Search “AR greeting card app” and most lists quietly swap in Evite, JibJab, or Paperless Post halfway through. Those are fine tools — but they have nothing to do with augmented reality. This guide only covers apps that do the actual thing: overlay a video onto the real world through a phone camera, triggered by a card, a postcard, or a link.
Four platforms currently do this in a way a regular consumer can actually buy and send today: iGreet, ARVideoCards, Overly, and MessageAR. Below is what each one actually costs, how the AR reveal actually works, and where each one falls apart in practice.
The AR reveal spectrum
“AR greeting card” isn’t one single product — it splits into four different approaches, based on how the reveal actually happens:
- Marker-triggered AR on a physical card. Scan a printed card with an app, and a video overlays on top of it. No card, no reveal. This is how iGreet works.
- Marker-triggered AR on a mailed postcard. Same idea, but the trigger is a printed photo postcard instead of a designed card. This is how ARVideoCards works.
- DIY AR authoring for your own trigger. You upload your own image and build the AR experience yourself — a toolkit, not a ready-to-send greeting. This is how Overly works.
- Linkless, markerless AR delivered instantly. No physical object at all — a shared link opens the camera and places the video directly into the recipient’s space. This is how MessageAR works.
Three of these four platforms still depend on a physical object arriving in the mail before the AR part can even happen. Keep that in mind as you read on — it’s the single biggest practical difference between them.
Quick comparison table
| Platform | AR trigger | Starting price | Shipping required? | App download required? | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| iGreet | Printed card | ~$5.40/card | Yes, 2–3 days | Yes | A physical card with a hidden video |
| ARVideoCards | Printed postcard | $4 flat | Yes, worldwide mail | No | A tangible keepsake |
| Overly | Your own trigger image | Free / $59 / $119 per month | No | No | Branded business AR campaigns |
| MessageAR | Shared link, no marker | $2.99–$4.99/video | No | No | Sending something today, to anyone, anywhere |
iGreet: the original AR greeting card
iGreet has been around since 2015 — one of the earliest consumer AR greeting card apps, and it still works the way it always has.
How it works: pick a designed card (birthday, wedding, love, thank-you, Christmas, baby), personalize it with a message and an optional recorded video, and order it as a physical card. It ships in a couple of days. The recipient opens the iGreet app, scans the card’s cover image, and the video plays as an overlay right on top of the illustration.
Pricing: roughly $5 per card (about €4.99 on the current site). A simpler free digital-send option also exists, without the printed card.
Where it falls short:
- The recipient has to install the iGreet app before seeing anything
- App store reviews mention scan failures and camera-orientation bugs
- Shipping wait between “I want to send this” and “they’ve received it”
Good fit for: someone who wants a real physical card in someone’s hands, with a video as a bonus layer — and doesn’t mind a few days’ lead time.
ARVideoCards: the flat-rate postcard
How it works: upload a short video, it gets printed as a real postcard, and mailed anywhere in the world for a flat $4. No account tiers, no coin system. The recipient points their phone at the printed image — through the mobile browser, no app install — and the video appears as an AR overlay.
Where it falls short:
- Still a physical-mail product — no way to send it in the next five minutes
- International delivery can run into weeks
- One-way format: no group contributions, no link-based sharing, no editing after mailing
Good fit for: a tangible keepsake someone can pin to a fridge — not a same-day send.
Overly: the DIY AR toolkit (not really a greeting card app)
Overly shows up constantly in “AR greeting card” searches, but it’s genuinely a different category — a no-code AR authoring platform for marketers and e-commerce brands, not someone wishing a friend happy birthday tonight.
How it works: upload your own trigger image and your own video or 3D content; Overly generates the AR experience and a scan-to-view link.
Pricing: Free (2 experiences, 50 views/month) → Start pack $59/month (20 experiences, unlimited views) → Growth pack $119/month (50 experiences). No per-greeting price — it’s a subscription built for an ongoing campaign, not a single card.
Where it falls short: significant overkill for one personal greeting, both in price and setup effort — you’re building the AR experience from scratch.
Good fit for: brands and agencies running a reusable AR marketing campaign, not consumer greetings.
MessageAR: no card, no app, no shipping wait
This is the platform built specifically to remove the physical-object dependency the other three all share. There’s nothing to print, mail, or install.
How it works: record a video, get a magic link, send the link. When the recipient opens it, the video appears directly in their real surroundings, in real time — no card to scan, no trigger image needed at all.
Current pricing:
- Basic — $2.99/video — 10-second AR video, HD, link live for 14 days
- Premium — $4.99/video — 30-second AR video, HD, link live for 30 days, priority support
- Custom — quote-based — extended length, extended availability, group or business use
What makes it genuinely different: iGreet and ARVideoCards both require the recipient to physically hold the card or postcard for the AR trigger to work. MessageAR needs nothing physical on either end, which is exactly why it works for long-distance sends where a mailed card either won’t arrive in time — or won’t arrive at all.
Good fit for: birthdays, anniversaries, long-distance family moments, and anything where the reveal needs to happen today. For general video greeting card comparisons beyond just the AR-native category, see our full breakdown of digital and video greeting card platforms.
Turnaround time, side by side
| Platform | Realistic turnaround |
|---|---|
| iGreet | 2–3 days (production + shipping) |
| ARVideoCards | Several days to a few weeks (postal delivery) |
| Overly | Same day — but only after you build the AR experience yourself |
| MessageAR | Minutes |
Which one should you actually pick?
- Want a physical keepsake and don’t mind waiting? iGreet or ARVideoCards — ARVideoCards at the lower flat rate, iGreet with more design variety.
- Running a branded AR marketing campaign? Overly — it’s an authoring platform, not a card-sending app, priced accordingly.
- Need to send something today, to someone far away, that actually feels alive? MessageAR — nothing to print, nothing to install, nothing to wait on.
If the occasion is coming up on the calendar, a couple of related reads worth checking next: Halloween costume ideas for 2026, Thanksgiving messages and gratitude video ideas, and New Year wishes for 2027.
Frequently asked questions
Is Overly actually a greeting card app? Not really. It’s a general-purpose AR authoring tool businesses use for product visualization and marketing campaigns. It can technically build a greeting-style experience, but it isn’t designed or priced for that.
Do any of these work without installing an app? ARVideoCards and MessageAR both work entirely through a mobile browser — no app install needed on the recipient’s end. iGreet requires its own app to scan and unlock cards.
Which is fastest to actually send today? MessageAR — record a video and share the link in a couple of minutes. The other three involve either a shipping wait (iGreet, ARVideoCards) or a setup process built for a campaign, not a single send (Overly).
Which is cheapest for a single greeting? ARVideoCards’ flat $4 and MessageAR’s $2.99 Basic tier are the two lowest per-send costs — see MessageAR’s full pricing for details. iGreet runs slightly higher per card; Overly isn’t priced per-send at all.
Can any of these handle a group tribute — messages from multiple people? MessageAR supports this directly: contributors record clips from their own devices, and the finished tribute is delivered as one link. Overly could technically support this with enough manual setup, but it isn’t a built-in feature the way it is with MessageAR. iGreet and ARVideoCards are both single-sender formats.
The bottom line
If you want a physical keepsake and don’t mind waiting a few days, iGreet or ARVideoCards both do that job. If you’re a business building a reusable branded AR campaign, Overly is a genuine authoring platform, priced for that use case. And if what you actually need is to send something today, to someone who might be a thousand miles away, that shows up as more than just another video in a chat thread — that’s the specific gap MessageAR was built to fill.
