BlurQ vs Redact: Which iPhone Face Blur App Should You Get? (2026)

BlurQ and Redact are the two iPhone apps people most often compare when they need to blur faces in photos and video. One disclosure before anything else: BlurQ is our app. This page is still written to be fair, because a reader who picks Redact after reading it should feel they got honest information. Every Redact claim comes from its App Store listing as of October 2026, not from hands-on testing, and where the listing does not say something, we say “not stated in the listing” instead of guessing.

The short answer:

• Pick Redact if you need automatic license plate detection, batch photos, an iPad or Mac version, or a “Data Not Collected” privacy label, and you are willing to pay $59.99 lifetime or $22.99 a year for full video.
• Pick BlurQ if you want photo and video face blur for a single $9.99 payment, like having 10 blur styles and emoji that follow faces, or want background and people blur, and you accept ads on the free tier.
• If you only blur single photos and never video, Redact’s free tier is the stronger one: full resolution, no watermark. BlurQ’s free saves carry a small watermark unless you watch a short ad.
• If you want to try before deciding, both are free to install, and the web tool at the end of this page needs no install at all.

BlurQ vs Redact at a glance

Both apps find faces on the device and let you tap a face to keep it visible or hide it. The real differences are price, what else gets detected, how deep the video editor goes, and what the privacy label says.

Price over two years

This is the clearest difference, so the numbers come first. BlurQ Pro Lifetime is $9.99, paid once. Redact Pro is $3.99 a month, $22.99 a year, or $59.99 lifetime, and one purchase covers iPhone, iPad and Mac with Family Sharing.

Over 24 months, the four ways to own the full app cost:

• BlurQ Pro Lifetime: $9.99 total.
• Redact monthly: 24 × $3.99 = $95.76. Only sensible for a one-off project that lasts a month or two.
• Redact yearly: 2 × $22.99 = $45.98.
• Redact lifetime: $59.99. It costs more than two years of the annual plan, and only pulls ahead of it in the third year.

So the gap is $9.99 against $45.98 to $59.99 for two years of full use. That is roughly five to six times the price. Whether that is worth it depends on whether you need the things Redact has and BlurQ does not, which the next sections cover.

One more price point matters: zero. Redact’s free tier exports single photos at full resolution with no watermark. BlurQ’s free tier shows ads, adds a small watermark to saves (a short ad removes it for that save) and caps video exports at 8 seconds in 720p. For a person who blurs one photo a month and never pays, Redact is the more comfortable free app.

Detection and control

Faces first, because that is what both apps are for. BlurQ uses Apple’s Vision framework to find faces on the phone, then you tap the ones to hide or keep. Redact also detects faces automatically and adds a confidence slider, which is useful in crowd photos where you want to catch small or distant faces, plus manual add and remove for anything it misses. Both let you keep one person visible while hiding everyone else, which matters for parents who want their own child shown and other kids hidden.

License plates are where they split. Redact detects plates automatically. In BlurQ, a plate, sign or line of text is a manual blur you draw yourself, and the manual tool is part of Pro. If you sell cars or blur dashcam clips, that is a real time saver on Redact’s side. Our guide on how to blur a license plate shows the manual method if you go with BlurQ.

BlurQ pulls ahead on what you can do once a face is found. It has 10 blur styles: Gaussian, Pixelate and Cover are free, and Pro adds Mosaic, Hexagon, Triangle, Frost, Motion, Zoom and Bokeh. Redact’s listing names blur, pixelate or mosaic, a black bar, emoji and stickers, with some sticker packs behind Pro. BlurQ can also blur the background or whole people in photos and video, which is handy when clothing or a location gives someone away. Background blur is not mentioned in Redact’s listing.

Video

Both apps track faces through video, so you do not need to place a blur on every frame. In BlurQ, the blur follows a face when the head turns or passes behind a hand, and emoji stickers can follow a face the same way. The workflow is the photo one applied to a clip: open the video, tap faces, pick a style, save. Step by step instructions are in how to blur faces in a video on iPhone.

Redact has the deeper video editor. Its listing says “every face blurred and tracked across the whole clip”, and it gives you a per-person timeline and a “Track from here” control, so you can start tracking a specific person at a specific point. For long clips with people entering and leaving the frame, that level of control is something BlurQ does not offer.

