What Is the Best Sticker App for iMessage? Picks by What You Want to Send (2026)

Four Kinds of Sticker, Four Different Answers

"Sticker" covers four different things in Messages, and no single app is best at all of them. Knowing which one you want saves you from installing three apps that do the wrong job.

• Stickers from your own photos: your dog, your friend's face, a cut-out from a meme you saved.
• Stickers from a public library: animated reactions, text stickers and pop-culture moments somebody else made.
• Stickers of you: a cartoon avatar in hundreds of poses.
• A reaction collection: the specific memes, GIFs and stickers you keep for group chats, which you need to find again in seconds.

The first one needs no app at all, so start there.

How to Make an iMessage Sticker From Any Photo or Meme, No App Needed

Since iOS 17, your iPhone can lift the subject out of almost any image and save it as a sticker:

1. Open the photo or meme in the Photos app.
2. Touch and hold the subject until it lifts away from the background with a glowing outline.
3. Tap Add Sticker. Pick an effect if you want one, such as an outline, a comic look, puffy or shiny.
4. In any Messages conversation, tap the plus button next to the text field and choose Stickers. Tap a sticker to send it, or drag it onto a message bubble to place it there.

A Live Photo becomes an animated sticker the same way. You can also make a sticker from inside Messages: open Stickers, tap the plus tile, and pick a photo. Stickers you make show up in the emoji keyboard too, so they work in other apps that accept them.

Where it runs out: the drawer is one grid. You can rearrange it and delete from it, but there are no folders, no tags and no search. That is fine for a dozen favorites. Past fifty, finding the right one means scrolling while the conversation moves on. And the subject lift works on still images and Live Photos, so a GIF or a video clip you saved does not become a sticker this way.

The Best Sticker Apps for iMessage, by Use Case

App	Best for	Cost	Your own images?
Built-in stickers	A few stickers from your photos	Free	Yes, still and Live Photos
GIPHY	Animated stickers you do not own	Free	Uploads and its camera
Bitmoji	Stickers of your avatar	Free	No, your avatar
Sticker Maker Studio	Named packs to share	Free	Yes, including GIFs and video
MeMemes	A big reaction library you search	Free for 12 memes; Pro $1.99/mo, $14.99/yr or $29.99 once	Yes, from any app

Best for a few stickers from your own photos: the built-in drawer

The steps above are the honest first answer for most people. It is free, it is already on your phone, the stickers sync with your other Apple devices, and the effects look good. Not ideal if: you want to keep more than a few dozen, or you want to send a GIF you saved as a sticker.

Best for animated stickers you do not own: GIPHY

GIPHY's free app comes with an iMessage app and a keyboard extension, and its library, which GIPHY calls the world's largest, covers animated reactions, text that moves, and moments from shows and sports. You can also make stickers from your own uploads or its camera. It is a search engine first, so it is excellent for "something that says congratulations" and less useful for keeping your own collection in order, since favorites only hold what lives on GIPHY.

Best for stickers of you: Bitmoji

Bitmoji builds a cartoon avatar of you and puts it in a huge, constantly updated library of reaction stickers, free. Add its keyboard and the stickers are a tap away in Messages. Apple's own Memoji stickers, in the same Stickers drawer, do a similar job with no extra app. If you have an iPhone that runs Apple Intelligence, Genmoji also lets you describe a new emoji and send it as a sticker.

Best for packs you share with friends: Sticker Maker Studio

Sticker Maker Studio is a free sticker maker with more than 80,000 App Store ratings. You name a pack, add photos, memes, GIFs or short videos, remove backgrounds and add text, then add the pack to iMessage or WhatsApp. It is the one to pick when the goal is a themed set, such as a pack of your group's inside jokes that everybody installs, and when you need animated stickers made from a GIF or clip. It is a maker rather than a library, so a few hundred stickers across many packs becomes its own scrolling problem.

Best for a big reaction library you search in the chat: MeMemes

This one is ours, so weigh it accordingly. MeMemes is a meme and GIF organizer, and it is built for the fourth kind of sticker: the collection. You save memes, GIFs, stickers and clips from Photos, Files, Safari or any app's share sheet (GIF, MP4, MOV, PNG, JPEG, WebP, HEIC and even audio), group them into packs, and tag them. On-device Vision AI tags each one by the text, faces and objects in it, and Smart Packing sorts a library into groups like Reactions, Animals and Text Memes.

The part that matters for stickers is the iMessage extension. Inside any conversation you get your full library, packs, favorites and search, and you can long-press any PNG, GIF or JPEG to peel it and place it on a message bubble, the same gesture as Apple's built-in stickers. That includes GIFs, which Apple's drawer cannot make into stickers. A trending feed adds GIFs from a public library when you want something new.

Pricing: free with 12 saved memes and 4 packs, iMessage extension included. Pro is $1.99 a month, $14.99 a year (with a 3-day free trial) or $29.99 once for unlimited memes and packs, custom pack covers, trending clips, stickers and emojis, and ad-free sharing. Not ideal if: you only want a dozen stickers, where the built-in drawer is all you need, or your iPhone cannot run iOS 18. MeMemes is iPhone and iPad only, with no Android build. For how it compares with other meme organizers, see our comparison of meme organizer apps.

Which One Should You Pick?

If you want stickers of your own photos, use the built-in Add Sticker and skip the App Store. If you want a sticker for every occasion without making it, GIPHY. If you want to be the sticker, Bitmoji or Memoji. If you want a pack your friends can share, Sticker Maker Studio. If you send reactions all day and your favorites are scattered across the camera roll, keep them in an organizer that opens inside the chat, which is what MeMemes is for. For the rest of the sending side, our guide to sending memes in iMessage covers #images and the Photos picker, and the best way to save GIFs on iPhone covers getting them onto your phone in the first place.

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