The face swap that knows what to leave alone
Face Studio replaces up to 6 faces in a single photo — or an entire head — and lets you choose, per face, which parts of the original survive. A hand in front of a cheek, a strand of hair across an eye, the frame of a pair of glasses: they stay. Everywhere else, they get painted over.
3 free renders every day for any signed-in account, at full resolution with no watermark. After that, $0.10 per face swap. No subscription, and credits never expire.
What this does that browser face swaps generally do not
Each claim below is paired with what the rest of the market does, so the comparison is checkable rather than asserted.
Occlusion preserve
Rare in this marketPer-face control over which original regions survive the swap — hair, hands, glasses, microphones, and anything else crossing the face — selected from a segmentation map the model returns for each detected face.
Every other browser face swap composites the new face over the whole region, so a hand in front of a cheek or a strand of hair across an eye is painted over.
Up to 6 faces in one pass
One upload detects and swaps up to 6 faces, each with its own reference photo and its own occlusion settings, in a single render.
Most tools swap one face per run. Akool charges 4 credits per selected face, so a group photo multiplies in price.
Whole-head swap
Rare in this marketA separate head-swap mode replaces the entire head — hairline, ears, jaw silhouette — rather than only the face region, for cases where the face-only result reads as a mask.
Rare outside Magic Hour; most face-swap tools have no head mode at all.
Full-resolution output
Results are returned at the source resolution, up to 4080×4080 and around 20 MB of PNG, with no downscale and no watermark at any tier.
Free and mid tiers elsewhere cap at 720p or 1080p and watermark the output; Reface's free tier is 720p watermarked, Akool's is 720p watermarked.
Never charged for a failed render
Rare in this marketCredits are reserved before the GPU starts and released in full if the render fails, so a job that produced no image costs nothing.
Credit systems that debit on submission charge for failures and require a support ticket to reverse.
Credits never expire
A credit bought today is spendable in a year. There is no subscription, no auto-renewal, and no monthly reset.
Akool and deepswap.ai both void unused credits at the end of each billing month.
Client-side EXIF and GPS stripping
Rare in this marketEvery photo is re-encoded in the browser before upload, which bakes in the correct orientation and discards all metadata, including GPS coordinates, before the file leaves the device.
Tools that upload the original file forward whatever location data the camera embedded.
Published pipeline, not a black box
The identity stack (InstantID, PuLID, IP-Adapter FaceID), its failure modes, and its model commit IDs are documented publicly at /docs/face-swap-pipeline and /verify.
Competitors disclose neither the models nor the known failure modes.
Measured, not estimated
Render times are for a 4000-pixel source on a warm NVIDIA A40.
Face swap render time
17–25 s
4000 px source, warm NVIDIA A40
Head swap render time
30–47 s
4000 px source, warm NVIDIA A40
Face detection
2–6 s
Free; not billed, because a photo that cannot be used should not cost anything
Max output
4080×4080
Around 20 MB of PNG, returned at source resolution
Max upload
40 MB
Uploaded straight to object storage, so the limit is the model's, not a web server's
How the price compares
Per-image cost for one photo face swap, normalised to USD from each vendor's own credit units. Checked against vendor pricing pages on 2026-09-27. We are not the cheapest, and the table says so.
| Service | Per image | Free tier | Max output | Head swap | Occlusion control | Credits expire |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Face Studio | $0.10 | 3/day, no watermark | 4080×4080 | Yes | Yes, per face | Never |
| Magic Hour | $0.013 | 5/day, no signup | Not published | Yes | No | Never |
| deepswap.ai | $0.05 | 2/day | 1080p | No | No | Monthly |
| DeepSwapAI | $0.10–0.15 | Watermarked trial | Not published | No | No | Never |
| Akool | $0.14–0.24 | 720p, watermarked | Not published | No | No | Monthly |
| Reface | $9.99/mo flat | 5/day, watermarked | 1080p | No | No | Never |
Magic Hour is roughly eight times cheaper per image and gives five free swaps a day without an account. If price per image is the only thing that matters for your use, it is the better choice. Face Studio is priced for the cases where occlusion control, group photos, head swap, or full-resolution output decide the result.
