Comparison

AR Lightning vs Camcora

Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.

Head to head
About

AR Lightning

Create realistic lightning effects from your fingertips using augmented reality. Control the direction and intensity of the lightning in real-time by changing your hand pose. Save your creations as videos or photos and share them.

Highlights
  • AR hand pose recognition
  • Real-time lightning control
  • Customizable ray color and power
  • Save as video or photo
  • Share to social media
  • Select photos from camera roll
Features
Read full description

●This app recognizes the pose of the hand captured by the AR camera and emits a flashy force lightning ray from the finger. ●Apple's human body image recognition technology is used to recognize hand pose images. ●By changing the pose of the hand, you can freely control the direction and on / off of the light beam in real time. In Star Wars, Sith's Dark Sidious and Count Dooku were fighting the Jedi Knights with this Force Lightning as a weapon. The rays of light emitted from the fingers in the camera are amazing just by looking at them. You can enjoy this Force Lightning effect on the AR screen that is displayed in real time. You can also save the powerful image in a video or photo or share it on SNS. You can even select a photo stored in your camera roll and save it to a video or photo. Let's enjoy the feeling of Star Wars. [Image Selection] - AR camera - Camera shooting: Photograph - Camera roll: Photo [Settings] - Selection of light emitting fingers (common to both hands) - Ray color setting (RGBA slider) - Background brightness - Ray power - Sound effect switch - Video length (5-30 seconds) - Save resolution [output] - Save to camera roll: videos, photos - Video / Photo Sharing: AirDrop, LINE, Facebook, Dropbox, Instagram, ...

About

Camcora

Transform your phone into a vintage camcorder with realistic 90s effects. Record videos with authentic analog sound, tape counter, and glitch effects. Import existing media to give it a retro makeover.

Highlights
  • Live 90s camcorder effects
  • Authentic analog sound
  • Editable date and time stamp
  • Shake for glitch effect
  • Tape Library with VCR player
  • Import and edit existing media
  • 4K export option
Features
Read full description

Camcora turns your iPhone into a camcorder. The look is live in the viewfinder, baked into picture and sound as you record, and exactly what you see in the file afterwards. Not a filter laid over a video later. 34 CAMERA LOOKS Each one re-creates an era of consumer video — tracking noise and colour bleed, blocky digital artifacts, film dirt, dot-matrix screens, ink on paper. And one with nothing at all: the plain camera picture, for tapes that mix takes with and without a look. • Tape: VHS 1987, VHS-C 1994, Hi8 1997, MiniDV 2001, Security Cam, Found Footage • Film: Silent Film 1925, Newsreel 1936, Color Film 1943, Super 8 1975 • Digital: Phone Cam 2003, VGA Cam 2004, MMS 2006 and four Handheld VGA variants • Print: Cyanotype 1842, Wet Plate 1860, Halftone Print, Stencil Print, Fax 1989, Photocopy, Thermal Receipt • Screen: Terminal 1982, ASCII Cam and five Pocket 256 colour pairs • Scientific: Thermal Cam, Ultrasound FROM THE PRINT SHOP New in this version — the picture on paper: a stencil print with two inks a little out of register, a photocopy with toner dust in the solids, a fax with a header line and the odd scan line that arrived wrong, a thermal receipt on a narrow strip in the middle of the frame, and a cyanotype in deep Prussian blue. TWO COLOURS, NOTHING BETWEEN A family of looks with no grey at all: each pixel is one of two colours, and the tones come back as dots. Five colour pairs, from ink on paper to amber on near-black. SMALL SENSOR, SLOW SCREEN Another family films the way cheap hardware saw the world — coarse pixels, colours that give up under a lamp, and movement that arrives a beat late. EVERY LOOK HAS ITS OWN SOUND A thin camcorder microphone, auto gain that pulls the hiss up in silence, wow and flutter from the tape. Some looks record through their own microphone character, so a clip sounds like the machine it looks like it came from. AUTHENTIC OSD Date and time, REC indicator, battery, tape counter and zoom bar in a pixel font that runs through the same degradation as the picture. Set the date freely — turn back time as far as you like. Every element can be switched off on its own. SHAKE FOR GLITCH Shake your iPhone and the tracking tears — in the picture and in the sound. THE DECK One cassette holds several takes: record, stop, record again, export as one video. Playback with fast forward and rewind like on a video recorder. Trim, delete and reorder takes. A tape-wear slider ages every look from a fresh tape to a chewed-up cassette. SHARE Export in 4:3, 9:16 or 16:9 — straight into the apps you post to, with one tap. Every recording lands in your photo library automatically. Burst recordings of 1, 3 or 5 seconds, and a start straight from Control Center, the Lock Screen or the Action button. FREE AND PRO Free: seven looks — VHS 1987, VHS-C 1994, Super 8, VGA Cam 2004, Halftone Print, Terminal 1982 and Ultrasound, one from every family — export in 1080p, recordings up to three minutes and a small watermark. Every other look can be watched live in the viewfinder before you decide. Camcora Pro unlocks all 34 looks, 4K export, import from your photo library, several takes on one tape, fine-tuning for every look, sharing your own presets as a code, no watermark and unlimited recording length. Pay once, or monthly. Importing other people's preset codes works without Pro. PRIVATE No account, no cloud, no ads. Your recordings stay on your device. Camcora counts anonymously which features are used — no identifiers, and you can switch it off in Settings. Privacy Policy: https://camcora.app/privacy Terms of Use: https://camcora.app/terms Terms of Use (EULA): https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/

