Free AR tools are real, and they are not all toys. But the line between free and paid is sharper than the marketing suggests. - For a store testing whether shoppers even tap the AR button, free is the honest place to start. If nobody taps it, you just saved a subscription. - Paid matters at scale: dozens of SKUs means pipeline, bulk capture, format conversion, cleanup, version control, analytics. - A seller phone-scan app for 3D assets might be free to download and paid per processed model. - An AR ecommerce plugin SaaS might cover five products free and fifty paid. - The trap is the middle: paying for a plan before you have proof of demand. - Start free, measure with intent, upgrade only when you can point at the AR sessions and say this is earning its keep. ModelSnap produces the 3D model and AR preview file, $4.99 per HD model.