The 8 best AI hairstyle apps in 2026, tested on one face

Search the App Store for an AI hairstyle app and you get past forty results before the list starts repeating itself. Almost all of them are free to download. Almost all of them promise the same sentence. Star ratings do not sort them either, because 4.7 stars across 1,780,454 ratings and 4.5 stars across 150 ratings are not the same claim measured in the same units, even though both get printed as a row of gold stars.

So this comparison does two things instead of ranking by stars. It gives you the rating and the rating count together every time, and it says what each app is structurally for, because the shape of the app is what decides whether you still have it installed on Thursday.

How this was tested

One photo, the same one every time. Front on, daylight coming from a window, hair pulled back off the forehead, no hat, no sunglasses, no filter. That matters more than it sounds: a bad input photo makes every one of these apps look worse than it is, and feeding a different selfie to each app would have made the whole exercise meaningless.

Then three questions, in this order. First, does the person in the result still look like you, or has the app quietly handed you a nice-looking stranger wearing the haircut. Second, how much is in the catalog and can you find one specific thing in it, because a butterfly cut you cannot search for is not really in the app as far as you are concerned. Third, what does it cost and at which tap does it ask.

Where the numbers come from, so you can check them: every rating, rating count, seller name, category and minimum iOS version below came out of Apple's own App Store search API on 17 August 2026, US storefront. Every feature described comes from that app's own App Store listing. Nothing here is written from memory. HairX AI appears in most roundups of this kind, and it did not come back in either search, so it is absent from this list rather than described from recollection.

Disclosure, before the table rather than after it: I built one of these eight. HairGlam is mine. It is in the table with its real numbers, which are 5.0 stars from exactly two ratings, and it does not win this list. If you have already decided you want the try on and not the comparison, the hairstyle try on page explains how it works and what a usable photo looks like.

The eight, side by side

Ordered by how many people have rated them, largest base first, because that is the one figure on this page you can verify yourself in about ten seconds.

Two columns there deserve a note. Every one of these eight is free to download, which is what Apple's price field says and nothing more. Some listings spell out the paid tier and some do not, and where a listing does not, it is written as not stated instead of guessed. Check the In-App Purchases list on the product page before you subscribe to any of them, including mine.

1. FaceApp: Perfect Face Editor

4.7 stars from 1,780,454 ratings. FaceApp Technology Limited, Photo & Video, iOS 17.0 or later, rated 12+.

Nothing else on this page is within two orders of magnitude of that rating count, and it is worth sitting with that for a second. Whatever you think of FaceApp, close to two million people have rated it and the average is still 4.7. That is what a long run as the default face editor looks like, and it means the photorealism problem is one this team solved a while ago.

The listing describes more than sixty filters, and hair sits among them: change your hair color and hairstyle, add volume, add a beard. So hair is a drawer inside a general editor rather than the point of the app. If your question is broad, something like whether you would suit lighter hair at all, that is enough.

Where it falls down is the narrow question. If you want to compare eleven variations on a bob and then check three of them against your actual jawline, a general photo editor is the wrong shape of tool. You are applying effects, not browsing a catalog, and there is no way to search for a cut by name. It also demands iOS 17, which quietly rules out older iPhones that the rest of this list still supports.

2. YouCam Makeup: Face Editor

4.7 stars from 154,701 ratings. Perfect Mobile Corp., Photo & Video, iOS 16.0 or later, rated 9+.

The most established beauty-tech company in this comparison, and the listing reads like it: makeup, face and body editing, a hairstyle try on, a hair color changer, a chat-based beauty assistant, and live makeup try on through the camera rather than on a still photo. That live mode is genuinely different from everything else here. Seeing a change move with your head answers questions a static render cannot, particularly about color.

What it is best at is being one app instead of five. If you are the sort of person who wants to fix the lighting, try a lip shade and see yourself as a redhead in the same sitting, this is the efficient choice, and the rating base is large enough that the average means something.

The cost is focus. Hair is one item on a long menu, so you are adopting an entire beauty suite to settle one haircut question, and the hair library is not the thing the app is organized around. If hair is the only reason you are downloading anything, a hair-first app will get you to an answer with less navigation.

3. Cosmo AI: Hair

4.3 stars from 16,629 ratings. Spark Dynamics, Photo & Video, iOS 16.6 or later, rated 12+.

