AirBrush

Look up AirBrush in two places and you'll get two different stories. The Apple App Store lists it at 4.8 out of 5 stars across more than 200,000 ratings — a strong showing for a photo app in a crowded category. Trustpilot, an independent review site, rates it 1.5 out of 5 and labels it "Bad." Both figures are current and both are measuring the same product, developed by Pixocial Technology (Singapore) Pte. Ltd., part of China's Meitu group, which also owns BeautyPlus.

The gap is worth explaining rather than averaging away. App Store ratings tend to reflect the moment someone finishes an edit they're happy with, prompted by an in-app review request. Trustpilot reviews are more often written by people who went looking for a place to complain about something specific — usually billing. Reading through AirBrush's own App Store reviews (which include developer responses) shows the same pattern in miniature: reviewers who like the editing tools but describe losing paid access after a renewal, seeing more ads after cancelling, or waiting weeks for a support response on a subscription issue.

Strip away the billing conversation and AirBrush is a genuinely broad retouching app. The toolkit covers AI-powered retouch, spot healing and blemish removal, skin smoothing, face and body reshaping, eye and teeth enhancement, hair color and volume adjustment, background removal and swap, an object eraser, and filters and color adjustment. A "Magic Edit" layer adds generative fill and expand tools, and the app extends the same retouching pipeline to short selfie videos — face retouch, object removal, and quality enhancement for clips, not just stills.

Beyond the mobile app, AirBrush runs a web-based online editor and a desktop application (AirBrush Studio) for Windows and macOS, aimed more at content creators and photographers who want the same retouching tools without a phone screen. The company markets three audiences directly: everyday users doing quick touch-ups, content creators building a visual identity, and professionals who want portrait or headshot retouching without a studio.

Where a lot of photo apps run one free tier and one flat subscription, AirBrush splits pricing across platform (Web, Studio, Mobile) and uses a credit system layered on top of tier limits. As of August 2026, the web-based Web Plus plan runs $15.95 per month, with credits (80 per month) that get consumed at different rates depending on whether you're exporting a photo (1 credit) or a video (2+ credits, scaling with length). Studio Pro runs $99.95 per year ($8.33/month equivalent) and includes unlimited retouch exports plus 50 monthly AI credits for generative features; Studio Master steps up to $199.95 per year with 500 monthly credits and access to more advanced image models. Team and enterprise plans start around $20 per seat.

The mobile app's in-app purchase listing, visible on its App Store page, shows a separate and wider spread — weekly, monthly, and annual options ranging from roughly $7 to $44 depending on the specific listing and any active promotion. That inconsistency across platforms and listings is itself a documented characteristic of the app, not a rumor: it's visible directly in Apple's own in-app purchase disclosure. Anyone subscribing should check the specific plan and platform they're buying, since "AirBrush Pro" doesn't map to one fixed price.

Facetune remains the closer comparison on pure portrait retouching — narrower in scope, generally regarded as more precise for face work, and with a comparatively simpler pricing structure. Lightroom sits in a different category entirely: full RAW editing and color grading with no beauty-specific retouch tools, aimed at people who want control rather than one-tap fixes. Against Remini, which leans hard into AI upscaling and old-photo restoration, AirBrush's strength is breadth of everyday retouching rather than restoration quality.

What differentiates AirBrush from most of that field isn't the editing toolkit, which is comparable — it's the subscription experience once you're past the free tier, which is where the Trustpilot complaints concentrate.

Anyone who has specifically read subscription-management complaints and wants to avoid that risk should weigh it seriously; the pattern (renewal issues, post-cancellation ad increases, slow billing support) recurs across a meaningful number of App Store reviews, not just a handful. People who want one clearly published price rather than a credits-and-tiers system will find the pricing page more work to parse than most competitors. And anyone needing RAW-level editing control should look to a dedicated photo editor instead — AirBrush is built for fast retouching, not deep manual adjustment.

One detail worth noting: Pixocial does respond to negative App Store reviews, often within days, and several of the public replies point users to a specific app version or a "Report a Problem" flow to restore access to paid features. That's a more active support presence than many apps in this category show in public. Whether that responsiveness holds up over direct support channels — as opposed to public review replies — is less consistently documented; some reviewers describe getting a public response but a slow or absent resolution through email support, which is a different problem than no response at all. For a subscription product, that distinction matters more than the raw star rating on either platform.

Because AirBrush prices vary by platform, by whether you're buying weekly, monthly, or annual access, and by whatever promotion happens to be running, the most reliable approach is to check the specific in-app purchase listing at the moment of subscribing rather than relying on a number from a review, including the ranges cited above. Annual plans consistently work out cheaper per month than monthly ones across every tier the company publishes, which is standard practice, but the size of the discount and the exact starting price are worth confirming directly in the app before committing a card.

AirBrush's editing tools are broad and well-reviewed in the App Store, and the free tier isn't a stripped-down demo. But the size of the gap between its App Store rating and its Trustpilot score is unusual enough to flag directly: it points to real, recurring friction around billing and cancellation that shows up in reviewers' own words, developer responses included. Anyone considering the paid tiers should read a few of the most recent App Store and Trustpilot reviews before subscribing, and keep an eye on renewal dates given how often that specific issue comes up.