Is Looksmith free?
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The first six looks are free at onboarding. After that Looksmith runs on credits bought in packs, and there is no subscription.
Free to start, not free forever. Looksmith is coming soon to iOS, and at launch the first six looks are free, granted at onboarding. After those, Looksmith runs on credits bought in packs. There is no subscription and there is not going to be one. A look is a 9:16 poster of your own face, and a silent four-second looping clip if you asked for one.
What a look is
What do I get for one look?
One settled look. Not one image file, and not one attempt at something. You pick a look, Looksmith renders it onto the face you saved as your Likeness, and what comes back is a 9:16 poster, your own photograph with the makeup painted into it, plus the silent four-second clip if you asked for it. The poster and the clip are one look, not two.
Looksmith lists the products it used beside the finished look, and that list comes back with the look.
A Looksmith render takes roughly a minute. That minute is the reason the pricing works the way it does.
Does saving a Likeness use up one of the six?
No. A Likeness is the set of selfies that becomes your reusable face in Looksmith, and it is not a look. You save it once, and Looksmith renders every look after that onto it.
What you get without paying anything
Here is the whole Looksmith free tier.
| What you can do in Looksmith | Free? |
|---|---|
| Save a Likeness | Yes. A Likeness is not a look, so saving one does not use up a free look |
| Your first six looks | Yes. Granted at onboarding |
| Style Me, which puts you in several looks at once | Yes. The looks it makes come out of those six |
| Create Look, which takes a description in words | Yes. Within those six |
| Mirror a Look, which takes an inspiration photograph | Yes. Within those six |
| The 9:16 poster | Yes. One per look |
| The silent four-second clip | Yes. When you ask for it, as part of the same look |
| The list of products used in the look | Yes. It comes back beside the look |
The six free looks are not a demo mode. They are ordinary Looksmith looks, made through all three ways in. What changes after the sixth is that a look is paid for with credits.
Why Looksmith is not unlimited
Why does Looksmith not make every look free?
Because each look costs Looksmith real money at the moment you press the button.
This is the part most apps write around. A generative render is not a filter your phone paints onto the camera feed. It is a large model doing work on rented hardware for about a minute, to produce one poster and one clip of one face. That bill arrives whether the look turns out to be the one you wanted or not.
So the honest version is that Looksmith charges per look because looks cost per look. It is not that the good features live behind a wall. Credits are how Looksmith passes that cost on.
The first six exist so you can find out whether the thing works on your face before any of that is your problem.
Does Looksmith have a subscription?
No. Looksmith has no subscription, and there is not going to be one. Looksmith sells credits in packs, and you spend them on looks. Nothing recurring, nothing that bills you in a month you did not open the app.
A subscription is the natural business model for software with near zero marginal cost. It is a poor fit for something where the cost lands per render. Charging monthly for a product that costs money every time it runs means either capping heavy users with rules nobody reads, or charging light users for looks they never made. Credits keep both ends honest, because you pay for the looks you asked for and nothing else.
How much do credits cost?
Looksmith grants six free looks at onboarding and sells credits in packs after that, with no subscription. The price per pack is not set yet, and this page does not print a number on purpose. Looksmith is not released. It is coming soon to iOS. The site takes waitlist emails, and pricing is set at launch. A specific figure written today would be a price for a product nobody can buy yet, and it would be wrong by the time it mattered.
The comparison behind the question
The question behind "is Looksmith free" is usually a comparison, and it is a fair one. You have used a makeup try-on that was free, forever, with no credits and no counting. Why is this one different?
The answer is where the pixels are computed.
| What differs | AR makeup filter | Generative try-on |
|---|---|---|
| Where the image is made | On your phone, in real time | On rented hardware, not on your phone |
| Who pays for the computing | Your phone, which you already bought | Whoever rents the hardware, once per look |
| Usual price | Free to use | In Looksmith, six free looks, then credits |
An AR filter can be free forever because the expensive part is happening on hardware you already bought. Your phone does the face tracking and paints colour onto the video, thousands of frames, at no cost to whoever wrote the app. YouCam Makeup, from Perfect Corp, is an AR try-on of that kind. So is the try-on on a cosmetics brand's own product page, most of which is Perfect Corp or ModiFace behind the brand's name. Those exist to sell you that brand's products, and the try-on is a cost of selling them.
Generative rendering does not borrow your phone the same way. Looksmith renders off the device, so the work happens somewhere else, on hardware somebody is paying for.
That is the trade. Free and instant, showing one product at a time as a live overlay that vanishes. Or paid per look and slower, showing a complete look on a photograph of you that is still on your phone next week. The filter is the better tool right up to the point where you want to keep the picture. After that it cannot help you at any price, free included. The pricing follows the engineering rather than the marketing.
What each one actually shows you is a different question, and it is covered in AR makeup filters vs generative AI try-on.
What can I use if I do not want to pay anything?
Use AR filters, and use them well. For checking whether an eyeliner shape reads on your eyes, or roughly where a blush wants to sit, a free live filter is the right instrument and it costs nothing to try fifty times. Colour is where it gets unreliable, because what you see has been through your phone's automatic white balance.
Come to generative rendering for the thing filters cannot do: a whole coordinated look on your face, in a picture that still exists tomorrow. In Looksmith the first six of those are free, which is enough to learn whether this is a tool you want.
What no amount of credit buys
Looksmith will not reshape your face, change your eyelid topology, alter your age, or give you a haircut. Those are locked by design, not by tier. Your glasses come back exactly as they went in, and Looksmith adds no piercings, tattoos or jewellery either.
What Looksmith does render is makeup across the twelve face regions, brow shape within what a pencil, powder, concealer and a razor can do, iris colour as a contact-lens effect in realistic human shades, hair colour and dye placement, skin tone by at most one step through product finish, and drawn cosmetic details such as freckles.
A Looksmith look is a render rather than a measurement. It shows you the look, not the swatch. Buying the exact tube listed beside it will not reproduce that pixel, and Looksmith does not claim it will. The house read on a look is a guide, not a verdict.
Before you spend anything
If the question underneath yours is whether this is worth handing your face to, that is a different page and a better one to read first: is Looksmith legit covers who builds it and what it is. The privacy policy says what Looksmith does with your photographs, and the terms say what you are agreeing to. If a credit does something you did not expect, help is where to ask.
Six free looks is a small number, deliberately. It is enough to see your own face in something you would not have bought, which is the only test that settles anything.
Looksmith renders a full makeup look onto your own face and lists the products it used. iOS, coming soon.
You’re on the list.