ARKit vs ARCore: Comparison between features, benefits, drawbacks, and use cases

Augmented reality technology is a new-age feature that helps businesses to provide their customers with an enhanced experience and engaging features while bridging the gap between online and offline journeys. To provide users with an engaging and immersive experience, developers can build an AR application by using custom code or by integrating an SDK into the pre-existing e-commerce platforms, which they can choose according to their convenience and expertise.

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Building an AR-based app using an SDK will help developers in several ways, such as cost-effectiveness, a comprehensive suite of pre-built tools, customization options, and more, which will help them reduce the time-to-market and provide their customers with more seamless experiences. With these advantages and good reasons, the global AR-based SDK market has seen immense growth, which was recorded at $1729.76 million in 2021 and reached $3882.5 million by the end of 2025, and is projected to reach a CAGR of 22.4% from 2025 to 2033.

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Most of the developers and online sellers use ARKit and ARCore SDKs to build AR-based applications for Android and iOS devices, respectively, but selecting the best one between these two is still a task because it requires lots of research and analysis of features, pros, cons, and use cases. In this blog, I will help you understand which one is the best AR-based SDK from ARKit and ARCore by providing you with detailed information about their features, pros, cons, and use cases via a comparison table.

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What is an augmented reality app?

An AR app is a software application based on augmented reality technology, which provides users with an engaging online shopping experience by overlaying digital content, including 3D models, text, or sounds, onto the real world in real-time. It helps businesses and online sellers to enhance the user shopping journey by enhancing their physical environment rather than replacing it with the help of their device's camera and sensors.

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It can be used for various industries or categories, such as eyewear, jewelry, makeup, bracelets, shoes, and apparel, which will help brands to improve their engagement, conversions, sales, and more by offering their customers interactive features. With the help of an AR-based app, they can provide users with some immersive features, such as product configurators, virtual try-ons, 3D models, and more, helping them to make more confident and satisfactory purchase decisions.

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ARKit and its features, pros, cons, and use cases

ARKit is an iOS-based SDK that Apple develops for those businesses or brands whose audience uses iOS, iPadOS, and visionOS devices, helping them to provide their customers with an immersive and engaging experience. It helps businesses to create an iOS-based application that will help them to bridge the gap between online and offline shopping experiences for those people who are using Apple products.

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It helps developers to seamlessly blend their digital content with the real world by using the user’s device camera, CPU, GPU, and motion sensors, providing them with an engaging shopping journey. In this section, I will help you understand the features, advantages, disadvantages, and use cases of the ARKit SDK provider and how it will help a business to reach a wider audience.

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Features

• Scene understanding and mapping: It analyzes the environment using the user’s device camera to detect horizontal and vertical planes, like floors and walls, which will help them to recognize specific images and objects to understand the real-world scale and surface properties.

• People occlusion: It helps users enable virtual objects to realistically appear behind people in the camera feed, which will create a more convincing sense of depth and immersion to provide them with an engaging and real-time experience while exploring products virtually at home.

• Motion capture: It helps businesses to provide their users with a lifelike shopping experience by tracking human body movements, which will enable them to use applications like virtual try-ons or interactive fitness experiences so that they can explore products interactively while sitting at home.

• LiDAR scanner integration: It uses a LiDAR scanner that helps businesses to instantly map environments with faster plane detection and improved depth perception, which will help them to provide their customers with the ability to explore products in the real-world environment.

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Pros

• Performance and integration: It helps developers to provide their customers with an engaging experience by enabling them to integrate the SDK with iOS hardware and optimize it for Apple's Metal graphics API, which will help them to deliver high-performance and low-latency AR experiences.

• Large user base: It helps businesses and developers to provide access to a massive audience of iPhone and iPad users without requiring additional hardware, which will help them increase their user engagement on various devices.

• Robust features: It helps developers to provide their customers with a framework that is continuously updated with advanced features, such as LiDAR support, which will enable them to improve the quality and realism of AR applications.

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Cons

• Platform lock-in: It is an exclusive SDK provider for the Apple ecosystem, which limits the reach of the audience to those who are using iOS devices, as compared to cross-platform solutions like Google's ARCore.

• Hardware dependency: It provides developers with advanced features like LiDAR integration, which can be used online or is available on newer and high-end Apple devices.

