Adobe Aero Alternatives for AR on iPhone, Android and the Web

Adobe Aero is no longer available. Adobe announced the end of support on August 7, 2025. The app left Creative Cloud, the App Store and Google Play on November 6, 2025. On December 3, 2025 Adobe decommissioned it, and .real scenes stopped working for authors and viewers alike. Files that nobody downloaded were removed from Adobe's servers after December 16, 2025, according to the Aero end of support FAQ. Adobe did not name a successor.

Aero was free and ran on iPhone, Android and the desktop, so most people leaving it want a no-code editor and a way to share a scene without making viewers install an app. Several older options are gone too. Meta Spark stopped running third-party effects on January 14, 2025. 8th Wall closed logins and its editor on February 28, 2026, and hosted projects only run until February 28, 2027. Amazon Sumerian scenes went offline on February 21, 2023. None of them appear below.

Zapworks, Reality Composer, Blippbuilder and Onirix need no code. Needle Engine works inside Blender or Unity. Lens Studio publishes to Snapchat. Unity with AR Foundation and model-viewer suit people who write code. Every price below was read on the vendor's own page on November 6, 2026.

Our method is on How we review tools.

Quick comparison

Zapworks

Zappar's Zapworks gives you two editors that run in the browser. Designer is drag and drop with no code. It handles image, face and world tracking, imports GLB and glTF models with their animations, and can launch a campaign from a single QR code. Mattercraft is the step up, with visual behaviours, a TypeScript editor built on Monaco, and location AR through Immersal or MultiSet VPS.

The big change from Aero is on the viewer's side. Zapworks scenes are WebAR, so people open them in a phone browser and skip the app store. Designer can also publish passthrough mixed reality for Meta Quest, Pico and Zapbox headsets. The pricing FAQ says every plan includes Designer, Mattercraft and the Universal AR SDKs.

Best for: Designers who want no-code AR that opens from a QR code in any phone browser.

Pricing:

• No free plan. A 14-day trial covers all tools but is not meant for public projects.
• Developer (non-commercial): $12.99/month or $64.99/year (£9.99 or €11.99 a month).
• Pro (commercial): $315/month or $2,640/year, with 12,000 views a year and up to 3 team members.
• Enterprise: custom pricing, required for companies with over $10 million in revenue or funding in the last 12 months. Prices exclude VAT or sales tax.

Watch out for:

• Developer projects show a Zapworks branded screen before the AR loads, are for non-commercial use only and get community support on Discord only.
• Pro caps views at 12,000 a year and projects at 50MB, so a busy public campaign can push you to an Enterprise quote.

Official site: Zapworks. Our listing: Zapworks.

Reality Composer

Apple's Reality Composer is the nearest match to Aero's place-it-on-the-table workflow. You position and rotate objects in AR or on a canvas, add basic animations, and attach spatial audio that plays on a tap or when the viewer walks close. You can import your own .usdz files or use the built-in library. On an iPhone 12 Pro or later, or an iPad Pro 5th generation or later, Object Capture turns a real object into a 3D model with the LiDAR sensor.

Scenes export as .usdz files that open in AR Quick Look on iPhone and iPad with nothing to install. Projects can move to a Mac through Xcode. For larger work Apple now offers Reality Composer Pro 3, which needs macOS 26.5 or later and previews changes live on Apple Vision Pro.

Best for: iPhone and iPad owners who want free AR authoring on the device, close to how Aero felt.

Pricing:

• Reality Composer: free on the App Store, needs iOS or iPadOS 17 or later.
• Reality Composer Pro 3: downloaded after a free Apple developer registration; Apple's page lists no price.

Watch out for:

• The App Store lists version 1.6 from October 10, 2023 as the latest, so the iPhone app has gone three years without an update.
• The app exists only for iPhone and iPad, and its scenes target Apple's AR Quick Look, so it is a poor fit if your audience is mostly on Android.

Official site: Reality Composer.

Needle Engine

Needle has published a guide written for Adobe Aero users. It maps Aero's Behaviors to Needle components one by one. Tap becomes a pointer click, Proximity becomes SpatialTrigger, and Play Animation, Show/Hide, Play Audio and Open URL each have a direct equivalent. Image targets from Aero can be reused with the WebXRImageTracking component.

You build scenes in Unity or Blender, or write TypeScript against the npm package, then export to the web. On iPhone, Needle generates interactive USDZ for Quick Look at runtime, with animations, show and hide, spatial audio and image tracking, or it runs WebXR through an App Clip. Deploy to any static host or to Needle Cloud.

Best for: Aero users who saved their assets and want the same tap and proximity behaviour on the web.

Pricing:

• Hobby: free, non-commercial, 1 Needle Cloud project, Needle branding on pages.
• Pro: €49 per seat per month, billed annually at €588. Commercial use, no watermark, unlimited viewers with no per-view fees, unlimited projects and 250 GB storage.
• Enterprise: custom pricing.

Watch out for:

• There is no phone app for authoring. Needle's own guide says Unity or Blender replace Aero's editor and Aero's on-phone placement does not carry over.
• Hobby projects can't be used commercially and carry Needle branding.

Official site: Needle Engine.

Blippbuilder

Blippar launched Blippbuilder in 2018 as a web-based drag-and-drop service. Blippbuilder Mobile lets you build from a phone with surface, gyro and marker tracking, preview the result and publish to social media.

