Doodle AI
Upload a photo and get back a hand-drawn-style illustrated avatar or character set, with the same face kept consistent across dozens of poses and styles.
🔗 Visit Doodle AI
Description
Turning a selfie into a cartoon avatar isn't new — apps have done rough versions of this for years — but most either flatten your face into a generic filter or lose your likeness after the first pose. Doodle AI is built around solving that second problem: it generates illustrated versions of a person or pet that stay recognizable across multiple poses, expressions, and seasonal themes, so you can build a whole set of consistent character art from one photo instead of a single one-off filter image.
Under the hood it exposes 21+ distinct "generation skills" (photo-to-illustration, multi-pose collages, emotional expression packs, seasonal portraits, pet illustrations) driven through natural-language prompts, with a Fast mode for quick drafts and a Fine mode for higher-quality output. The project is fully open source under the MIT license, built on Astro 5 and Cloudflare Workers with the Mastra agent framework, and welcomes external contributions on GitHub. It's currently in a free testing phase — 5 credits on signup, more available on request via Discord or email — with no automated paid tier live yet, which is normal for an early open-source project but means pricing and availability could change once it moves out of testing.
💬 Our review
The short version: Doodle AI's actual technical pitch — character-consistent illustration across many poses, not just a single-shot filter — is a real and non-trivial capability, and being open source under MIT is a meaningful trust signal in a category full of closed, ad-supported avatar apps, but it's still pre-monetization software from a small project and the free-credit-on-request model won't scale to serious production use yet.
Compared to mainstream avatar generators like Lensa AI or Remini, which are polished, one-tap consumer products with clear subscription pricing, Doodle AI is rougher around the edges and clearly aimed at people comfortable with an early-stage tool — but it offers something those closed apps don't: you can read the code, self-host it, or extend it with your own generation skills via the Mastra framework. If you just want a quick fun avatar, a mainstream app is faster. If you want consistent illustrated characters for an ongoing project (a webcomic, branded social content, a small game) and don't mind some rough edges, Doodle AI's open architecture is the more interesting long-term bet.
💰 Pricing
📊 Global score
🤖 AI-enriched data
Free during testing: 5 credits on signup, no payment method required. Additional credits available on request via Discord/email/WhatsApp; no automated paid plan live yet.
Pros
Character consistency across many poses and styles, not just one filter
21+ distinct generation skills (multi-pose, expressions, seasonal, pet portraits)
Fully open source, MIT licensed, self-hostable
Free credits with no card required to try
Cons
No live automated paid tier yet — credit top-ups are manual/on-request
Small, early-stage project compared to mainstream avatar apps
UI/UX likely rougher than polished consumer competitors
Long-term pricing and availability still undecided