• Learning curve: It requires a moderate learning curve; instead of having well-updated documentation, it is essential for businesses to hire experienced developers to understand the framework, which requires knowledge of Swift/Objective-C and 3D development concepts. 

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Use cases

• Shopping and e-commerce: It helps businesses to bridge the gap between online and offline shopping experiences by enabling their customers to virtually "try on" clothes, view furniture in their homes before purchase, or visualize products in 3D, helping them to make more informed purchase decisions during virtual shopping.

• Navigation: It helps businesses to provide their customers with AR navigation overlays on live camera feeds to help them understand walking directions, point out landmarks, or guide users within large indoor spaces, enabling them to reach the nearest without any hassle.

• Education and training: It helps educational institutes to provide their students with interactive learning experiences where they can interact with 3D models of historical artifacts or complex scientific diagrams to provide them with a better learning curve.

• Industrial design and architecture: It helps interior designers and real estate agents to provide their customers with architectural designs or prototypes in a real-world context during the planning phase, which will provide their customers with a better understanding of the place.

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ARCore and its features, pros, cons, and use cases

ARCore is an AR-based SDK, developed by Google, primarily designed for Android users that helps businesses and developers to seamlessly and successfully blend digital content into the real-world environment to provide their customers with an engaging experience. With the help of this SDK provider, businesses can provide their customers with a lifelike experience using their smartphone's camera and sensors to help them visualize products in real time.

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In this section, I will provide you with detailed information on the features, pros, cons, and use cases of the ARCore SDK and how it helps businesses to provide their customers with features like motion tracking, environmental understanding, and light estimation.

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Features

• Motion tracking: It uses the simultaneous localization and mapping technique along with the device's inertial measurement unit data to understand the phone's position and pose, which will track the user's movements to provide them with a real-time experience.

• Light estimation: It helps developers render 3D objects realistically by integrating them with the surroundings by estimating the environment's current lighting conditions, including intensity and color correction, and applying that to virtual objects.

• Depth API: It helps developers to create depth maps, which contain data about the distance of surfaces from the camera, to provide their customers with realistic interactions of virtual objects appearing in front of or behind real ones by using physics-based interactions.

• Environmental understanding: It provides users with an engaging experience by identifying the horizontal, vertical, and angled surfaces (planes) like floors, tables, and walls by looking for clusters of feature points, which will allow developers to place virtual objects realistically on these surfaces.

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Pros

• Wider audience reach: It helps businesses to reach a wider audience by offering them a cross-platform compatibility feature with a wide range of Google-certified Android devices running Android 7.0 or later, enabling them to provide customers with a better and seamless experience.

• Cross-platform: It helps businesses to provide their customers with a similar experience across various devices and platforms because it is available for Android, Unity, Unreal, and Web, which will allow developers to develop applications across major platforms.

• Rich features: It provides developers with advanced features like depth perception, cloud anchors, and a geospatial API, which will help them to provide their customers with an immersive and realistic experience.

• Integration with the Google ecosystem: It helps developers and businesses to integrate their applications with the Google ecosystem so that their users can use various Google services, including Google Maps, which will provide them with the feature of advanced location-based AR.

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Cons

• Device specificity: It doesn’t support all devices because it requires certification by Google to ensure optimal performance, which can be a disadvantage for businesses that want to provide their customers with seamless experiences.

• Platform differences: It provides businesses with cross-platform workflows, which may not match the level of native integration offered by Apple’s ARKit on iOS, requiring additional testing and optimization.

• Scanning limitations: It sometimes shows limitations towards the initial scanning process because it may take longer on lower-end devices or in poor lighting conditions, which can sometimes be slow and negatively impact the user experience during the virtual session.

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Use cases

• Retail and e-commerce: It helps businesses and brands to provide their customers with real-time visualization of products, such as furniture or clothing, which will help them make more informed purchase decisions.

• Education and training: It helps educational institutes to create an interactive learning curve for their students so that they can understand complex subjects using interactive 3D models of anatomy or historical artifacts, which will help them make their learning more engaging.

• Navigation: It helps businesses and brands to provide their customers with AR-powered directions and points of interest overlaid onto the real-world view in apps like Google Maps Live View.

• Architecture and real estate: It helps interior designers and real estate people to provide their customers with real-time visualization of building plans on physical sites or enables potential buyers to tour properties with different layouts and furnishings virtually.

