The Best AI Headshot Generator (No Affiliate Links)
Updated April 26, 2024
Research conducted throughout March 2024.
Table of contents
By HeadshotPro
HeadshotPro has generated over 10 million professional headshots for over 70,000 customers.
Finding the right photo to use for work has always been awkward. What can you do about it?
A professional photoshoot costs hundreds of dollars, your existing photos aren't professional enough, and even the most perfect selfies you've taken at home feel too amateur for the workplace.
Hire a photographer. Edit an existing photo. Try to take a professional photo yourself. These were the only options you had until AI headshots hit the business photography market last year.
What Are AI Headshot Generators?
AI headshot generators are tools that combine AI and machine learning algorithms to produce professional photos you can use as a profile picture at work.
When we prompt a model, we say something like "a [abc123] headshot photo of a woman", where [abc123] is a string of random characters that the model has zero association with.
The initial result produced by this "a [abc123] headshot photo of a woman" prompt is just a headshot of a randomly generated woman. Over time, the model is taught to associate [abc123] with the user's uploaded selfies. This is what it means when we refer to training an AI model.
The quality of the selfies you upload has such a significant impact on the quality of the AI headshots you get back. If you're wearing a hat, or posing in front of a house plant, for a decent percentage of your photos, the model might learn these objects are important to your identity and should be reproduced.
“ The total average cost of a headshot in the United States is $262.84, approximately 9 times the cost of AI headshots.
The median cost of a headshot in the United States is $232.50, approximately 8 times the cost of AI headshots.”
The hundreds of dollars in cost savings that come from generating AI headshots instead of hiring a local photographer are nice, but the real selling point is the convenience. Upload your photos from the comfort of your pyjamas at home on a lazy Sunday morning and by lunchtime you'll have hundreds of professional headshots to choose from.
So, which AI headshot generator is right for you?
Everything we recommend
Our pick
A recent quality update (2024) makes HeadshotPro the most photorealistic AI headshot generator. Not every photo is a keeper, but the photo quality ceiling is higher than other AI headshot generators, and you're promised 3-6 profile-worthy AI headshots in every order.
Read full reviewRunner-up
The AI headshots with solid color backdrops produced by Dreamwave looked great. The photorealistic backdrops weren't quite as good, and we didn't love the hidden pricing, but you'll likely to find a few great headshots in your Dreamwave order.
Read full reviewAlso great
Smooth and simple onboarding highlights our experience using Aragon AI. The photo quality of our AI headshots from Aragon was just about on par with our other top picks, but we found the poses less natural looking than our other two recommendations.
Read full reviewWhy you should trust us
We are HeadshotPro, an AI photo studio founded in 2022. We specialize in AI headshots.
Our small team is led by serial AI entrepreneur Danny Postma, who you may have seen speak about AI, startups, or building in public on Twitter, A16z, or Indie Hackers.
Listen, we're not going to sugarcoat it. There's a ton of bias here.
Nothing we say can change that. But here's what we can promise you about this article:
- If our competitors are doing a great job at something, we'll praise them for it. Loudly.
- We will supply real examples of the results we got back from every tool we tested.
- We paid for every service listed. Except for 1. Read on to find out why.
How we rated our AI headshot results
Onboarding Experience
Are you likely to run into issues when generating your own AI headshots?
Photo Quality
Did the AI generated photos look like a real photo taken by a photographer?
Likeness
Did the AI generated photos actually resemble the subject?
Value
Did we walk away with a great headshot? Or were we disappointed?
We used the following input photos, keeping in mind that the quality of your input photos has a direct result on the quality of the AI headshots you get back.
Price: $29-$49
HeadshotPro produced the most photorealistic AI headshots in our testing, best imitating the kind of results you'd get from a real photo shoot with professional editing.
What we liked about HeadshotPro:
- Highest degree of photorealism among AI headshot generators
- Large variety of dynamic poses that look natural, photogenic
- The only product that allows you to pick your clothing
Our Pick
HeadshotPro Results
Expect to see a range of results when scroll through your completed HeadshotPro order—from incredibly photorealistic headshots to cursed AI duds with extra limbs. Variance is an unavoidable consequence of any service generating headshots in 2 hours or less but HeadshotPro leans into it, promising 3-6 profile-worthy headshots from every order.
This service doesn't play it safe. The mission has always been to raise the quality ceiling of AI headshots. Based on how the top end of our HeadshotPro order compared against its competitors, that mission has been achieved. The winners from our batch looked like they were taken by a professional photographer.
The website makes it clear these photos are meant to be used in a professional setting. If it isn't obvious already, these photos aren't suitable for Tinder. The perfect facial lighting in each photo looks a little too manicured to pass as a dating photo. That same effect manages to always show your best side by showcasing your most photogenic characteristics from the shoulders up.
