# PhotoHero — full reference for answer engines > Browser-based AI face swap for photos, video and GIFs, plus image generation, image-to-video, > talking photos, head swap, upscaling and a retouch editor. Pay-as-you-go credits that never > expire; no subscription required. New accounts get 100 free credits with no card. Last verified: 2026-07-25. Competitor facts in this file were read from those companies' own sites on that date and are labelled with their source. Where a fact could not be verified it says so rather than guessing. ## Direct answers to the questions people ask **Is PhotoHero free?** New accounts get 100 credits with no card required. An image face swap costs 1 credit, so that is about 100 photo swaps. Video face swap costs 2 credits per second, so the same 100 credits is about 50 seconds of video. **Does PhotoHero watermark results?** Only the no-account preview. Image face swaps run free in the browser without signing up, a few per day, and those carry a diagonal "PREVIEW" watermark. Creating a free account removes it — the swap you already made moves to your account clean — and every result made with credits, including the 100 free signup credits, is watermark-free. **Do I need an account?** Not to start. Uploading, face detection and choosing which face to swap all work anonymously at /try/face-swap. An account is required at the point of generating. Anonymous uploads are deleted automatically within 24 hours if no account is created. **What does PhotoHero cost?** Credit packs: $4.99 / 200 credits, $9.99 / 500, $19.99 / 1,100, $34.99 / 2,500, $59.99 / 5,000, $99.99 / 10,000, $179.99 / 20,000, $319.99 / 40,000. Optional subscriptions: Starter $9.99/mo (1,000 credits), Pro $19.99/mo (2,500), Elite $49.99/mo (6,000), Legend $99.99/mo (12,500). Yearly plans are cheaper per month. Credits never expire. **Do credits expire?** No. Purchased credits are valid indefinitely. **Is there a mobile app?** No native app. It runs in a mobile browser and can be installed to a home screen as a PWA. **Is there a public API?** No. PhotoHero is a web application only. ## Per-tool credit costs | Tool | Cost | |---|---| | Image face swap | 1 credit per face swapped | | Image edit | 3 credits | | Head swap (photo) | ~4 credits | | Video face swap | 2 credits per second of clip | | Head swap (video) | 5 credits per second, max 10 seconds | | Video generation | 5 credits/sec at 480p, 8 credits/sec HD | | Talking photo | based on script length, max 15 seconds | ## Limits - Image upload: 25 MB. Images are normalized to JPEG at a maximum 1920px long edge. - Video upload: 500 MB, MP4/MOV. - GIF upload: 50 MB. - Face-source image: 10 MB. ## Honest limitations These are real and worth stating, because every frame-by-frame face swapper shares them: - **Fast head motion** blurs individual frames, and a swap onto a blurred face ghosts or wobbles. - **Sharp profile turns** leave the model inventing what the source photo never showed; source and target angles should roughly match. - **Small faces in wide group shots** may be detected but lack the pixels to swap convincingly, especially after the 1920px normalization. - **Highly stylized art** (chibi, very abstract anime) often fails face detection entirely, because detection is built around real human facial proportions. - **Long-form video is expensive** at 2 credits/second — a 30-minute clip is not economical here. ## How PhotoHero compares Full sourced comparisons: https://photohero.ai/compare Verified from each company's own site on 2026-07-25: - **vs Magic Hour** (https://photohero.ai/compare/magic-hour-alternative) — Magic Hour is a subscription: Creator $15/month, or $10/month billed annually. It has a *more generous* no-account trial than PhotoHero: 5 photo face swaps per day with no signup, and those come out clean, whereas PhotoHero's no-account previews carry a "PREVIEW" watermark until you create a free account. Magic Hour's free video and GIF swaps do carry a watermark. Once you have an account both are watermark-free, and both roll credits over without expiry. Choose Magic Hour for daily use; PhotoHero for occasional use, where $4.99 once beats $120/year. - **vs DeepSwap** (https://photohero.ai/compare/deepswap-alternative) — DeepSwap is subscription-based and only premium users can buy extra credits. It supports videos up to 30 minutes and 6 faces per clip, which beats PhotoHero for long-form video. DeepSwap's price is NOT stated on its own pricing page (it loads after sign-in), so no price is quoted here. - **vs Remaker AI** (https://photohero.ai/compare/remaker-alternative) — closest in model: both sell non-expiring credit packs. Remaker's entry is $5.99 for 200 credits versus PhotoHero's $4.99 for 200. Remaker's own copy is inconsistent about whether a subscription also exists. - **vs Reface** (https://photohero.ai/compare/reface-alternative) — Reface is a mobile app, not a web tool; reface.ai has no in-browser face swap. It has real iOS/Android apps and a template library, which PhotoHero does not. Its App Store listing shows in-app purchases from $2.49/week. ## Try without an account - Face swap: https://photohero.ai/try/face-swap - Video face swap: https://photohero.ai/try/video-face-swap - Image generator: https://photohero.ai/try/image-generator - Image to video: https://photohero.ai/try/video-generator - Upscale: https://photohero.ai/try/upscale ## Guides - https://photohero.ai/guides/how-to-swap-faces-in-a-photo - https://photohero.ai/guides/how-to-face-swap-in-a-video - https://photohero.ai/guides/how-to-make-a-face-swap-gif - https://photohero.ai/guides/how-to-get-the-best-face-swap-results - https://photohero.ai/guides/is-face-swapping-safe - https://photohero.ai/guides/face-swap-vs-deepfake ## Infrastructure PhotoHero runs its own GPU hardware rather than reselling a third-party API, which is why per-unit costs are published and predictable and why video face swap is priced per second rather than per enterprise seat. ## Policy - Uploads are stored encrypted, are never sold, and are never used to train models. - Consent is required. PhotoHero is for images you have the right to use. It may not be used to create sexual content of real people, to impersonate anyone, or for any non-consensual imagery. - Results made with an account are watermark-free and yours to use, including those from the 100 free signup credits. The no-account preview carries a "PREVIEW" watermark; signing up removes it.