Cosmo covers hairstyle filters, hair color, makeup, brows, video retouch and body reshaping. Broad, in other words, with hair given top billing in the name. The rating is the second lowest of the eight, which for a base of over sixteen thousand is a reasonably reliable signal that it works for most people and irritates a real minority.

The listing does something the others mostly do not: it states plainly that some advanced AI hairstyle try on options, video retouch, body edits and HD exports need an active subscription or in-app credits, and that paid features are marked inside the app before you buy. Telling people where the wall is before they hit it is a small thing that should be standard.

Credits are also the catch. A credit model prices the exact behavior you want from a hairstyle app, which is trying the tenth thing after the ninth one did not suit you. If you are the kind of person who works through a whole category before deciding, watch what the browsing costs.

4. Glowify: AI Hairstyle Try On

4.7 stars from 11,091 ratings. Flarial Interactive Limited, Photo & Video, iOS 15.0 or later, rated 4+.

The highest rated hair-first app in this comparison at a volume that makes the average trustworthy. The listing covers hairstyles, hair colors, makeup, outfits and accessories, plus an AI face shape read and seasonal color analysis, plus curated scenario looks with names like Office Polished and Vacation Resort. Pricing is stated: a Pro subscription, weekly, monthly or yearly.

It is good at the full makeover. If your real question is how you want to look at a wedding in six weeks, hair being only one part of that, Glowify is built for exactly that brief and 11,091 ratings at 4.7 suggests it delivers on it.

It is less good at the small question. Scenario collections and outfit try ons are a lot of app to walk past when all you wanted to know is whether curtain bangs work on your forehead. Seasonal color analysis is also its own discipline, and an app doing it alongside hair, makeup and clothes is spreading itself across four skills at once.

5. HairApp: AI Hairstyle Try On

4.2 stars from 8,055 ratings. XLABS, Lifestyle, iOS 15.1 or later, rated 4+.

The listing puts hairstyle try on, color analysis and a color changer up front, then keeps going: a beard filter, a beauty filter, an age guesser, a celebrity look alike and AI nail art. Hair and beard together in one place is a real advantage if you are growing something out and want to see the two decisions next to each other rather than in separate apps.

4.2 is the lowest average of the eight, and it is drawn from a base of eight thousand, so it is not a fluke of a handful of bad days. It is still a perfectly respectable score. It is just the one figure in this table that says most clearly: try the free tier before you pay for anything.

The feature spread is the honest concern. Going from hairstyle rendering to nail art to guessing your age is a lot of separate machine learning problems for one team to keep sharp at the same time, and every app in this category has to keep its hair model current as trends move.

6. HairHunt

4.4 stars from 365 ratings. Sugesta L.L.C-FZ, Photo & Video, iOS 16.4 or later, rated 4+.

HairHunt describes generating results on your uploaded selfie, which is the first of the three test questions and the one that matters most. Alongside the try on, the listing describes an Explore feed, a blog-style stream of trends and collections covering curtain bangs, the butterfly haircut, the wolf cut, bobs, pixies, shags and face-framing layers, browsable by length and texture.

The most interesting feature in this entire list is not the try on though. It is Visits: a log for your hairdresser where you keep before and after photos, the name of the cut, the color formula, what you liked and what you did not, and a reminder for the next appointment. Nobody else here is treating the app as a record of what actually happened to your hair. If you have ever sat in a chair trying to remember the number of a toner from four months ago, you already know why that is worth something.

The caution is the rating base. 365 ratings at 4.4 is a decent early signal but a thin one, roughly one bad week away from moving. It also needs iOS 16.4, which is a higher floor than several apps here.

7. Trimr

4.5 stars from 150 ratings. Erik Birger Storgaard Rasmussen, Lifestyle, iOS 17.0 or later, rated 12+.

Trimr is built around three things. A face analysis that reads jawline, forehead and cheekbones to identify your face shape and rank haircuts by fit, scoring each out of 100 on face shape match, age, maintenance, trend and styling difficulty. A try on that the listing is careful to say is generated on your own selfie rather than a generic model. And a color try on covering jet black through platinum blonde.

The best-aimed feature on this page belongs to Trimr, and it is the barber brief: the exact words to say at the chair, including guard numbers, length and technique. Almost every bad haircut is a translation failure rather than a skill failure. Handing someone a script with the guard number in it addresses the actual point where things go wrong, and no amount of rendering does that on its own.

