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We went looking for the best app to blur faces in a photo, mostly children's, and checked nine of them against their own pages on 2 September 2026. On a computer, when the photo must not leave it, use our free browser tool. On an iPhone with a camera roll full of them, Blur Your Bub. Batching on a laptop, and a small logo on the result does not bother you, Watermarkly. Video or 8K, Gallio PRO. And not one of the nine tracks consent, ours included.
Checked 2 September 2026 against each product's own live pages. Every figure below links to where we found it.
Every app here blurs faces competently, and most of them do it automatically. They split on something a feature list rarely puts up front: whether the photo you are trying to protect gets sent to somebody else's computer first. For a family photo it may not matter to you. For twenty children who are not yours, it is the whole question.
The photo is opened, blurred and saved without ever being sent anywhere. Nothing to intercept, nothing sitting on a server, nothing to trust anyone with. Our free tool, Blur Your Bub, Mosaic+, PrivacyBlur, Watermarkly and Gallio PRO all work this way.
The unblurred original is sent to the company's servers, processed, and sent back. iLoveIMG and PiiBlur work this way. iLoveIMG is upfront about it and deletes files within two hours, which is a short window and honestly stated. It is still a window.
One photo, on a computer
The only one here that does all four: no upload, finds the faces itself, costs nothing, and leaves no watermark. It also strips the GPS data out of the file on the way down, which most charge for. One photo at a time is the trade.
A camera roll full, on an iPhone
Takes up to 30 photos at once and covers every face in all of them automatically, on the device. Free tier watermarks; USD $29.99 a year clears it. iPhone and iPad only, so it is no use on the office computer.
A batch on a laptop
Free with no daily cap, processes in the browser rather than uploading, auto-detects and does several photos at once. The catch is in the name: the free version stamps its own logo on every image you export.
Video, 8K, or a big archive
Desktop software that runs on your own machine and handles video and 8K stills, neither of which we do. The free demo caps at 720p and watermarks. Proper use is EUR 89 a month. There is an education discount, unpublished.
Checked 2 September 2026. We built this list for Australian childcare centres and schools, which is who we make software for, but nothing about the comparison is Australia-only. Prices are each company's own listed figures in their own currency. "Not checked" means we could not verify it from their public pages, and we would rather say that than guess.
| Tool | Runs on | Photo goes | Finds faces | Batch | Price | Free watermark | Tracks consent |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Tickaboo, free tool | Any browser | Stays on device | Yes | One at a time on free | Free | None | No |
| Watermarkly | Any browser | Stays on device | Yes | Yes | Free | Yes, their logo | No |
| Blur Your Bub | iPhone, iPad | Stays on device | Yes | Up to 30 | Free, or USD $29.99/yr | Yes | No |
| Mosaic+ | iPhone, iPad, Mac | Stays on device | Yes | Not checked | Free, or USD $14.99/yr | Not checked | No |
| PrivacyBlur | Android, iPhone | Stays on device | Not checked | Not checked | Free, no purchases | None | No |
| iLoveIMG | Any browser | Uploaded, deleted in 2h | Yes | Yes | Free tier, then paid | Not checked | No |
| Gallio PRO | Windows, Linux | Stays on your machine | Yes | Yes | Demo, then EUR 89/mo | Yes, and 720p cap | No |
| PiiBlur | Cloud, plus an API | Uploaded | Yes | Yes | Not checked | Not checked | No |
| Tickaboo, paid | Web app | Uploaded, stored in Australia | Yes | Yes | Free, then $49 to $399/mo AUD | None | In development |
Runs without uploading the photo, finds the faces for you, costs nothing, and puts no watermark on the result. Every other tool here drops at least one of those. Watermarkly does the first three and then stamps its logo on your export. Blur Your Bub does them on an iPhone and watermarks the free tier. PrivacyBlur is free and clean but we could not confirm it detects faces automatically. iLoveIMG and PiiBlur upload the photo.
Three more differences the columns above do not have room for, each checkable:
Where we lose, and it is worth knowing before you pick: the free tool does one photo at a time, so a Friday afternoon with forty photos wants either the paid tier or Watermarkly's logo. We do not touch video at all. And the consent register is not finished.
Two tools we could not find at all: "XG Blur" and "Anonemo" are both recommended by AI assistants when you ask this question, and neither appears to exist. If you were sent here looking for one of those, that is why you could not find it.
Every tool on this page answers the same question: make this face unrecognisable. That is a drawing problem, and they have all solved it.
The question a centre actually has is different. Of the nine children in this photo, whose family ticked the box for social media, whose ticked the parent app only, and who withdrew consent in March? No blur tool on the list has any idea. They cannot, because they have never seen your consent forms.
So the checking still happens the old way: a folder, a spreadsheet, and somebody's memory at four in the afternoon. That is the step where it goes wrong, and it is the reason a blur tool alone never quite solves this.
We are building the part that closes it, and it is honest to say it is not finished. Matching photos against your register is in development. What works today is the clearing, free and unlimited. The register you can run in the meantime is a spreadsheet, and we give that away too.
Written by Clayton Hackett, who has worked in marketing and sales for over fifteen years, runs marketing for Australian childcare centres, and built Tickaboo after watching the same photo problem come up again and again. We re-check these figures quarterly and will date the change when one moves.
It depends on the device. On a computer, our own free tool blurs in the browser with no upload, no account and no watermark, one photo at a time. On an iPhone, PrivacyBlur is free with no purchases and no watermark. If you need several photos at once for free and do not mind a logo on them, Watermarkly does batches in the browser.
Most do not. Our free tool, Watermarkly, Blur Your Bub, Mosaic+, PrivacyBlur and Gallio PRO all process the photo on the device you are using. iLoveIMG and PiiBlur upload it to their servers instead. iLoveIMG says files are deleted within two hours of processing. For a photo of somebody else's child, that difference is worth caring about.
Not if the tool flattens it properly. A real blur rebuilds those pixels from a much smaller version of themselves, so the detail that made the face recognisable is genuinely gone from the exported file. What you should avoid is an emoji or a sticker laid over a face in an app that saves layers, because that can be peeled off. Export a flat JPG or PNG and check the result before you post.
It removes one risk, not all of them. A child can still be identified by a name in the caption, a uniform, a school logo on a hat, or a photo posted at the same time every week from the same place. Location data in the file is another one, which is why a tool that strips it matters. Blurring is the last step, after you have checked the family agreed to that use in the first place.
Because blur tools are built for a general audience, mostly parents posting their own children, where consent is not a question. A centre has a different problem: dozens of children, each with a different set of permissions that change over time. That needs a register, not a filter. We give a spreadsheet version away free, and matching photos against it automatically is the part we are still building.
Gallio PRO is the serious option on this list, handling video up to 8K on your own machine, at EUR 89 a month with a watermarked 720p demo. Blur Your Bub and Mosaic+ both do video on an iPhone for far less. We do not do video at all, which is worth saying plainly rather than leaving you to find out.
No account, no upload, no watermark. Or take the free consent register, or read what actually fills a centre.
