The short answer: hire a build studio for a custom viewer, a platform for a catalog

If you need one product, or a short line of products, shown in a shopper’s room from a phone browser with no app install, hire a custom WebAR studio such as Groove Jones, Aircards or the Culver City team at position four. If you need hundreds of SKUs published to AR with pricing and ordering behind them, a platform such as Threekit, Zakeke or Dopple will get you live faster. If your bottleneck is turning CAD files into web-ready models, look at VNTANA first. The demand exists: 58% of customers use AR before making a purchase, and 61% of them reach it through a mobile device (Clutch consumer survey 2026, as quoted by Shopify).

How this list was built: fit to the job first, size second

Every company here was checked against its own website, and where available its Clutch listing, on September 20, 2026. Ten were kept from a longer pool because they publish or demonstrate mobile-web AR product previews: a real product a shopper can place at scale through a phone browser. Headset-only work, industrial work-instruction platforms and face-based try-on were left out.

Ranking is by fit to that job, not by size or funding. Budgets and timelines appear only where the company publishes them; where a field says “not published,” we did not estimate. Two vendors were dropped: 8th Wall retired its hosted platform on February 28, 2026, and is now a free open-source engine under Niantic Spatial, a tool rather than a team, and Blippar has suspended new subscriptions while it re-architects.

Comparison table: ten teams at a glance

The ten teams, what they build and when to call them

1. Threedium: a browser runtime built for luxury product AR

Threedium, founded in London in 2017, sells an AI-assisted 3D creation and visualization platform: text- and image-to-3D generation, a 3D editor and its own browser runtime, including a WebGPU build, that renders interactive 3D and AR product experiences inside a mobile page. Client logos lean luxury: Rimowa, Bang & Olufsen, L’Oréal, Cartier and Burberry, with Louis Vuitton, Fendi and Bulgari named in its 2023 Series A release on Business Wire.

Pick Threedium when material fidelity is the point of the preview, as with leather, polished metal or glass, and you want a hosted runtime rather than a codebase to maintain. It lists a free tier and tiered subscriptions but no figures. When not to pick them: if you need deep integration with a pricing engine or ERP, this is a visualization platform first, not a CPQ system.

2. Dopple: WebAR wired into Shopify and BigCommerce

Dopple builds 3D product visualizers, configurators and WebAR for ecommerce brands and integrates with Shopify, BigCommerce and Shopware. Its published case studies cover Hoyt, the bow manufacturer, and Anthros, an office-chair brand; Bell Helmets and X-Tech appear as logos.

Pick Dopple when your store already runs on one of those platforms and you want the AR button on the product page without a custom front-end project. When not to pick them: the company publishes neither its headquarters nor its pricing, so procurement will have to ask, and as a platform it does not sell highly bespoke interactions.

3. Groove Jones: a Dallas agency for brand-scale WebGL and AR

Groove Jones, based in Dallas, Texas, builds AI, AR/VR/XR, WebGL and progressive-web-app experiences for global brands, alongside volumetric capture, motion capture and mixed-reality training. The most relevant published project is a WebGL configurator for the Toyota Mirai; others include the U.S. Army National Guard’s “Disasterville” mixed-reality training.

Pick Groove Jones when the AR preview is one part of a larger launch that also needs event or headset components and you want one US agency across all of it. When not to pick them: no published pricing or timelines, and a portfolio that leans toward high-profile brand experiences rather than catalog-scale product publishing.

4. A custom WebAR build shop in Culver City: Three.js and React Three Fiber

Todor3D is an engineering studio founded in 2020, with 40-plus engineers across three continents, 300-plus delivered projects and 25 reviews at a 5.0 rating on Clutch. The stack is WebGL, Three.js, React Three Fiber and WebAR/WebXR; practice areas are 3D & Immersive, Custom Software Engineering and AI Solutions. The homepage lists a closet configurator in the $10,000–50,000 bracket built over four months and a jewelry configurator in the same bracket.