How it works
- 1
Upload the photo you want to change
Sign in and open Face Studio, then upload a photo up to 40 MB. It is re-encoded in the browser to fix orientation and strip metadata, then uploaded directly to storage.
- 2
Review the detected faces
Detection returns every face it finds, up to 6, with a thumbnail and a segmentation map for each. Detection is free and is not billed.
- 3
Give each face a reference
Upload a reference photo for each face you want to replace, or pick one from the built-in virtual identity library. Faces you leave alone are untouched.
- 4
Choose what to keep from the original
For each face, select the regions to preserve — hair, hands, glasses, anything crossing the face. This is what keeps a hand in front of a cheek from being painted over.
- 5
Render
A face swap costs 10 credits and takes 17–25 seconds; a head swap costs 20 credits and takes 30–47 seconds. Credits are reserved first and refunded in full if the render fails.
- 6
Compare and download
The result loads into a synced before/after viewer at full resolution. A brush tool paints back any region of the original. Download is unwatermarked and unlimited.
Face Studio is not the desktop apps, and buying one does not affect the other
Face Studio is a hosted service that runs on our GPUs and is billed per render in credits. The NanoPocket desktop applications are separate one-time purchases that run entirely on your own GPU with no metering, no subscription, and no per-image, per-minute or per-frame fee. Credits do not apply to them, and owning a desktop license does not consume credits. See /trust for the authoritative pricing terms of both.
Frequently asked questions
How much does NanoPocket Face Studio cost per image?
A face swap costs 10 credits and a head swap costs 20 credits. One credit is one US cent, so a face swap is $0.10 and a head swap is $0.20. Credit packs start at $5 and never expire. There is no subscription and no auto-renewal.
Is there a free tier for Face Studio?
Yes. Every signed-in NanoPocket account is topped up to 30 credits each day, which is 3 face swaps per day at full resolution with no watermark. Face detection is always free. The allowance tops the balance up to 30 rather than adding to it, so it does not accumulate.
Can Face Studio swap more than one face in a photo?
Yes. One upload detects up to 6 faces and each can be given its own reference photo and its own occlusion settings in a single render. Most competing tools swap one face per run.
What is occlusion preserve in a face swap?
Occlusion preserve is per-face control over which regions of the original photo survive the swap. Face Studio returns a segmentation map for each detected face, and the user chooses which classes — hair, hands, glasses, a microphone — to keep from the original. Without it, anything crossing the face is painted over by the new identity, which is the most common visible failure in browser face swaps.
What resolution does Face Studio output?
Results are returned at the source resolution, up to 4080×4080, as PNG of around 20 MB, with no watermark at any tier including the free daily allowance. Competing free and mid tiers commonly cap at 720p or 1080p and watermark output.
Does Face Studio charge for a render that fails?
No. Credits are reserved before the GPU starts and released in full if the render fails, so a job that produced no image costs nothing. No support ticket is needed.
Do Face Studio credits expire?
No. Credits do not expire and there is no subscription or auto-renewal. Akool and deepswap.ai both void unused credits at the end of each billing month; NanoPocket does not.
Does Face Studio upload my photo's location data?
No. Each photo is re-encoded in the browser before it is uploaded, which applies the correct EXIF orientation and discards all metadata including GPS coordinates. The original file never leaves the device.
How long does a Face Studio render take?
A face swap takes 17–25 seconds and a head swap 30–47 seconds on a warm NVIDIA A40 for a 4000-pixel source. Face detection takes 2–6 seconds and is free. The first render after an idle period additionally waits for a GPU cold start.
Is Face Studio the same as the NanoPocket desktop apps?
No. Face Studio is a hosted cloud service billed per render in credits. The NanoPocket desktop applications are separate one-time purchases that run entirely on the user's own GPU with no metering, no subscription, and no per-image fee. Buying credits does not affect a desktop license and owning a desktop license does not consume credits.
Try it on a group photo
That is where the difference shows: 6 faces in one pass, each with its own reference, each keeping whatever was in front of it.
Facts on this page verified 2026-09-27.