Retake AI Review: What It Does Well, What It Costs, and When Stunna Fits Better

The short answer

Pick Retake AI if your problem is your own face in selfies, you are happy to upload about a dozen photos of yourself first, and you like choosing from several versions of the same shot.

Pick Stunna if you have one photo you almost love and the problem is bigger than an expression: flat light, a grey sky, a friend who blinked, glare on glasses, or a look that should feel like a film camera or a night-out flash. Stunna works from that single photo, with no training step, and handles group shots.

Retake AI vs Stunna at a glance

Prices are what the US App Store showed on October 12, 2026. Retake lists several prices for the same plan at once, which usually means the developer is testing prices, so you may see a different one.

How Retake AI works

Setup is the part that surprises people. Before you can edit anything, Retake asks for a set of photos of your face (its US listing says 12) and checks each one, rejecting shots where your face is too far away or appears twice. It then trains a personal model, which takes a while.

Once the model is ready, you upload a selfie and Retake returns several AI versions of it, each with a slightly different expression, eyes or smile. You mark the ones you like or dislike so it learns your taste. A separate tab has manual sliders for facial edits, and some options, such as hairstyles, carry a Pro badge. You can keep more than one profile, which helps if a partner or friend uses the same phone.

The design makes sense for its goal. A model trained on your face can change an expression without turning you into someone else, which is the main fear with AI face edits.

What Retake does well

The results often look like the person. One Google Play reviewer in October 2026 said the edit "looked much more natural than I thought it would", and that theme comes up again and again in the positive reviews. Getting several takes from one upload also suits anyone who likes to choose rather than tweak.

It is also one of the bigger names in this niche, with more than 10 million installs on Google Play, and the entry price is low if you land on one of the cheaper weekly price points. If your camera roll is mostly solo selfies and you only want better expressions, Retake does that job well.

Where Retake users run into trouble

Billing is the loudest complaint. Most of the recent one-star reviews on Google Play, from September and October 2026, are about being charged for the trial or not finding how to cancel. That is not unusual for subscription apps, but it is worth knowing before you start a trial. On iPhone, you cancel in Settings under your name, then Subscriptions. On Android, open Google Play, tap your profile, then Payments and subscriptions.

Other reviews mention compressed exports, long waits, occasional strange additions to a face, and limited options for Black hair and darker skin tones. A few paying users say the app paused them after many retakes in one sitting, although Retake does not publish a usage limit.

The setup is also a poor fit for a single photo. If you want to fix one group shot from last weekend, uploading a dozen selfies and waiting for training is a lot of work, and the group shot may contain faces the model was never trained on.

On privacy, both apps say in their App Store privacy labels that they use some data to track you, so read them before you install. The difference is what they list. Retake lists User Content among the data used to track you. Stunna lists purchases, identifiers and usage data for tracking, not your photos.

Where Stunna is different

Stunna starts from the photo you already have. You pick it from your library, choose a look or a fix, and Stunna reshoots it with AI while keeping the person, pose, outfit and place. There is no model to train, so the first edit takes about as long as the upload.

It also changes the things Retake leaves alone. An overcast lunch can get warm Golden Hour light, a dim night-out photo can get the crisp look of a direct flash, and a grey sky can turn clear blue. Photo Rescue covers the face fixes people usually want from Retake: Eyes Open, Soft Smile, Look at Camera and Group Blink, which fixes one blink in a group photo without touching the others. Glare Gone clears reflections on glasses, and our guide to glasses glare in photos explains how to avoid it at the shoot.

When the edit is done, you can export a clean photo or a before-and-after slide, side-by-side image or reveal video, which is handy if the before is part of the story. Stunna is newer and smaller than Retake, and AI results vary, so compare every result with your original before you save it. Our AI photo editing checklist lists the five things to check.

Which one should you pick?

Most people know after answering three questions.

• Is the problem your face or the photo? For expressions in solo selfies, Retake. For light, sky, camera look or a mix of fixes, Stunna.
• Is there more than one person in the shot? Retake works one face at a time. Stunna's Group Blink and scene looks work on the whole frame, and our group photo guide helps you get it right in camera next time.
• Do you want to set anything up? Retake needs about a dozen selfies and a training wait. Stunna needs one photo.
• Is it an old, blurry scan? Neither app is built for that. A restoration app like Remini is, and we compare it in apps like Remini.

Other Retake AI alternatives

If neither app fits, the newer AI photo apps are worth a look. Pecra and Cocopix both turn your photos into styled AI shots, and we compare them in our Pecra app review and our Cocopix review. For lighting you can fix before you ever need an app, see the cloudy day photo guide and the golden hour photography guide. If you want bolder face edits, such as age, hairstyle or gender swaps, see our guide to apps like FaceApp.

How we checked

Features, prices and privacy labels come from Retake AI's US App Store listing, its Google Play listing and Data safety page, and its website, all checked on October 12, 2026. Review themes come from Google Play reviews posted between September 5 and October 9, 2026, and the App Store review page. We did not pay for Retake Pro, so features behind its paywall are described as listed. Retake AI belongs to its developer, and Stunna is not affiliated with it. If something here is out of date, tell us and we will fix it.