Trimr also publishes its prices in the listing, which nobody else here does: $8.99 for one AI hairstyle scan a week, $10.99 for two, $14.99 for four. Give it credit for the transparency, then read the unit. You are buying scans rather than access, and one look a week is a very different product from browsing. If you already know roughly what you want and need it confirmed, that fits. If you want to work through twenty options on a Sunday afternoon, it does not. It also requires iOS 17.

8. HairGlam

5.0 stars from 2 ratings. Viral Tandel, Photo & Video, iOS 15.1 or later, rated 4+. Released 30 July 2026. This is my app, so read this section with the appropriate suspicion and check the numbers yourself.

Start with the weaknesses, because they are the part a maker is tempted to bury. Two ratings is not a rating. A 5.0 average from two people means two people liked it and tells you nothing about whether you will. It runs on iPhone and iPad, with no Android build at all. Unlimited use runs on HairGlam Pro, an auto renewing subscription billed weekly or yearly and cancelled in your App Store settings like any other. And it launched on 30 July 2026, so there is no track record at all: no history of updates, no evidence of how fast the catalog is kept current. Against apps with five and six figure rating counts, that is the honest position.

What it does well is narrow and specific. The style renders onto the photo you upload, keeping your face, your hairline and your coloring, rather than showing the cut on a catalog model. There are over 240 hairstyles and hair colors, and cuts and colors sit in separate rows on the home screen, Today's Picks and Trending Now for the cuts, Hair Colors for the shades, so you can change the cut without losing the color you had settled on. The Discover tab has a real search field and filters for Trending, Bold Color, Bob and Curly, and every card is labeled as a cut and a color together, along the lines of Beach Waves with caramel highlights. There is no sign up and no account to create, though the first launch walks you through a setup questionnaire and a subscription offer before it drops you on the home screen.

Discover in HairGlam: a search field, filter chips, and cards labeled as a cut plus a color rather than a single mood board image.

Where that combination earns its place is the browsing case, when you do not yet know what you want and need to see fifteen things on your own face before the shortlist makes sense. It is not the app with the deepest track record here, it does not analyze your seasonal palette, and it will not write your barber a script. Trimr does that better.

How to pick one

Match the app to the problem you actually have, because these eight are solving noticeably different ones.

• You already own a face editor. Try hair inside FaceApp or YouCam Makeup first. It costs nothing and it may be enough.
• You cannot describe what you want out loud. Trimr, for the barber brief and the guard numbers.
• You keep forgetting what your colorist did. HairHunt, for Visits.
• You want hair, makeup and outfits settled together. Glowify or YouCam Makeup.
• You want to browse a lot of cuts and colors on your own face. HairGlam, with the caveats above intact.
• You want the widest toolbox for the money. Cosmo AI, watching the credit balance.

Then four rules that apply whichever you download. Read the rating and the count as one number, and distrust any roundup that prints stars without a count, including any future version of this one. Check the In-App Purchases list on the App Store product page before you subscribe, because that list is Apple's and cannot be softened by marketing copy. Use the same photo in whichever two you try, or you are comparing photos rather than apps. And take a proper photo: front on, daylight, hair off the forehead. The input matters more than the app.

One more thing worth doing before any of this. Most of these apps will offer you a face shape reading, and the recommendations that follow are only as good as that reading. It takes four measurements and a couple of minutes to work it out yourself, and knowing the answer makes every one of these apps more useful, because you stop accepting suggestions you already know will not work. There is a walkthrough in how to know your face shape, and the rest of the guides are on the blog index.

The honest summary

There is no single winner here, which is an unsatisfying answer that happens to be the true one. FaceApp and YouCam Makeup have the numbers and the polish, and hair is a side dish in both. Glowify and Cosmo AI are makeover apps with hair at the front. HairHunt and Trimr are the two doing genuinely original thinking, and both have small rating bases you should treat as early rather than proven. HairGlam is the newest thing on this page by a wide margin and asks you to take a chance on two ratings.

What all eight agree on is the underlying point, and it is the one worth leaving with. Deciding on a haircut from a photo of somebody else is guesswork, and it is the reason so many people walk out of a salon quietly disappointed with a cut that was objectively well executed. Seeing it on your own face first, whichever app you use to do it, removes the part of the decision that was never yours to guess at.