The Best Sites to Cartoon Yourself For Free [September 2020]

If you like using social media and chat apps to communicate with family and friends, then you’ve probably heard of cartooning. That’s when you create a cartoon avatar of yourself to use on chat apps and sites. Cartooning is a fun and creative way to make new avatars for your online presence, and there are lots of free sites that will let you cartoon yourself without spending any money. In this article, I will show you some of the best sites that will let you create cartoon versions of yourself (or any other image), all absolutely free.

Most of the sites I’m going to recommend handle all the work for you, and all you have to do is pick the photograph you want to use. Head and shoulders shots work best for most of these apps, bu you can use whatever picture you like.

You’ll need a smartphone for this one, but one of the best ways to make a cartoon version of yourself comes from Snapchat, the owners of Bitmoji. You’ve probably heard of Bitmoji already—you might have even already made one—but it’s a great way to customize your messages on your phone. Bitmoji is best used with Snapchat, but it’s not exclusive to the platform. In fact, it’s built right into the standard Google keyboard on Android, and is easy to use on iOS as well.

Once you have the app installed on your phone, follow the steps provided to set up your very own Bitmoji for the first time! The service is easy to use, and constantly refreshes the clothing available for your new avatar, so you can start using it as soon as possible while also following the seasonal change.

Pho.to is a pretty cool website that performs a lot of image manipulation including cartooning. What makes it one of the best sites on this list, of course, is the ability to work with any kind of image—not just portraits. The site offers a number of tools, including retouching, special effects, and “emoji”-style alteration, but to cartoon your image, you want to use their Photo Lab app. All you have to do is provide the image, their advanced software does all the work.

Snapstouch isn’t quite as fully featured as the preceding two, but it can still do a lot with images, including make them look like a cartoon. Upload an image and select from the top menu, Sketch, Pencil Sketch, Painting, Drawing, Outline and Color Effect. Your image will be adjusted accordingly. Each style has specific settings too so it’s easy to find the perfect look.

Pick a Face is slightly different in that (similar to the way that Bitmoji creates images) you don’t upload an image to cartoonize, you create one from scratch. It uses a graphical editor to create a face and a series of options to fine tune the cartoon to just the way you like it. While not quite as impressive as photo manipulation, in the right hands it is entirely possible to create a likeness.

Any Making might be a strange name, but it’s one of the best websites on this list for what we’re looking for in a photo editing site. It allows you to apply dozens of effects to an image, including cartoon effects. Choose an effect, upload an image and the site will do the rest. The end result is pretty good too. While there are no options to really fine tune the result, the defaults deliver a credible cartoon that you can use wherever you like.

Rollip is another powerful image manipulation website where you can cartoon yourself for free. Select a filter, upload an image and the site will do the rest. There are two that are pretty good, Carbon Copy and Water Colors. There is no specific cartoon effect but these two filters create some very good cartoon likenesses.

FaceYourManga is a very popular website to cartoon yourself for free, especially if you’re trying to aim for an anime appearance. The site is simple but effective and features hundreds of options to create a cartoon from scratch. You can then save your new avatar to use as you see fit. If you are artistically inclined, this is one of the best sites out there for avatar creation.

Though it was originally only available on iPhone X-series devices, with iOS 13, Memoji has now rolled out to any iPhone running the newest software from Apple. Much like Bitmoji, Memoji allows you to create your own personal cartoon avatar to send through iMessage or any other app on your phone, right from the built-in keyboard. iPhone X and iPhone 11 devices will still have the best experience with Memoji thanks to the tech used for FaceID, but it’s nice to see every device now have access to this fun avatar creator.

PicJoke is a tough one as the site itself is not very welcoming but the sheer potential of what it hides makes patience worthwhile. You can use stock images or upload your own and then select an effect by date from the left menu. It may take a while to find what you’re looking for but there are hundreds, if not thousands of effects to choose from. For volume alone this site is worth checking out.

PiZap is a great looking site with a simple flat design. It allows you to upload images and manipulate them in multiple ways including cartoonizing. You aren’t restricted to portraits though, you can apply effects to any kind of image. It also allows you to create Emoji, Facebook and Twitter covers, collages and design freehand. It’s a pretty good website for budding artists.

Photo Kako is a Japanese website that does provide an English front end. The creator of the site acknowledges that his English isn’t great, but the software he provides is amazing. You can use more than 170 photo manipulation tools, including cartoonizing and many other different filters.

Picture to People is my final website to cartoon yourself for free. Again, it isn’t the best looking website in the world but what it does, it does well. Upload an image and you have hundreds of options for effects, filters, cartooning and more. You can also add text, frames, logos and more. Turn images into stickers and generally play around with images. It is a deep site with a lot to offer once you can find your way around.