BeautyPlus, Facetune, AirBrush, YouCam Perfect and FaceApp compared — believable skin retouching, precise spot fixes and transformations without the plastic look.
Bad selfie editing does not fail by doing too little; it fails by doing too much. Plastic skin and oversized eyes read instantly on a small screen, so the difference between these five apps is not raw power but how much control they hand you to stop before the result stops looking like you. Some are built for a single discreet fix, others for a full studio pass or for AI transformations with real privacy trade-offs. The 5 apps in this guide were picked across that spectrum in 2026, from the most generous free option to the creators' benchmark.
BeautyPlus is the category's best-rated app, smoothing skin while keeping its texture — the closest of the group to a believable result.
Its skin filters aim to preserve texture rather than airbrushing faces into plastic, which is the single hardest thing in portrait retouching and the reason it sits top of the ratings. The light correction is the other standout, doing remarkably well on indoor selfies where the face is lit by a warm ceiling bulb and nothing else; a few quick adjustments rescue shots that other apps flatten. The annoyances are around monetisation and permissions: a watermark appears unless you disable it in settings, the subscription is pushed hard, and the app requests broad gallery access.
Facetune is the creators' benchmark, with brush-level control over every part of the face, and one of the priciest subscriptions going.
From Lightricks, it is the professional reference for facial work: you paint adjustments onto specific areas instead of applying one global slider, reshape precisely, and use dedicated hair, makeup and teeth tools. That brush-level control is exactly why many creators actually edit with it rather than the trendier alternatives. Power and price arrive together. The subscription is expensive and effectively unavoidable, the toolkit takes real time to learn, and the same precision that enables subtle results also makes it easy to push every slider ten percent too far.
AirBrush is built for discreet spot fixes — a blemish, dark circles, teeth — which is why its results look the most believable.
Rather than one blanket filter, it offers targeted corrections: whitening teeth, removing a single blemish, lifting under-eye shadows and fine-tuning facial light without touching the rest of the image. The blemish tool is precise enough for close-ups, and working on specific problems is structurally what keeps the heavy-filter look away. Think of it as a concealer brush rather than a makeover. The economics are less attractive: its rating is modest, largely blamed on the subscription model, many tools are locked behind payment, and the free tier carries ads.
YouCam Perfect offers the broadest toolkit — body reshaping, object removal and a camera that previews retouching live before you shoot.
A veteran of the category, it gives the most granular control: adjustable skin smoothing rather than an all-or-nothing switch, face and body reshaping, removal of objects or people from the background, and a camera that shows the edited result in real time before the shutter fires, so you compose knowing what will change. That range makes it the versatile pick. Its reputation has slipped, though: users blame an aggressive subscription push and frequent free-version ads for the lower rating, and with so many powerful sliders it is easy to overshoot into an artificial look.
FaceApp dominates AI transformations — ageing, hairstyles, expressions — with striking realism, but it processes photos on its own servers.
It made its name on transformations and still leads them: ageing or de-ageing a face, swapping hairstyles and changing expressions come out strikingly realistic, and the usual facial retouching tools are included alongside the headline effects. It is genuinely fun in a way none of the other four attempts. The thing to know before uploading is architectural — photos are processed on FaceApp's servers rather than locally on the phone, which has drawn privacy criticism in the past, and nearly every effect you would open the app for sits behind a subscription.
Pros
Most realistic age and style transforms
Changes age, hairstyle and expression
Includes standard facial retouching
Cons
Server-side, not on-device processing
Past privacy controversies
Almost every effect needs a subscription
Download price only. In-app purchases and subscriptions may cost extra.
Questions & answers
How do I keep selfie retouching from being obvious?
Three rules. Fix the light before touching skin, because most of what bothers you in a selfie is bad lighting rather than the face itself. Use spot tools on specific problems instead of a global filter. And halve the intensity you first reach for: everything looks subtle on a small screen until you post it.
Which selfie editor is best for free?
BeautyPlus is the most generous free tier and the best rated, though it adds a watermark you can switch off in settings. AirBrush and YouCam Perfect have usable free versions with plenty of locked tools. Facetune is practically unworkable without paying.
Do these apps upload my photos to the internet?
It depends which feature you use. Conventional retouching in most of them runs on the phone itself. AI features — ageing, generated hairstyles, one-tap enhance — usually require sending the image to a server, and FaceApp processes in the cloud, which earned it privacy criticism. If that bothers you, skip the AI effects on photos you would not otherwise share.
Can selfie retouching affect self-esteem?
It is a fair question, especially with teenagers. Correcting the light in a photo is one thing; systematically reshaping your own features until you no longer recognise yourself is another. Retouching itself is harmless, but it is a reasonable argument for apps that correct discreetly over ones that rebuild the whole face.
More related apps
App library · United States App Store. Prices and availability reflect the last check.