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Comparison table of ARKit vs ARCore

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Benefits of using an SDK to build AR applications

With the help of an SDK, brands and businesses can provide their customers with an engaging experience with less time-to-market and minimal costs. An SDK helps developers in multiple ways by accelerating the development process, reducing costs, and enabling access to complex and specialized features, which will also help them maintain the website's performance.

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Apart from that, it also saves developers’ time to build an app from scratch by using pre-existing coding knowledge and expertise, as it provides them with a pre-built suite of tools that they can customize according to their needs and requirements. In this section, I will tell you about the benefits of using an SDK for building AR-based applications and how it helps developers by offering various advantages.

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1. Core development advantages

• Faster and more efficient development: It helps developers to reduce the development cost and time because it provides them with a set of pre-built components, libraries, and code samples, which they can use to perform common functionalities and automate repetitive tasks.

• Cost and resource savings: By using the AR-based SDK, developers can streamline the development process with the help of the essential tools, which help them to reduce the overall time and resources needed for a project, leading to cost savings and a higher return on investment.

• Simplified integration: It helps developers to perform easy integration of the tool with the existing codebase and other services, such as analytics or payment gateways, which will also provide them with the assurance that all components work together seamlessly.

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2. Specialized AR functionality

• Complex feature implementation: It helps developers to reduce the complexity of feature implementation by enabling them to use the pre-built SDK, which they can integrate into the existing e-commerce platforms with some exciting and advanced features, such as motion and surface tracking, object and image recognition, and environmental understanding.

• High-performance rendering: It helps developers to use the powerful 3D rendering engines and tools on the AR-based applications, which will help them to provide their customers with photorealistic visualization and smooth product interactions while enhancing their overall user experience and shopping journey.

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3. Platform and support benefits

• Cross-platform compatibility: It provides developers with the ability to reach a wider audience with a single codebase for various devices and platforms, such as Vuforia, EasyAR, Unity, iOS, and Android.

• Ongoing updates and security: It helps developers to keep features up-to-date by providing them with regular updates to ensure compatibility of the SDK with the latest operating systems and providing them with essential security patches to reduce vulnerabilities and maintenance burdens.

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How to select a suitable SDK provider for your business?

With the increasing demand for AR-based applications, the number of SDK providers is increasing in the market with various features and offerings for different industries. To select a suitable SDK provider for your business, you have to evaluate various factors, such as the provider's reputation, the SDK's technical performance, security practices, support structure, and cost.

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Therefore, in this section, I will help you understand how to select the best SDK provider according to your business needs and goals by providing you with detailed information on different factors that you need to consider.

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1. Functionality and feature set

While selecting the suitable SDK provider for your business, it is very important to understand your business goals and needs because it will help you understand how the SDK will help you grow your business and reach a wider audience.

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After getting clarity about the business goals, you need to look for the SDK providers that offer the core features that are mostly critical to your business needs and requirements, because it will help you to opt for an SDK that aligns with your roadmap and provides your business with future enhancements.

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2. Performance and reliability

After looking for the functionality and feature set, you have to understand the performance and reliability of the SDK and how it will impact your app's performance by looking for factors, including load times, memory usage, and battery consumption.

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You can review the case studies and performance benchmarks of the providers, which will help you select those providers that have a track record of high performance and availability with minimal downtime.

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3. Security and compliance

While selecting an SDK provider, you can consider security and compliance factors that will help you to keep the user information safe by adhering to relevant data protection regulations, such as GDPR and CCPA, which they share during the session on the application.

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Apart from that, you can also check their security documentation to have a clear understanding of privacy policies regarding user data or check for features like data encryption and secure data handling practices, which will help you to foster customers’ trust by assuring them that their data is safe under the standard security measures.

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4. Developer experience and documentation

Selecting a good SDK provider implies that it can be handled by everyone, including experienced or beginner-level developers, enabling them to integrate the SDK properly with the e-commerce platform and providing them with an easy-to-use interface.

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You can also opt for documentation as a selection criterion that will help the development team to stay updated with the latest updates and help them to resolve issues by using the documentation, tutorials, code samples, or discussing issues with the developer community using forums.

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5. Support and maintenance

Now, look for an SDK provider that offers tiered support options depending on the service plan, such as email, chat, phone, and a dedicated account manager, enabling you to stay updated with the latest updates and timely assistance for bug resolution and issue escalation.

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To understand the SDK providers' support and maintenance features, you can also check for their update frequency and ongoing maintenance commitments, which will help you to understand how often they update the SDK versions.

