Picrew is a popular Japanese site for building custom avatars and character illustrations from mix-and-match art assets made by independent creators. If you’ve used it and want more options — or just a different art style — here are ten reputable sites like Picrew worth trying.
1. Avachara
Avachara is a free online avatar maker that lets you build a personal avatar from a wide range of facial features, hairstyles, and outfits. Once you’re happy with your creation, you can download it or share it directly online.
2. FaceYourManga
FaceYourManga is a user-friendly avatar creator that lets you put together an anime-style character in just a few minutes, with plenty of hairstyles, clothing, and accessories to choose from.
3. DoppelMe
DoppelMe focuses on building a more realistic-looking avatar of yourself, with fine control over hair, eyes, nose, and mouth, plus optional extras like scars, tattoos, and piercings.
4. Charat
Charat offers several distinct avatar makers under one roof, including chibi, realistic, and gacha-style character creators, each with its own large library of parts and color options.
5. itsMe
itsMe is a mobile-first 3D avatar app that builds a more stylized, animated version of you, aimed at using your avatar as a sticker pack or profile picture across social apps.
6. Bitmoji
Bitmoji, widely known through its Snapchat integration, lets you build a cartoon avatar of yourself and use it across messaging apps, keyboards, and social platforms as reaction stickers.
7. Cartoonify
Cartoonify offers a simpler, quicker avatar-building experience with a smaller but easy-to-browse set of features, well suited to users who want a fast result without a lot of customization options.
8. VRoid Studio
VRoid Studio is a free, more advanced tool for creating full 3D anime-style avatars, popular with VTubers and VR users who need a rigged, animatable character rather than a flat illustration.
9. Zepeto
Zepeto builds a 3D avatar from a selfie and lets you dress it, pose it, and share it within its own social app, which also includes virtual spaces to explore with your avatar.
10. Canva’s Avatar Tools
Canva isn’t an avatar site by design, but its character and illustration asset libraries let you assemble a custom avatar-style graphic alongside its usual design tools — handy if you already use Canva for other projects and don’t want to juggle a separate app.
Picrew vs. the Alternatives
Picrew remains a favorite for its huge, constantly growing library of independently made character makers, each with its own distinct art style. Its main tradeoff is that quality and options vary a lot from maker to maker, since anyone can publish one.
Sites like Avachara, FaceYourManga, and DoppelMe offer a single, more consistent creator instead of Picrew’s patchwork of styles — a better fit if you want one reliable tool rather than browsing through many different makers to find the right look.
Conclusion
There you have it — ten solid alternatives to Picrew, ranging from quick cartoon avatars to full 3D character creators. Whichever style you’re after, one of these is worth a try.