Plans are sized by published projects, not by views. The pricing docs list unlimited views and free hosting on Creative, which covers one live project. Creative Plus covers two and drops the Blippar watermark, and Pro covers up to five with five users. Developers can use the separate Blippar WebAR SDK instead.

Best for: Small teams with one or two live AR projects who want unlimited views for a flat monthly fee.

Pricing:

• Blippbuilder Creative: £7.99/month; Creative Plus: £99/month; Pro: £249/month.
• WebAR SDK: free trial up to 100 views with a watermark; Creative licence £100/month; Commercial licence £250/month.
• Enterprise and Education: contact sales. Prices are listed in GBP, billed monthly.

Watch out for:

• Blippar ended Blippbuilder trial access on April 15, 2026, so you now pay before you can try the editor.
• Its help pages disagree: the pricing docs still describe a free Starter plan for testing, while the April 2026 notice says trials are gone. Check at signup.

Official site: Blippbuilder.

Onirix

Onirix Studio builds WebAR scenes by drag and drop, with an Online Code Editor when you need full control. It has four tracking modes: image, rotation from the phone's gyroscope, world tracking on floors and tables, and spatial tracking, where you scan a real room and pin content inside it.

A single project can hold image, surface and spatial scenes. The Plus tiers add wayfinding, e57 point-cloud import and BIM models with metadata, which aims Onirix at buildings, venues and facilities more than at social posts.

Best for: Agencies and building teams who need room-scale or indoor WebAR, not just a model on the floor.

Pricing:

• Starter: €45/month billed annually, or €90 paid monthly. 5 projects, 200 views a month, 15-day free trial.
• Professional: €299/month billed annually, or €598 monthly. 50 projects, 10,000 views a month, 1 domain.
• Plus: €449/month billed annually, or €898 monthly. Enterprise: contact sales. Prices exclude taxes.

Watch out for:

• Starter's 200 views a month covers testing, not a public launch.
• Combined tracking, which mixes image tracking with world or rotation tracking in one scene, is only in the Plus tiers.

Official site: Onirix.

Lens Studio

Snap's Lens Studio is free, runs on Windows 11 and macOS 12 or later, and reached version 5.24.1 on October 7, 2026. Lenses publish to Snapchat and Snap's Specs glasses. Through Camera Kit they can also run inside your own iOS, Android and web apps. Version 5.24 added two GenAI plugins, AI Video Transform and AI Photo Duo.

Aero scenes lived behind a link. Lens Studio work lives inside Snapchat, where the audience already is, so it fits brand filters and social campaigns better than product demos. For the same job on TikTok, Effect House is a free desktop app for Mac or PC.

Best for: Brands and creators who want AR effects seen inside Snapchat.

Pricing:

• Free. Snap calls Lens Studio its free AR development platform.
• Effect House for TikTok is also free.

Watch out for:

• Snap says 5.25 is the last release for Intel Macs, and 5.26 will require Apple silicon.
• Reaching people outside Snapchat means building Camera Kit into your own app or site, which is developer work.

Official site: Lens Studio.

Unity with AR Foundation

Unity plus the AR Foundation package is the route when an AR scene has to become a proper app. AR Foundation 6.2 has official provider plug-ins for ARCore on Android, ARKit on iOS, visionOS, HoloLens 2, Meta Quest and Android XR, so one project can target phones and headsets.

The editor runs on Windows 10 21H1 or newer, macOS Big Sur 11 or newer, and Ubuntu 22.04 or 24.04. Plan on C# scripting for anything past placing a model, and on shipping through app stores.

Best for: Teams who need an installable AR app for phones or headsets.

Pricing:

• Personal: free for businesses with up to $200,000 in revenue and funding.
• Pro: $2,310 per seat per year, or $210 per seat per month.
• Enterprise: custom pricing, required above $25M in annual revenue.

Watch out for:

• Pro and Enterprise prices rose 5% from January 12, 2026.
• AR Foundation lists no web provider, so a Unity AR scene can't open from a link the way Aero scenes did.

Official site: Unity with AR Foundation. Our listing: Unity with AR Foundation.

model-viewer

Google's model-viewer is a web component, licensed under Apache 2.0, that puts a 3D model on any page with an AR button. It supports WebXR, Scene Viewer and Quick Look modes. If you skip the ios-src file, it builds the USDZ itself when an iPhone visitor taps the AR button, so you can host just a GLB.

Placement defaults to the floor, and ar-placement set to wall hangs the model instead, which suits posters and artwork. It supports the last two major versions of Chrome, Firefox, Safari and Edge on desktop and mobile. Version 4.4.0 came out on October 9, 2026.

Best for: Shops and portfolios that need one model in AR on a product page, at no cost.

Pricing:

• Free and open source under the Apache License 2.0.

Watch out for:

• The docs warn that the auto-generated USDZ may not be adequate, in which case you supply your own ios-src file, which is an extra download.
• The AR button appears only on AR-capable devices, WebXR needs HTTPS, and iframes need the xr-spatial-tracking permission.

Official site: model-viewer.

How to choose

If you still have Adobe Aero files

There is no version of Aero left to stay on. Adobe decommissioned it on December 3, 2025, and .real scenes stopped working for authors and viewers that day. If you exported scenes before then, keep those files. Renamed to .zip and unzipped, they hold your 3D assets in an Assets folder that the tools above can import.

Frequently asked questions