Screenshots

AR Lightning4 screens
Camcora4 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is review sentiment: Camcora at 50% against AR Lightning's 0%. Camcora also leads on price (Free vs $1.99) and update cadence (every 2 days vs weekly). AR Lightning's advantage is rating (2.3 vs 1.0) and in-app purchases (none vs 2). On ads and device support 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

CostPrice · In-app purchases · Ads · Monetization

Camcora is free to download; AR Lightning costs $1.99 up front. Camcora sells 2 in-app purchases, starting at $2.99 per month. AR Lightning asks for nothing beyond the download.

ReceptionRating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings

AR Lightning holds the better App Store score, 2.3 against 1.0. Both are backed by a comparable volume of ratings — 3 and 1 respectively. Written reviews complicate that: 0% of AR Lightning's written reviews are positive against 50% of Camcora's, so the app with the better star average is not the one people write more warmly about.

UpkeepUpdate frequency

AR Lightning ships an update weekly, Camcora every 2 days. The most recent releases landed on October 24, 2026 and October 28, 2026 respectively.

Scorecard8 real differences · 2 level
AR Lightning versus Camcora: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterAR LightningCamcora
Price$1.99Free — better
Rating2.3 (3 ratings) — better1.0 (1 ratings)
Positive reviews0.0% of reviews50.0% of reviews — better
Number of ratings3 — better1
Update frequencyWeeklyEvery 2 days — better
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesNo — betterYes
MonetizationPaidFree with in-app purchases — better
DevicesiPhone, iPad, iPod — betteriPhone, iPad
Requires iOS13.0 — better18.0
Further details — not scored
Size15 MB13 MB
Age rating4+4+
DeveloperMasanori KatsutaTobias Zehndbauer

Customer experience

AR Lightning

All ratings3 ratings
Positive33.3%
Neutral0.0%
Negative66.7%
Written reviews2 reviews
Positive0.0%
Neutral0.0%
Negative100.0%

Camcora

All ratings1 ratings
Positive0.0%
Neutral0.0%
Negative100.0%
Written reviews2 reviews
Positive50.0%
Neutral0.0%
Negative50.0%

In-app purchases

None

AR Lightning

No in-app purchases

2 purchases

Camcora

Subscriptions1
  • camcora_pro_monthly3 Days trial$2.991 Month
One-time1
  • camcora_pro_lifetime$9.99

Questions

Is AR Lightning free?
AR Lightning costs $1.99, with no in-app purchases.
Is Camcora free?
Camcora is free to download, with in-app purchases available.
Which has better reviews, AR Lightning or Camcora?
AR Lightning is rated higher. AR Lightning averages 2.3 out of 5 from 3 ratings, while Camcora averages 1.0 from 1 ratings.
Do AR Lightning or Camcora have ads?
Neither AR Lightning nor Camcora shows ads.
Which is updated more often, AR Lightning or Camcora?
AR Lightning ships an update weekly, and Camcora every 2 days. Most recently, AR Lightning was updated on October 24, 2026 and Camcora on October 28, 2026.

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