The short version: The choice between AR filters vs WebAR is really a choice between renting an audience and owning an experience. Filters live inside Snapchat and TikTok, borrow those platforms' distribution, and stop existing the moment the platform decides they should — which is exactly what happened to every third-party Instagram and Facebook filter in January 2025. WebAR lives on a URL you control, works on any modern phone without an app, and can be measured and kept indefinitely, but you have to bring your own traffic. Most brands that only pick one pick wrong: use filters for reach at the top of the funnel, WebAR for anything that has to convert, persist, or be measured.
The reset most articles have not caught up with
If you read anything about branded AR written before the last couple of years, it will tell you to start with Instagram. That advice is now impossible to follow.
We are being blunt about this because a great deal of published advice — including, until recently, some of our own pages — still lists "Instagram filters" as a service you can buy. You cannot. No agency can build you a custom Instagram or Facebook filter today, and any that says otherwise is either working from stale notes or hoping you will not check.
This matters far beyond one platform. It is the cleanest possible illustration of the actual risk in filter-led AR: you are building on land you do not own, under a tenancy that can be ended without your agreement. Hundreds of thousands of creators discovered that at once, with a few months' notice.
Snapchat — Lens Studio: active and open. Snap continues to support brand and creator lens development, and also offers Camera Kit for bringing Snap's AR into your own app.
TikTok — Effect House: active and open. Free to build in, with a separate paid Branded Effect route for large reservation campaigns.
Instagram & Facebook: closed to third parties. First-party Meta effects only.
WebAR: unaffected, because it does not depend on anyone's app store or effect platform.
Rented reach vs owned experience
Strip away the technology and AR filters vs WebAR is a property question.
A social filter is rented reach. You put your effect into someone else's app, and in exchange for surrendering control you get access to an audience already standing there with the camera open. Discovery is the entire value proposition. Nobody has to install anything, nobody has to be persuaded to visit a URL, and if the effect is genuinely fun it can travel on its own.
WebAR is an owned experience. It is a page on your domain that opens the camera. There is no gatekeeper, no review queue, no platform policy that can retire it, and no ceiling on what you are allowed to build. The trade is that a URL has no audience of its own. You have to bring people to it — from a QR code on packaging, a poster, an email, a product page, an ad.
Filters give you
Native distribution, a low barrier to trying, social sharing built in, and a format audiences already understand.
Filters cost you
Platform dependency, review processes, limited analytics, hard technical ceilings, and no guarantee of continued existence.
WebAR gives you
A permanent URL, full analytics, no app install, unlimited complexity, and an asset you keep.
WebAR costs you
All of the traffic acquisition. A WebAR experience nobody is sent to is an expensive page nobody visits.
Where social filters still clearly win
None of the above makes filters a bad buy. It makes them a specific buy.
Where WebAR clearly wins
The pattern here is anything with a job to do beyond being seen.
AR filters vs WebAR, side by side
| Social AR filters | WebAR | |
|---|---|---|
| Lives where | Snapchat, TikTok | Your own domain |
| Instagram / Facebook | No longer possible for third parties | Unaffected |
| Built-in audience | Yes — the main reason to use them | None; you bring the traffic |
| Install required | The platform app | None — any modern mobile browser |
| Analytics depth | Platform-defined, shallow | Whatever you already use |
| Links to checkout | Constrained | Directly |
| Technical ceiling | Platform limits on size and complexity | Practical limits only |
| Who can end it | The platform, unilaterally | You |
| Useful lifespan | Campaign-length | Years, if maintained |
| Best at | Reach and sharing | Conversion, retention, measurement |
A two-minute decision tool
Pick the statement that sounds most like your actual situation. This is deliberately blunt — it will give you a starting position, not a strategy.
What are you actually trying to do?
One answer. Be honest rather than aspirational.
Lifespan: the number nobody quotes you
Agencies quote build cost. Almost nobody quotes cost per useful month, which is the figure that actually decides this.
A filter's working life is generally the campaign it was made for. Interest decays quickly once promotion stops, platform trends move on, and — as Spark demonstrated — the whole surface can be withdrawn. A WebAR experience on your own domain keeps working as long as you keep it maintained, and it can be updated, extended and repointed at new products without starting again.
The sensible way to think about it: filters are media spend and should be budgeted from your campaign line. WebAR is an asset and should be budgeted from your product or web line. Comparing their prices directly is a category error, which is why so many of these conversations go in circles.
Using both properly
The brands that get real value from AR rarely choose. They sequence.
Doing it in the opposite order is the common mistake. A filter goes viral, there is nowhere to send the interest, and three weeks later there is nothing to show for it except a screenshot in a wrap-up deck.
Frequently asked questions
Can I still get a custom Instagram filter made for my brand?
No. Meta closed the Spark AR platform to third-party creators on 14 January 2025, retiring Meta Spark Studio, Meta Spark Hub and Meta Spark Player, and removing third-party effects from Facebook, Instagram and Messenger. Only Meta's own first-party effects remain on those apps. Any agency currently offering to build you a custom Instagram or Facebook filter is working from out-of-date information. The remaining routes for branded social AR are Snapchat via Lens Studio and TikTok via Effect House.
What is the difference between an AR filter and WebAR?
An AR filter is an effect that runs inside a social platform's app, such as Snapchat or TikTok, and relies on that platform for distribution, hosting and rules. WebAR runs in a normal mobile browser from a URL you own, needs no app installation, and is governed only by you. Filters are better at reach because the audience is already in the app. WebAR is better at conversion, measurement and permanence because it sits on your own site alongside everything else you control.
Which is cheaper, an AR filter or a WebAR experience?
A simple social filter is usually cheaper to build than a comparable WebAR experience, but the comparison is misleading because they are different kinds of purchase. A filter is media spend with a campaign-length life. WebAR is an asset that persists and can be updated and reused across products and campaigns. The more useful question is cost per month of useful life, and by that measure a WebAR experience you maintain for two years often works out cheaper than a series of one-off filters.
Do people need to download an app to use WebAR?
No, and that is the central advantage. WebAR runs in the mobile browser already on the phone. A shopper scans a QR code or taps a link, grants camera permission once, and the experience loads. There is no app store visit, no install, and no account. This is why WebAR works well on packaging, print, exhibition stands and product pages, where asking someone to install software would lose almost everyone.
Is WebAR supported on iPhone and Android?
Yes, on modern devices and current browsers, though the mechanism differs. Placing an object at real scale hands off to Apple's AR Quick Look on iOS and Google's Scene Viewer on Android, both of which are built into the operating system. Inline AR that stays within the web page uses the WebXR APIs, and support for those is less consistent across browsers. A well-built WebAR experience detects what the device supports and falls back to a plain 3D viewer rather than failing.
Should a small business bother with AR at all?
Only if there is a specific job for it. AR earns its cost when a customer genuinely cannot judge a product from photographs — scale, fit, how something looks in a real room — or when you need a physical object such as packaging or a poster to open a digital experience. If neither applies, the money is usually better spent elsewhere. We would rather tell you that at the enquiry stage than after a build.
Not sure which side of this you are on?
Tell us what you are trying to achieve and who you are trying to reach. If a Snap or TikTok effect is the right answer we will say so, and if the honest answer is that AR is not the right spend for you this quarter, we will say that too.
Get a straight recommendationRelated reading: AR filters and social lenses, WebAR development, our augmented reality services, AR for events, putting WebAR on a Shopify product page, and AR on a trade show stand.