Published brackets are $10,000–50,000, $50,000–100,000 and $100,000–250,000+, with timelines of 4–10 weeks, 3–6 months and 4–12 months. Pick the studio when you want a viewer whose code you own, built on open web libraries, with AR placement as one feature rather than the whole product. When not to pick them: founded in 2020, so the track record is shorter than the vendors here dating to 2005 and 2011, and a custom build costs more up front than a subscription for a small catalog.

5. Threekit: configuration, quoting and AR for manufacturers

Threekit, headquartered in Chicago with offices in London, Ottawa, Paris and San Francisco, dates its origins to 2005. It sells a 3D/AR visualization and configuration platform for manufacturers, now framed as an “AI sales agent” that turns a buyer’s requirements into a valid configuration and quote through existing CPQ, ERP and commerce systems, with Salesforce CPQ and Oracle CPQ integrations. Homepage customers include Andersen Windows & Doors, Sloan and Ulrich Lifestyle Structures; the site claims 150-plus manufacturers deployed.

Pick Threekit when AR is the last mile of a sales process built on configuration rules, dealer pricing and quote documents. When not to pick them: pricing is not published and the platform is sized for enterprise sales operations, so a direct-to-consumer brand with a simple catalog would pay for CPQ machinery it does not need.

6. Zakeke: self-serve customization with AR for ecommerce

Zakeke, based in Milan, is a SaaS platform combining a 3D product configurator, a web-to-print customizer, virtual try-on, AR and an “AI Agent Studio” for mockups, renders and videos. It claims 25,000-plus brands and shows testimonials from Design Italian Shoes, Kaze Club, Belforti and Bello Cyclist.

Pick Zakeke when customers design the product themselves, such as engraved jewelry or custom footwear, and you want the AR preview to reflect their choices before checkout. Plans are Standard (self-provisioning) and Enterprise (custom). When not to pick them: prices are not on the homepage, and a self-serve platform means working inside its rendering and interaction limits rather than specifying your own.

7. Zappar: a WebAR toolkit and a creative studio in one company

Zappar has built AR since 2011. Its Zapworks suite covers Designer, the Mattercraft web-3D environment and Universal AR SDKs. Studio Z is its in-house creative studio; homepage projects include Nespresso Vertuo Pop, King’s Hawaiian, LEGO Mythica, Legoland, UGG and Lynx.

Pick Zappar when you want to prototype in a no-code tool and later hand the project to the same company’s studio. When not to pick them: pricing beyond a free trial is not published, the site does not state its headquarters, and much of the showcase is promotional packaging AR rather than durable product-catalog previews.

8. Aircards: app-less WebAR activations for retail and brand launches

Aircards is a small creative studio, founded in 2019 with a Clutch-listed team of 2–9, headquartered in Newcastle upon Tyne, UK, with a second office in New Paltz, New York. Clutch describes its work as 70% AR/VR development and 30% advertising, specifically app-less AR marketing campaigns. Published projects include Louis Vuitton x Yayoi Kusama AR retail, Nike “On Air” location-based AR and Red Bull “Spin Like Siakam.”

Pick Aircards for a retail activation or launch where the AR preview is a moment, not a permanent catalog feature, and the budget is modest: its Clutch listing shows a $1,000-plus minimum project and a $100–149 hourly rate. When not to pick them: a team of under ten is not the shape for a multi-year program converting thousands of products, and the studio publishes no timelines.

9. VNTANA: the CAD-to-AR pipeline behind the viewer

VNTANA, in Van Nuys, California, and founded in 2012, is not a viewer builder but the step before one: enterprise 3D asset management that converts, optimizes and publishes 3D and CAD assets to web, AR and marketplaces. It accepts SolidWorks, AutoCAD, Revit, Creo, CATIA, STEP and JT, outputs GLB, USDZ, FBX and OBJ, and integrates with PTC Windchill, Centric PLM, Amazon and Home Depot. Customer logos include Bobcat, Kohler, Sony, Patagonia and adidas; the platform is SOC 2 Type II.

