Personally, I have two NSFW capable chatbots that I've been enjoying using. I won't claim they're the best as I definitely haven't tried all of them (there's a lot out there!) but they work very well in my opinion. Like you, the one I hear the most rave reviews over is candy.ai but yeah, it's trial run is WAY too limited and I hate subbing to something I can't get a good feel for first.
Nomi.ai - My personal favorite. Excellent memory and VERY natural responses. It's currently still in Beta but the devs are very active on reddit and constantly coming out with great updates. Free version only allows you one character with limited posts per day but it's plenty to give you a good feel for it. Can't really use the typical character cards but I've input enough details in the "shared notes" to create some excellent RP scenarios. Haven't experienced any NSFW limits yet (and I have a some fairly dark kinks). Biggest negative is that, like any current AI chatbot, sometimes it gets confused and makes a post that just doesn't work for the current scene or setting with no option to have it regenerate a new post. Devs refuse to acknowledge the value of a regen post option believing they can make the AI good enough to not need it.. Also has the ability to generate AI selfies that stay true to the original features, changing outfit and background to fit the current scene. Not the best AI generator but works well enough most times for it's purpose.
Yodayo.com - Seemingly no NSFW limits. So much so that there's been some concerns about how much they allow. I can't say the memory is great but works well enough. Mostly depends on how much information is in the character card. And if the AI does go off course, has a nifty reroll feature for each post. Even better, if you realize after a few posts, you just don't like the way it's heading, you can simply go back as far as you want, delete your post at that point and repost or reroll the AI's post. Two biggest negatives is one, if you're using someone else's character card, you can't see or manipulate the card in any way to tweak it to your own preferences. Two, no story image generator to add some visual flavor to the current RP like Nomi.ai or, I believe, candy.ai does even better. For costs, your given 150 points to use each day. I find it to be plenty though and I use it a lot. Site also has a rather robust AI art generator for primarily hentai or realistic asian girls but will eat heavily into your daily free points (each image costs average of 5 points). Other than being on the same website, generator isn't linked in any way to the chatbots.
BONUS: Chatbots on Yodayo, for this week only (i think 2/5/24 - 2/9/24), is completely free to use due to some update rollout hiccup. Aka, infinite messages. So great time to try it out and have those daily yodayo points for art generating!
Looking for realistic characters for Nsfw AI girlfriend? It means you don't want anime or hentai ai girls. Here are my recommendations:
SoulFun- Over 10 lifelike characters with high-quality NSFW photos generation and immersive NSFW AI chat experience.
Candy ai- Good quality of NSFW photos, maybe?
Muah AI - NSFW photos, voice chat, even PHONE CALLS (But it only supports US phone number)
Kupid AI - Another alternative similar to Candy but it provides gif with voice (they make it like a video)
DreamGF- Lots of user-created characters for you to choose. You can create your own easily.
If you have a decent NVIDIA video card, you can just host a local LLM like KoboldCPP, load a basic 7B model like siliconmaid, then use Silly Tavern (local host) to connect to koboldCPP with the model loaded. Then you don't have to pay $$$ to anyone, you just run the AI locally on your computer. I have a GTX 970 that handles a 7B decently, just make sure to use ContextShift on KoboldCPP to save time.
