Are iMessage Sticker Packs Free? What You Actually Get, and How to Tell Before You Tap Get (2026)

What Is an iMessage Sticker Pack?

A sticker pack is a small app that lives inside Messages on iPhone and iPad. Instead of opening on your Home Screen, it adds a drawer of stickers to your conversations. You can send a sticker on its own, or touch and hold it and drop it onto a message bubble, a photo, or another sticker. Packs come from the App Store like any other app, and the person you send to does not need the pack installed to see the sticker.

They are different from the stickers your iPhone makes for you. Since iOS 17, you can touch and hold the subject of any photo and tap Add Sticker, and Memoji stickers of your own avatar are built in too. Those cost nothing and need no app. A sticker pack is for artwork somebody else drew: characters, lettering, a style you could not make from your camera roll. Our guide to the best sticker app for iMessage covers making your own; this post is about the packs you install.

Free, Free to Start, or Paid: The Three Kinds of Sticker Pack

Kind	What the listing shows	What you get
Completely free	Get button reads Free, no In-App Purchases label	Every sticker in the pack, nothing locked
Free to start	Free, with In-App Purchases beside the button	A starter set; the rest unlock with a purchase or subscription
Paid	A price on the button, such as $0.99	The whole pack once you buy it
Built in	Nothing to install	Memoji, Live Stickers from your photos, and emoji

The middle row is the one that surprises people. A lot of character and "kawaii" packs on the store are free to download with a small set unlocked, then sell the rest one pack at a time or as a subscription. That is a fair way to try a style before paying, as long as you know it going in. The complaint in reviews is almost always the same: the screenshots showed stickers the free version does not include.

How to Tell If a Sticker Pack Is Really Free, in Ten Seconds

1. Look at the button. "Get" with no price means free to download. A price means you pay first.
2. Look beside the button. "In-App Purchases" in small gray text means the pack sells something inside it. No label means there is nothing to buy.
3. Scroll to Information. The In-App Purchases row there lists each item and its price, so you can see whether the extras are a one-time unlock or a weekly subscription.
4. Read the newest reviews. If several say "only a few stickers are free," believe them over the screenshots.
5. Check Compatibility. The listing says which iOS version the pack needs and whether it runs on iPad.

A pack that passes the first two checks is free all the way down: everything in the screenshots is what you get.

How to Get a Sticker Pack and Send It

There are two ways in, and both end in the same place.

1. From Messages: open a conversation, tap the plus button next to the text field, then tap the Store icon. That opens the App Store for iMessage, which lists apps and sticker packs that work in Messages. Tap Get, then Install.
2. From the App Store app: search for the pack by name and tap Get on its listing. Sticker packs install from there too; there is just no Home Screen icon afterward, which is normal.
3. To send: in a conversation, tap the plus button and find the pack among your iMessage apps (swipe up to see more). Tap a sticker to send it, or touch and hold it and drag it onto a message bubble.
4. To tidy up: go to Settings, Apps, Messages, iMessage Apps to turn packs on or off, or touch and hold an app in the plus menu and drag it to reorder.

If you send to someone on Android, the sticker arrives as an ordinary image rather than a sticker stuck to a bubble. It still gets the point across. For the other things you can send from that plus menu, our guide to sending memes in iMessage covers #images and the Photos picker.

Where to Find Good Free Sticker Packs

Search the App Store for a character or a mood rather than for "free stickers," which returns the biggest freemium packs first. Brands and artists publish free packs regularly: the stores and shows you already like, and independent illustrators who make a pack as a calling card. Those are usually free all the way down, because the pack is not the product. For specific picks, paid and free, see our list of the best iMessage sticker packs by use case.

A free pack to start with: AsaGoTomo Pan

This one is ours, so weigh it accordingly. AsaGoTomo™ is our family of breakfast characters, and Pan is its fluffiest member: a loaf of shokupan, the soft Japanese milk bread, from Hokkaido. He has a crusty outside and a soft heart, and the pack shows him across a range of emotions, from sleepy morning yawns to arms stretched out in excitement. It is made for bread lovers, kawaii fans, and anyone whose group chat runs on good-morning messages.

What it costs: free, and the listing shows no in-app purchases, so what you see is what you get. What it does not do: it is an iMessage sticker pack only, so it works in Messages on iPhone and iPad and nowhere else. It needs iOS 18.4 or later, there is no Android version, and it is a fixed set of Pan rather than a sticker maker. If you want stickers of your own photos, use Add Sticker in Photos instead; if you want a library of the memes and reactions you save, that is a different tool, and we compared them in the best GIPHY alternatives for iPhone.

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