Captures Studio: A Polycam Alternative for Gaussian Splatting

Search for a polycam alternative for gaussian splatting and you will find plenty of feature lists, but the real question is narrower: does an app built around one phone's camera and LiDAR sensor hold up once the work outgrows a single device. Polycam does the capture well. What happens after, when the file needs to leave the app, reach someone else's phone, or come from a laser scanner Polycam was never built to read, is where the choice actually gets made. That is the part worth thirty seconds of thought before you scan anything else.

Polycam alternative for gaussian splatting: the short answer

Stay with Polycam if every scan starts and ends on the same iPhone or iPad, the subject is mostly small objects, and a public GLTF link is genuinely enough. Move to Captures Studio once a scan has to reach a browser on a device that never ran the capture app, once the source is a video file or a scanner point cloud rather than a live phone session, or once the deliverable is a walkable tour with a guided path rather than one spinning object. The app is the constraint here, not the splat.

How we are comparing

The choice between the two breaks down into five practical questions, in roughly the order a real project runs into them.

• Capture path. Does the work have to start on a specific phone running a specific app, or can it start from a file someone already has, a video export, a drone clip, a scanner's point cloud.
• What the output needs, to be seen. Can the finished scene be opened by anyone with a link, or does it depend on the viewer also having the right app or plan.
• Input variety. Photos and phone video cover the object-scanning case. A survey team with an existing LiDAR scanner or a hospitality client with drone footage needs more than that.
• What the editing tools are actually for. Cleanup built for a single clean object is a different job from tools built for hotspots, a narrated path, and a scene someone walks rather than spins.
• Where it lives day to day. An install tied to one operating system versus a browser tab, open on whatever the next person in the chain happens to be holding.

Captures Studio, in short

Captures Studio takes a phone photo set, an ordinary MP4 or MOV video, 360 or equirectangular footage from a camera like an Insta360 or Ricoh Theta, drone footage, or a LiDAR point cloud in E57, LAS, LAZ or PLY, and turns any of it into a Gaussian Splat scene in the cloud, no local GPU and no install, in a window of 10 to 120 minutes depending on the capture. The result opens as .spz, .ply, .splat or .ksplat, and gets shared as a link, an embed, or a QR code that opens on a phone, tablet, desktop or VR headset without anyone installing anything first.

Editing runs toward the walkthrough, not the single object: guided camera paths, hotspots carrying text, image, video or a link, and other media or 3D objects placed directly in the scene. Two tools ship free alongside the main pipeline. Multi Splat aligns two captures of the same space and renders a 4D timelapse between them as an MP4, built for anyone tracking how a site changes over time. Splat Editor handles cleanup on a finished scene. An ordered set of scenes can also be published as one continuous tour, with branding at the tour level for teams that need it, and firms that already own scanning hardware but want the LiDAR-to-splat pipeline handled for them can send scan data through as a managed service rather than doing it themselves.

Polycam, in short

Polycam's Gaussian Splatting mode runs from the Polycam app on an iPhone or iPad: capture live through the app itself, or feed it 20 to 200 photos in PNG or JPG, or an MP4 video, and it reconstructs the scene in the cloud (Polycam, Gaussian Splatting product page, 2026). A splat editing suite reduces floaters after the fact, and a splat can be exported back out as a mesh when that is what a downstream tool actually needs. LiDAR capture is available too, but only through Apple's own sensor on an iPhone 12 Pro or later, or an iPad Pro from 2020 onward (The Future 3D, Polycam software review, 2026).

The free plan covers limited space, object and AI captures with GLTF export and public link sharing. Unlimited object captures and gaussian splats, unlimited space captures with or without LiDAR, six mesh export formats and private link sharing all sit behind the Basic plan, priced at $12.50 a month or$150 a year as of its current pricing page. Custom branding on a shared link is an Enterprise feature, at $1,200 a year per seat with a three-seat minimum (Polycam, pricing page, 2026).

