Health, home and travel decision
ThatGlow
A technical user can recreate the face‑analysis + plan workflow, but the full paid product (App Store subscription flows, native polish, and AI image generation) is not practical to reproduce fully as a lightweight self‑hosted replacement.
View on the App Store↗$4.17/mo
$50/yr
Read off the official pricing page.
$100one-off60 h to build
$50/mo6 h/mo upkeep
On cash alone, building overtakes the subscription at 14 seats.
No open-source build does this yet
Nothing published replaces this one, so a replacement starts from an empty file. Here is what it would have to cover.
What a replacement has to do
- User takes/upload selfie → run automated facial & skin analysis → generate a short personalized plan and recommendations → optionally track progress over rescans
What it still won’t have
- Polished native iOS UI, App Store distribution and review workflows
- Built-in in‑app purchase handling and Apple’s subscription flows
- AI image 'Future Self' generation previews (compute + model complexity)
- Any proprietary datasets, labeling, or model tuning used by the vendor
- Marketing, analytics and trust/ratings from the App Store listing
What remains hard
- Product polish and ongoing maintenance
First-year cost
Keep paying
Paying is—cheaper in year one.
On cash alone, building overtakes the subscription at 14 seats.
Money you would actually spend
Time you would spend
—
What you would spend
What we assumed
The verdict above measures whether you could build it. This one is only about money.
Runnable build prompt
Build a minimal ThatGlow replacement: implement a React Native iOS app + Python Flask backend. Core features in scope: (1) mobile UI to take or upload a selfie, (2) backend endpoint that runs facial analysis using an open Python face library (e.g. DeepFace) to output landmarks, symmetry and simple skin metrics, (3) a rule‑based generator that emits a 50‑day step plan from analysis results, (4) account/session storage in Postgres and simple progress comparison across rescans, (5) a subscription gate placeholder (no App Store payments required). Out of scope: generative 'Future Self' image editing, App Store in‑app purchase integration, advanced ML training. Require error handling, authentication for saved scans, and unit tests for analysis and plan generation endpoints.
How we checked
How the score was reached
- Partly verdict base52
- Price verified on pricing page+3
- 3/3 assessment runs agreed+4
- Evidence score59
The base comes from the verdict. Everything under it is a check that either happened or did not, and each one is a fact frozen in this record rather than a judgement made at render time - so the same evidence always produces the same number.
How scoring works →Cited sources · 1
Every page the run actually retrieved.
- official productThatGlow – Face Scan & Glow Up (App Store)
Integrity checks
What held up, and what did not.