The free tiers are where it gets uneven. BlurQ’s free video export stops at 8 seconds in 720p, enough to test the tracking on a short clip but not to publish anything. Redact’s free video exports carry a “Made with Redact” badge and have a length limit the listing does not quantify. In both cases, real video work means paying: $9.99 once for BlurQ, or $22.99 a year or $59.99 lifetime for Redact.

Privacy

Both developers say photos and videos never leave the phone. Redact’s listing describes it as “100% on-device, powered by the Neural Engine” and says it works fully offline. BlurQ runs face detection on the device with Apple’s Vision framework, saves photos at original resolution with no location or camera data, and never uploads your images. Redact also states that EXIF data is stripped on export.

The App Store privacy labels differ, and this deserves an honest explanation. Redact’s label is “Data Not Collected”, the cleanest label an app can have. BlurQ’s label is “Data Used to Track You” and lists location, identifiers and usage data. The reason is simple: the free version of BlurQ shows ads, and the ad network collects that data to serve them. The label is about ads, not about your photos.

What that means in practice: if you use BlurQ for free, an ad network sees the same kind of device data it sees in any ad-supported app. What it does not mean: it does not mean your photos or videos are uploaded, and it does not mean the blur runs on a server. Still, if your work requires an app with no third-party data sharing at all, such as a journalist protecting sources, Redact’s label is the one that passes without a conversation. Privacy labels are self-reported, so we quote both as written.

Platforms

BlurQ is iPhone only and needs iOS 18 or later. There is no iPad app, no Mac app, and no Android version.

Redact runs on iPhone, iPad, Mac and Apple Vision, needing iOS 18 or macOS 26, and one Pro purchase covers all of them with Family Sharing. If you blur on a Mac after importing footage, or you want to share one purchase with family members, that is a clear win for Redact and nothing on BlurQ’s side offsets it.

What each one lacks

Side by side, these are the gaps we would weigh before paying.

• BlurQ lacks: automatic plate detection (plates are a manual Pro blur), batch mode for many photos at once, an iPad or Mac app, and a watermark-free free tier (free saves carry a small watermark unless you watch an ad). Its free version shows ads, which is also why its privacy label is “Data Used to Track You”.
• Redact lacks: a low price. Lifetime is $59.99 and the annual plan is $22.99, against $9.99 once for BlurQ. Free video exports carry a “Made with Redact” badge and a length limit that is not stated in the listing. Batch photos and some sticker packs need Pro. Background and people blur are not mentioned in the listing. The app also does not yet have enough ratings on the US App Store to show a score, so there is little public feedback to go on.

Which should you get?

The right answer depends on what you blur, how often, and on which devices. By type of user:

• Parents posting kids’ photos and short clips: BlurQ. One tap hides every face, you can keep your own child visible, emoji that follow faces make it friendlier for kids’ videos, and $9.99 once is easy to justify. Redact handles the photos just as well, but you would be paying for plate detection and a Mac app you may never use.
• Vloggers and TikTok creators: it depends on clip length and how many people walk through the frame. Short clips with one or two people: BlurQ, cheaper and good enough. Long clips with many people coming and going: Redact’s per-person timeline and “Track from here” control earn their price.
• Car sellers and street photographers: Redact, because plates are detected automatically. In BlurQ every plate is a manual Pro blur, which is fine for one listing photo and tedious for twenty.
• Journalists and anyone working offline or under a strict privacy policy: Redact. Both apps keep media on the device, but Redact’s “Data Not Collected” label and no-ads model mean there is nothing to explain.
• iPad or Mac users: Redact, since BlurQ has no iPad or Mac version at all.
• Tightest budget: BlurQ. $9.99 once beats $45.98 for two years of Redact, and the free tier lets you test everything, with the ads and watermark as the trade-off. If you will never pay anything and only blur single photos, Redact’s free photo export with no watermark is the better free deal.

Try both for free

Both apps have free tiers, so the cheapest way to settle this is to install both, open the same group photo and the same short clip in each, and see which one you reach for a second time. Check a face at the edge of the frame, a head turning away, and the one person you want to keep visible, then zoom in on the saved file.

If you do not want to install anything yet, our free blur faces online tool detects faces in Safari, offers blur, pixelate and mosaic, adds no watermark and never uploads the photo. It handles faces in photos only, not video or plates, but it is a quick way to see whether automatic detection catches the faces in your typical shots.

And if you want the one-time-purchase route on iPhone, the BlurQ face blur app for iPhone is on the App Store, free to try. For a wider look at the other options, including the cheaper one-time apps and the ones that detect text, see our roundup of the best apps to blur faces.