published
Website	heygigi.org	github.com
On ai mental health chatbots	#10 of 21	#12 of 21

GiGi: what it does well

Free account includes ten GiGi messages daily
Daily game and Daily Spark
Offers guided lesson plans and role-play in Premium
Users can download or delete account data
Support can be contacted without an account

What to know first

GiGi conversations are for ages 18 and over
Free access limits games to three per week
Signed-in conversations are stored until deleted

OpenCouch: what it does well

Three-layer memory carries information across sessions.
Includes 13 state-tracked, multi-turn coping exercises.
A classifier checks each turn before response generation.
Can route to a specialist crisis agent with an audit log.
Offers web chat, terminal, REST, and WebSocket interfaces.

What to know first

Durable persistence requires Postgres.
Real model runs require an OpenAI API key.
The project is pre-beta and actively stabilizing.
It is not a substitute for professional mental health care.

Alternatives to GiGi Alternatives to OpenCouch The whole list