Artcodes vs Magoo
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Artcodes
Create visually engaging codes by drawing beautiful images. Link these designs to websites for a fun and interactive experience, offering a playful alternative to traditional QR codes. Explore unique visual interactions for products, packaging, and services.
- Visually design interactive codes
- Link images to websites
- Playful alternative to QR codes
- Enhance product and packaging interaction
- Create unique visual experiences
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Artcodes allow everyone to become a coder. By drawing visually beautiful images, you can link them to websites to showcase how interaction can become fun and beautiful. Design visually beautiful images and encode them, resulting in the same interactivity as that of the QR code but with a more visually engaging and playful experience. Images can be identical with unique codes or the opposite: visually unique with identical codes. This interplay offers a new opportunity for visual interaction within, product, packaging, service and interaction design.
Magoo
Point your phone at an image with a special logo to reveal hidden content like videos, audio, or social media links. Discover more information, shop online, and experience surprises through augmented reality.
- Scan images to reveal hidden content
- Discover videos and audio
- Access social media profiles
- Link to online shopping
- Augmented reality experiences
- Easy to use interface
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Are you ready to discover the message “hidden” on your Magoo? Download Magoo, point your phone to an image and tap to scan. You might find a video, an audio, a social media profile or something even more surprising. Look for our “Magoo Smart Print” logo in newspapers, magazines, billboards, posters, etc. When you find it just scan it to find more information, go to shop online and much more! Magoo is easy to use and awesome!
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is review sentiment: Artcodes at 100% against Magoo's 0%. Artcodes also leads on rating (5.0 vs 3.7) and iOS requirement (12.0 vs 15.0). Magoo's advantage is ratings volume (3 vs 1). On price, update cadence, ads and in-app purchases 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. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.
Artcodes holds the better App Store score, 5.0 against 3.7. Both are backed by a comparable volume of ratings — 1 and 3 respectively. Written reviews point the same way: 100% of Artcodes's written reviews are positive against 0% of Magoo's.
Both ship on a similar rhythm, roughly every 2 months. The most recent releases landed on November 1, 2026 and November 6, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | Artcodes | Magoo |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 5.0 (1 ratings) — better | 3.7 (3 ratings) |
| Positive reviews | 100.0% of reviews — better | 0.0% of reviews |
| Number of ratings | 1 | 3 — better |
| Update frequency | Every 2 months | Every 2 months |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No | No |
| Monetization | Free | Free |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad, iPod | iPhone, iPad, iPod |
| Requires iOS | 12.0 — better | 15.0 |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 24 MB | 235 MB |
| Age rating | 17+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Mixed Reality Lab, University of Nottingham | Magooapp LLC |
Customer experience
Artcodes
Magoo
In-app purchases
Artcodes
No in-app purchases
Magoo
No in-app purchases
