Prequel vs Picsart AI vs Meitu 美图秀秀 vs Facetune
A side-by-side look at scores, pricing and features — with RECATOOLS' ASEAN-aware verdict for each.
Prequel
Trend-first mobile photo/video editor with 800+ filters and AI avatars
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Picsart AI
150M-user photo/video editor, now a hub for 90+ AI models
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Meitu 美图秀秀
China's beautification app empire, now layering AI credits on VIP
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Facetune
Mainstream AI selfie retoucher — smoothing, reshaping, AI headshots
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| RECATOOLS Score | 6.2 / 10 | 7.4 / 10 | 6.7 / 10 | 6.5 / 10 |
| Capability | — | — | ||
| Value for money | — | — | ||
| Ease of use | — | — | ||
| ASEAN readiness | — | — | ||
| API quality | — | — | ||
| Pricing | Freemium | Freemium | Freemium | Freemium |
| Free tier | Free with basic filters and watermarks | — | — | 7-day free trial; core retouching free with limits |
| Paid from | Prequel Gold ~$7.99/week or ~$34.99/year | — | — | ~$9.99/month or ~$49.99/year |
| Has API | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ |
| Open source | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ |
| Free to use | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Users | 100M+ downloads (2022) | — | — | 200M+ downloads |
| Founded | 2018 | 2011 | — | — |
| Maker | Serge Aliseenko, Timur Khabirov | — | — | Lightricks Ltd. |
| Verdict | Prequel earns its downloads on aesthetics, not tooling. The draw is a deep bank of filters and one-tap looks (the D3D moving-photo effect and AI avatars get the most screen time) that make an ordinary phone clip look sty... |
Picsart earned its user base as a straightforward mobile photo editor, and that's still the core: background removal, object erase, templates, one-tap enhance. What changed in 2026 is the AI layer stacked on top — Flow,... |
Meitu has been the default Chinese beautification app since 2008 and it shows: retouching, body shaping and filter presets are polished to a degree few competitors match, and its AI portrait styles reliably go viral in C... |
Facetune is the app that made one-tap selfie retouching mainstream, and it still does the core job better than most: smoothing, reshaping, teeth-whitening and blemish removal that a non-editor can pull off in seconds. Li... |
| Full review → | Full review → | Full review → | Full review → |
Comparisons cover up to 4 tools. Scores are RECATOOLS editorial assessments; verify current pricing on each vendor's site.