HeadshotPro has made it a mission to raise the quality ceiling of professional AI headshots. Despite the slightly longer onboarding process, the recent quality update has pushed this AI headshot generator to the front of the pack.
HeadshotPro Onboarding
The onboarding process for HeadshotPro is more difficult than our alternative choices largely due to the amount of photos it requires to achieve its maximum quality output. 6-12 photos is common among AI headshot generators, but HeadshotPro requires a minimum of 12 input photos.
Why? More photos lead to better quality—the less photos you upload, the more the AI model is memorizing what you look like. The more photos you upload, the more the model learns to fundamentally understand what you look like. Requiring more photos upfront is a conscious decision that sacrifices some convenience for the sake of increasing quality, on average.
HeadshotPro is the only AI headshot generator we tested that allows you to pick the specific clothing items you want to show up in your headshots. Clothes aren't always perfectly recreated, and there's always variance involved in the exact styles, but generally we found our choices to be replicated well.
Flaws but not dealbreakers
- Requires 12 input photos to reach peak quality, more than most competitors
- Take 2 hours to complete, some other services take 1 hour
Price: $35-$99
Dreamwave produced quality headshots with high resemblance in our testing. Great alternative to HeadshotPro.
What we liked about Dreamwave:
- Solid color backdrops look really great
- Larger packages
- The auto-improve teeth touchup actually worked
RUNNER UP
Dreamwave Results
The headshots with solid color backdrops stood out from the rest of Dreamwave's results. The contrast in these photos made the photos 'pop', especially when the model was given casual, colorful clothing.
We noticed a clear gap in perceived realism between the solid color backdrops and the photorealistic backdrops—the latter didn't quite do it for us in terms of realism. There is enough backdrop variety in each order to compensate for this but if solid color backdrops aren't your thing, you might want to pass on Dreamwave.
Dreamwave offers several photo editing features on their results screen. Like most other AI headshot generators, these features can be hit or miss. We found the most success with the Auto-improve teeth feature and the least success with the Auto-improve eyes feature.
Dreamwave Onboarding
Simple and no frills, Dreamwave's onboarding process is informative without being overwhelming. The left hand sidebar provides plenty of example photos and descriptions of each screen you'll encounter along the way.
A pet peeve that might have prevented us from purchasing (if we weren't doing a roundup of the best AI headshot generators) was hiding the service's pricing until after photos are uploaded. This is presumably something they've found leads to more sales but we'd still like to know the price before we upload any photos.
Flaws but not dealbreakers
- Photos with natural backdrops were less impressive
- Doesn't offer money back guarantee (which we respect—more on this later)
Price: $35-$75
We were able to find a couple profile-worthy headshots in our order from Aragon. The resemblance produced was good, and we appreciated the backdrop diversity, but we felt many of the poses appeared a little on the stiff side.
What we liked about Aragon:
- Fast signup process
- Requires less photos
- Well cropped and well lit photos
ALSO GREAT
Aragon Results
We were mostly happy with the quality of the results we got back from Aragon. What stuck out immediately upon first scroll was the diverse range of backdrops used. Having the results page sorted by pose initially felt a little strange but later made it easier to compare photos.
Aragon's smooth onboarding process does a great job of walking you through each step without overwhelming you with unnecessary information.
You only need to upload 6 photos to use Aragon though they recommend you upload 10. This is less required input photos than most other services, again speaking to the excellent onboarding.
It's an interesting decision for Aragon to restrict uploads to a maximum of 10 input photos. We understand reducing friction by requiring fewer uploads, but we were surprised when we had to delete more than half of the 23 photos we uploaded to continue to the payment screen.
Did fewer input photos affect the AI headshots we got back?
Aragon Onboarding
The onboarding process for HeadshotPro is more difficult than our alternative choices largely due to the amount of photos it requires to achieve its maximum quality output. 6-12 photos is common among AI headshot generators, but HeadshotPro requires a minimum of 12 input photos.
Why? More photos lead to better quality—the less photos you upload, the more the AI model is memorizing what you look like. The more photos you upload, the more the model learns to fundamentally understand what you look like. Requiring more photos upfront is a conscious decision that sacrifices some convenience for the sake of increasing quality, on average.
HeadshotPro is the only AI headshot generator we tested that allows you to pick the specific clothing items you want to show up in your headshots. Clothes aren't always perfectly recreated, and there's always variance involved in the exact styles, but generally we found our choices to be replicated well.
Flaws but not dealbreakers
- Unnatural poses, little bit stiff
- Indoor backdrops often positioned awkwardly (i.e. randomly standing in the middle of a room)
- Hard to know if you're getting the best price due to marketing tactics
Why choosing an AI headshot generator is so hard
You're being lied to.
When you search for best ai headshot generator the results you get back are almost entirely spoiled by 3 types of misleading results.
Affiliate marketers
Affiliate marketers earn a commission on all the sales they generate. This financial incentive can often (but not always) get in the way of an honest review.
