Asciilizer vs PIXEL86
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Asciilizer
Transform your photos into unique text-based art. Choose from various detail levels to create custom ASCII images from your camera or existing pictures. Save and share your creations easily.
- Generate ASCII art from photos
- Six fineness modes
- Save art as image
- Clip art as text
- Share to social media
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Asciilizer is an ascii art generator which makes your photo into text. ◇ Generate Ascii Arts - Take a camera or load a photo, then the photo will be an amazing ascii art. - Select the fineness of ascii art from 6 modes, light, lighter, normal, detailed, complicated and super. ◇ Save & Clip Ascii Arts - Save generated ascii arts into the camera roll as image. - Clip the ascii arts as text ◇ Share Ascii Arts - Share the asciilized image with your friends. - Support Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LINE and Weibo.
PIXEL86
Transform photos and videos with vintage pixel art aesthetics. Apply true black-and-white dithering, custom color palettes, and unique dithering styles to create retro media. Supports video editing and sharing your creations.
- True B/W dithering
- Video editing support
- Customizable color palettes
- Three dithering styles (Natural, Pattern, Flat)
- Vintage-inspired aesthetics
- Social media sharing
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PIXEL86 — Retro Dithering for Photos & Videos Make your media look like it came from a cooler, glitchier timeline. Bring back the charm of vintage tech with PIXEL86, the ultimate tool to transform your photos and videos into pixel-perfect black-and-white or limited-palette art. Inspired by early computer graphics, old-school printers, and classic GIFs — this is retro done right. True B/W Dithering No grays. Just black or white pixels smartly arranged to simulate shadows and depth — exactly how early screens did it. Now Supports Video Editing Apply your favorite dithering style to video clips. Make every frame look like a piece of pixel-art history. Color Palettes, Reimagined Choose from curated vintage-inspired palettes Hit random for a fresh surprise every time Or build your own custom palette for a personalized look Three Dithering Styles Natural — Smooth, classic error diffusion. Clean and expressive. Pattern — Retro dot-matrix vibes. Adjustable matrix for custom textures. Flat — Not technically dithering, but perfect for dramatic, posterized effects in both stills and motion. Share Your Style Use #pixel86 on social and tag @pixel86app on Instagram — we love featuring the coolest creations from the community.
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is rating: PIXEL86 at 4.6 against Asciilizer's 3.0. PIXEL86 also leads on update cadence (every 5 days vs every 5 weeks) and review sentiment (100% vs 73%). Asciilizer's advantage is ads (none vs shown) and device support (3 vs 1). On price, in-app purchases and monetization model there is nothing between them.
Scored on Price · Rating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings · Update frequency · Ads · In-app purchases · Monetization · Best chart rank · Devices · Requires iOS
Both are free to download. Asciilizer sells 1 one-off in-app purchase and PIXEL86 sells 2 one-off in-app purchases. Whichever you choose, the download price is not the number that matters.
PIXEL86 holds the better App Store score, 4.6 against 3.0. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: PIXEL86 has 42 ratings behind it against 4, so its average is the more settled of the two. Written reviews point the same way: 73% of Asciilizer's written reviews are positive against 100% of PIXEL86's.
Asciilizer ships an update every 5 weeks, PIXEL86 every 5 days. The most recent releases landed on November 1, 2026 and November 3, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | Asciilizer | PIXEL86 |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 3.0 (4 ratings) | 4.6 (42 ratings) — better |
| Positive reviews | 73.0% of reviews | 100.0% of reviews — better |
| Number of ratings | 4 | 42 — better |
| Update frequency | Every 5 weeks | Every 5 days — better |
| Ads | No — better | Yes |
| In-app purchases | Yes | Yes |
| Monetization | Free with in-app purchases | Free with in-app purchases |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad, iPod — better | iPhone |
| Requires iOS | 8.0 — better | 18.0 |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 32 MB | 87 MB |
| Age rating | 12+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Nooon LLC | Peter Tretyakov |
Customer experience
Asciilizer
PIXEL86
In-app purchases
Asciilizer
- Super Mode$1.99
PIXEL86
- License Discount$9.99
- Perpetual License$19.99