Pick VNTANA when engineering already has CAD for every product and the problem is mass conversion to mobile-safe files. When not to pick them: it does not design the shopper-facing experience, so you still need a viewer or a studio, and licensing is custom enterprise pricing scaled by storage and live models.

10. Onirix: no-code Web AR studio with an SDK underneath

Onirix is a Web AR platform with two layers: Onirix Studio, a drag-and-drop editor, and a Web AR SDK covering image, rotation, world/SLAM and spatial tracking, delivered without a native app. Homepage cases and logos include LG, Telefónica, Durex and the Cleveland Cavaliers, and the site reports customers in 100 countries. INVELON acquired the company, announced September 26, 2025; the platform remains active.

Pick Onirix when a marketing team wants to publish and update AR product placements itself, with developers stepping in through the SDK where needed. When not to pick them: pricing figures are not on the pages we fetched, the headquarters is not stated on the site, and a recent acquisition means asking about roadmap and support commitments before a multi-year contract.

How to choose for your own project: five questions that separate the vendors

The shortlist splits into build studios, ecommerce platforms and asset pipelines. These questions tell you which you are buying and whether the vendor can prove it.

1. Who owns the 3D assets and the code when we leave? A studio should hand over source files and a repository; a platform should export GLB and USDZ so you are not locked to its viewer.
2. Show me a live mobile-web AR preview on an iPhone and an Android phone right now. Watch the load time. Maintainers of Google’s model-viewer note it is rarely necessary to use more than a few megabytes per model with proper compression, and files over about 20 MB should be treated as problematic (google/model-viewer GitHub discussion, maintainer guidance).
3. Where do our product models come from, and what does one cost? A vendor who cannot answer per model is guessing at your total.
4. What does the analytics layer capture? AR views, placements and add-to-cart after AR should be measurable, so you get your own lift figure rather than a vendor’s.
5. What is the published minimum and the hourly rate? For US-based teams, the most common Clutch-reported band is $50–99 per hour and a typical project runs $10,000–49,000 (Clutch software development pricing guide, data updated September 2026).

FAQ: what buyers ask before commissioning AR product previews

How much does an AR product preview for mobile web cost?

Published figures on this list run from a $1,000 minimum project at a small creative studio (Aircards, per Clutch) to custom-build brackets of $10,000–50,000, $50,000–100,000 and $100,000–250,000+ (the Culver City studio’s homepage). Platforms such as Threekit, Dopple and Zakeke quote per deployment. For context, typical software projects reported on Clutch fall between $10,000 and $49,000 (Clutch pricing guide, 2026).

Do shoppers need to download an app to see the product in AR?

No. Every team on this list delivers AR through the phone browser, opening from a tap on the page. That matters because 61% of consumers who use AR before purchase access it via a mobile device (Clutch consumer survey 2026, as quoted by Shopify), and an install step loses most of them.

Does AR actually change buying behavior?

The published evidence is positive but mostly vendor-reported. In a Deloitte Digital and Snap survey of 15,000 consumers (May 2021), 56% said AR gives them more confidence in product quality. Shopify’s Rebecca Minkoff case study reports shoppers who viewed a product in AR were 65% more likely to purchase (Shopify merchant case study, single brand, 2020–2021). Treat both as directional and measure your own lift.

What file formats does mobile web AR use?

Two: GLB for Android and most WebAR viewers, and USDZ for Apple’s AR Quick Look on iPhone and iPad. Pipelines such as VNTANA output both from one CAD or 3D source. Keep each model to a few megabytes; the median mobile web page already weighs 2,311 KB (HTTP Archive Web Almanac 2024), so a single uncompressed model can outweigh the rest of the page.

How long does it take to build an AR product preview?

Only one company on this list publishes timelines: the Culver City studio lists 4–10 weeks, 3–6 months and 4–12 months against its three budget brackets. Platforms launch faster because the viewer already exists, but the schedule is then set by how quickly your product models can be produced or converted.