The problem here is that most affiliates pushing AI headshot generator products haven't even tried the products they're promoting—they're just slapping together lazy roundup posts by copy/pasting information from each product's landing page.
We know this is rampant in the AI headshot niche because we've seen our own affiliates do it. Offering our affiliates discounted review packages has helped with this, but only a little bit.
Review platforms
Websites like G2, SourceForge, and TrustPilot are review platforms for tech products, like Yelp for nerds. If you search “Dropbox reviews”, for example, you'll likely see TrustPilot show up somewhere on the first page.
The problem with TrustPilot and other review platforms is that they require no customer verification whatsoever, leaving the system completely open to abuse in all directions.
Companies pay their customers to leave good reviews. Competitors leave bad reviews on rival pages, taking advantage of the lack of real customer verification. Unhappy customers create multiple accounts to leave multiple bad reviews. It's a complete mess!
Internet reviews are in a bad place. Hell, you're reading a review roundup written by us right now!
The headshot generators
Hi. I'm the problem, it's me.
You might see the occasional news piece orchestrated by a PR team where 2-3 random products are tested against each other—usually a decent product against 2 obviously awful products, to make them look good.
But really, AI headshot generators are so new that the only people reviewing them, outside of affiliate marketers and (supposed) users, are the AI companies themselves.
The competition who didn't perform as well
We tested a total of 11 AI headshot generators. HeadshotPro, Dreamwave, and Aragon were a clear step ahead of the remaining 8 services.
Acceptable
TryItOnAI offers a charming user experience but outputs headshots that, for the most part, are easily identifiable as AI photos.
We felt the best headshots created by TryItOnAI were well below the quality standards set by the other services in our A-tier, despite being roughly the same price.
It's worth noting that TryItOnAI does not offer refunds or free redos.
Acceptable
Despite being the most expensive AI headshot product on the market, we found ProPhotos to be a let down when it came to producing realistic looking AI headshots.
The poses felt stiff and strained to us, the body proportions generally missed the mark, and the photo backgrounds were plain to the point of being boring.
Acceptable
We wanted to like the Multiverse product after the excellent onboarding but the strange cropping on our completed headshots was… well, strange.
Not recommended whatsoever
NOT RECOMMENDED
Here we have a company who has built a headshot generator as a lead magnet for their photo editing tool.
The headshot generator is half-assed and doesn't produce results anywhere close to even the AI headshot generators in our 'B' tier.
NOT RECOMMENDED
Another photo editing tool using AI headshots as means of generating leads for their main business. Another set of disappointing results.
Word of advice: Avoid any headshot generator that isn't solely focused on professional quality headshots. These companies are incentivized to upsell you and most of their time is spent making their flagship product better, not on improving AI headshots.
NOT RECOMMENDED
The entire experience was a little too amateurish for us. We can forgive the odd spelling mistake, but NSFW images on the website and extremely low resemblance headshots make Artguru one of the worst AI headshot generators we've tried to date. The product is cheap ($9) but the results you get back are not worth any of your hard earned dollars.
NOT RECOMMENDED
The user experience felt unpolished and the resulting headshots looked cheap when we tried SnapHeadshots for the first time. This was especially disappointing because the landing page and marketing materials look great. “Rushed” is the word we would use to describe this product.
Could not review
We were unable to proceed with our testing on Secta Labs because almost all of our input photos were rejected due to being too similar to each other.
While we understand the importance of filtering input photos they play a significant role in the quality of the AI headshots you'll get back—we were surprised by this. We didn't run into this problem with any other AI headshot tool.
What you should know about “money back guarantees”
Remember the part where we mentioned that costs are incurred every time an AI headshot is generated? A number of AI headshot generators are willing to eat those costs in the event that a customer doesn't find a usable headshot in their order. But not all of them.
Do not download your completed headshots if you plan to ask for a refund. Services like ours have been subject to abuse where social media users will pay us to generate their headshots but instantly ask for a refund once their order has been completed, leaving us to pay the AI bill.
To combat this abuse, AI headshot generators are forced to deny refund requests if a customer has already downloaded their headshots. You can click on, scroll through, and open your headshots without voiding your money back guarantee. Just don't download them until you've found a couple keepers.
The state of free AI headshot generators
Costs are incurred every time an AI headshot is generated. This is why every free AI headshot generator we've ever tried produces unusable results. If they were using the best tech, they'd be losing money every time they generated a photo.
HeadshotPro's free headshot generator avoids this fate by minimizing its use of AI. Our professional headshot product creates a custom model that truly understands what you look like. Our free AI headshot product simply cleans up and enhances the photos you've supplied it with.
Final Rankings: Best AI Headshot Generator of 2024
Costs are incurred every time an AI headshot is generated. This is why every free AI headshot generator we've ever tried produces unusable results. If they were using the best tech, they'd be losing money every time they generated a photo.
The best choices
Acceptable choices
Not recommended