The comparison table

Where Captures Studio wins

The clearest edge is that capture never depends on one phone running one app. A video export from a drone, a set of photos someone already shot on a DSLR last month, or a LiDAR file handed over by a scanning contractor all go into the same browser upload, with nothing to install first. That matters most the moment a job stops being a single person's phone habit and starts being a team pulling in footage from wherever it already exists.

Scanner support goes further, too. Polycam's LiDAR mode only reads Apple's own sensor, which means the input has to come from an iPhone 12 Pro or newer, or a recent iPad Pro (The Future 3D, Polycam software review, 2026). Captures Studio takes point cloud files directly, in E57, LAS, LAZ or PLY, regardless of which scanner produced them, and runs the LiDAR-to-splat conversion as a managed pipeline for firms that already own the hardware and just need the output.

Viewing is the third, and it is where an app-first tool shows its seams fastest. A Captures Studio scene opens from a link, an embed or a QR code on a phone, tablet, desktop or VR headset, with nobody on the receiving end needing an app, an account tier, or even the same operating system the capture started on. Polycam's own sharing improves with each paid tier, but the baseline assumption is still that the app is part of the loop somewhere.

The editing tools point in a different direction too. Polycam's suite is built to clean up and export a single object or space, floaters removed, a mesh pulled out the other side. Captures Studio's tools are built for something a viewer walks through: guided camera paths, hotspots that carry text, image, video or a link, and a multi-capture timelapse tool for anyone doing repeat scans of a changing site rather than a one-off object.

Where Polycam wins

None of that makes Polycam the weaker tool for what it was built to do. It wins on immediacy: point a supported iPhone at an object, and there is no upload step, no separate device, no browser tab, because capture and reconstruction both start on the same piece of hardware already in your hand. For a solo operator scanning small objects one at a time, that is a real and legitimate advantage, not a rounding error.

It also wins on export breadth once a user is on a paid plan. Six mesh export formats plus a working splat-to-mesh conversion path give a Polycam subscriber more downstream flexibility for a single object than most splat-focused tools offer, gaussian splat pipelines included. A hobbyist or a product photographer who only ever needs one clean object file, and who is fine paying for that flexibility, is genuinely well served staying exactly where they are.

Which to choose

If every capture this year will be a single small object, shot on the same iPhone, and a GLTF or a paid-tier mesh export is genuinely the end of the pipeline, Polycam is already the right tool and switching buys nothing.

If capture needs to start from more than one kind of input, phone photos one week and a client's drone footage or LiDAR scan the next, take the browser-based route through video or image uploads instead, so the workflow does not depend on which device happened to shoot the source material.

If LiDAR is already part of the job and the scanner is not an iPhone or iPad, the deciding fact is simple: Polycam's LiDAR capture is built around Apple's own sensor, not a general scanner import, and a dedicated LiDAR-to-3D pipeline takes the point cloud file directly instead.

If the deliverable is a tour someone walks through rather than an object someone spins, hotspots, a guided path, a sequence of scenes published as one showcase, that is a shape Polycam's object-first editing tools were never built to hold, and it is worth reading how the wider field of gaussian splatting tools stacks up before settling on either one.

FAQ

Is there a polycam alternative for gaussian splatting that works entirely in the browser?

Yes. Captures Studio uploads and processes photos, video, 360 footage or LiDAR entirely in the browser, with no app to install on the capture side or the viewing side.

Does switching away from Polycam mean losing LiDAR support?

No, if anything it widens it. Polycam's LiDAR mode reads Apple's own sensor on an iPhone 12 Pro or newer, or a recent iPad Pro. A workflow that starts from a dedicated laser scanner needs a tool that accepts point cloud files like E57, LAS or LAZ directly, rather than one tied to a phone's built-in sensor.

The real dividing line was never the quality of either splat. It is whether the next step in the workflow needs a specific phone in the loop, or just a link anyone can open.

Polycam is named here for comparison. All trademarks belong to their respective owners. No affiliation, partnership or endorsement is implied.