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6. Pricing plan and license model

While selecting the SDK provider, always look for its pricing plan and license model because it will help you to understand their different tiered plans by analyzing their features, including one-time fees, subscriptions, pay-per-use, and freemium features. You can also review their licensing agreement for any restrictions on usage or distribution to have an overview of the supported devices and platforms.

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Introducing GlamAR: An AR-based SDK provider for both Android and iOS platforms and devices

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To provide your customers with an interactive and engaging experience, you can consider GlamAR, which is an AR-based SDK provider that helps online sellers and businesses to enhance their online presence by reaching a wider audience and enhancing customer experience. It offers several solutions, such as virtual try-ons, 3D product configurators, 3D model creators, 360-degree viewers, and an AI-based skin analyzer, which will help brands to experience an end-to-end 3D, AR, and VR lifecycle support.

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With the help of its AR try-on feature, online sellers can provide their customers with a personalized yet immersive shopping journey by enabling them to visualize products from their device’s camera on themselves or at their place realistically. It helps businesses to reduce the guesswork and uncertainty among their customers during virtual shopping by helping them to customize products according to their needs and offering them a real-time experience.

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It provides brands with an SDK or API, which supports low-code or no-code integration, enabling them to integrate the WebAR try-on into their e-commerce platform so that they can increase their user engagement by redefining how customers engage at every touchpoint. Apart from that, it also provides businesses and developers with detailed documentation, which they can use if they get stuck at any point or talk to their experts for any assistance through chat or email.

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Features

• Unlimited customization options: It provides users with the ability to customize and configure the product according to their needs and requirements, offering them a wide range of configuration options, such as colors, specifications, and materials.

• AR integration: It helps brands to increase user experience by offering their customers elevated shopping experiences by integrating augmented reality features that will enable them to visualize products in their environment, providing them with a real-time experience.

• 360-degree spin: It helps users to understand the detailing of the product by offering them a 360-degree view of products, providing them with the ability to explore products from different angles and perspectives, and offering them an in-store-like experience.

• Photorealistic renders: It provides businesses with WebGL-based rendering technology that helps them to create stunning thumbnails and marketing visuals, enabling them to attract more customers with high-quality models.

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Applications of GlamAR’s AR-based SDK for different industries

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GlamAR is an AR-based SDK provider for both iOS and Android users, which helps businesses to provide their customers with an engaging and immersive online shopping experience. It has been helping several businesses and online sellers to increase user engagement and enhance overall sales by enabling them to reach a wider audience, irrespective of their geographical location and time zone.

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In this section, I will provide you with brief information about the brands that are using GlamAR’s AR SDK on their e-commerce platform so that they can offer interactive features to their customers and help them make more informed and confident buying decisions.

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1. White Cut

White Cut is an online jewelry brand that uses the GlamAR virtual jewelry try-on SDK on its website and app, which will help it provide its customers with an engaging and interactive shopping journey. It provides their customers with exciting features, such as virtual try-ons, 360-degree viewers, and 3D model creators, which will enable them to try and explore different products interactively.

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With the help of this AR SDK, the brand has bridged the gap between the online and offline shopping journey by replacing static 2D images with interactive 3D models to help their customers make more informed purchasing decisions.

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2. Saturdays

Saturdays is an eyewear brand that uses 3D virtual eyewear try-on technology to provide its customers with a lifelike shopping experience by enabling them to virtually try different eyewear products while sitting at home.

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It provides its customers with multiple features, such as virtual try-ons, 3D model creators, and 360-degree viewers, which will offer them some engaging features, such as spin, zoom, and rotate, to help them explore products from different angles and perspectives. It also helps them reduce the product return rate by helping their customers make more informed and confident purchases during online shopping.

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Conclusion

ARCore and ARKit are two leading AR-based SDKs for Android and iOS, respectively, that help businesses and developers to provide their customers with an engaging and immersive experience. However, using two different SDKs for different platforms can increase development complexity and make it harder to maintain consistent experiences across platforms.

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Therefore, brands can also use GlamAR’s AR-based SDK that offers a cross-platform compatible solution for brands that they can use for both Android and iOS users, while keeping their performance high and more versatile. It also helps businesses to seamlessly integrate the SDK into their pre-existing e-commerce platforms, including Shopify, enabling them to boost their user experience, engagement, sales, and conversion rates.

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