8th Wall alternative: what to do before your WebAR goes offline on February 28, 2027

For years, 8th Wall was the platform everybody in WebAR measured themselves against, including us. In my list of the best WebAR platforms, I called it the top choice for brands with technical teams and the budget to use it. So when Niantic announced it was winding the platform down, I think a lot of people in our industry had the same first reaction: wait, what happens to all those projects?

That question is the reason for this blog. Over the past months, our team went through dozens of public 8th Wall projects, from award nominees to agency showcases, to understand who is affected and what they can realistically do. Below, I share what we found, the three options you have, and, honestly, where Overlyapp can help and where it can’t.

What exactly happened to 8th Wall?

8th Wall was acquired by Niantic, the company behind Pokémon GO, back in 2022. In 2026 the commercial platform was shut down in two stages:

• February 28, 2026: platform access ended. Nobody can log in, create, edit, publish or export projects any more.
• February 28, 2026 to February 28, 2027: experiences that were already published keep running, read-only. Projects using Niantic’s VPS are supported until the end of this period.
• February 28, 2027: hosting ends. Every 8th Wall link, QR code and trigger stops working, and project data is deleted.

Niantic also released the engine as open source under the MIT licence at 8thwall.org. It includes face effects, image targets and sky effects, but not SLAM (world tracking), Lightship Maps or the Geospatial Browser. Teams that used the Buildable Code Export before the cutoff can run their projects on their own servers.

If you ask me, there is a bigger lesson here. In roughly a year we also lost Meta Spark AR and Adobe Aero. If your AR plans depend on a single vendor, you carry more risk than it might seem.

Is your project affected?

The short version: you have a problem if people reach your AR through something you can’t easily reprint or change. When we sorted the public 8th Wall projects, most of the at-risk ones fell into six groups:

1. Wine and spirits labels. Bottles with holograms or animated characters on the label stay on shelves and in people’s homes for years.
2. Product packaging. On-pack product education, games and “scan the box” experiences in food, beauty and FMCG.
3. Menus and in-venue print. AR on restaurant and bar menus, coasters and table cards.
4. Museums and permanent installations. Exhibition trails, sculpture overlays and garden games that run for years.
5. Books and print media. AR printed inside books, magazines and print ads.
6. E-commerce “view in your room” features. Live product pages that place art, furniture or products in the shopper’s space.

All of these have one thing in common: the QR code is printed and points to an 8th Wall address. On February 28, 2027, it will lead to an error page, and the printed piece will still be out there.

Seasonal campaigns are a slightly different story. Christmas advent calendars, holiday packaging and winter retail activations get rebuilt every year anyway, so the risk is smaller. They still need a new home, and since nothing new can be published on 8th Wall any more, this Christmas’s campaigns already have to be built somewhere else.

Your three options

Option 1: Self-host the open-source 8th Wall engine

This is for studios with their own developers who exported their code before the cutoff.

Pros:

• You keep your existing code and effects. Face effects, image targets and sky effects all work.
• There are no licence fees.

Cons:

• There is no SLAM, so world-tracked experiences have to be rebuilt.
• Hosting, updates, browser testing and security are now your job.
• It’s a C++, Bazel and Emscripten build chain. We cloned the repository and tried to build it ourselves. It’s realistic for an engineering team. For a marketing team, it’s a stretch.

Option 2: Move to another developer platform

This is for agencies that build custom, code-heavy WebAR and need image tracking or world tracking in the browser. The usual destinations are Zappar (ZapWorks), Blippar (WebAR SDK), Kivicube and ARLOOPA, and most of them have published their own 8th Wall migration guides. Expect to rewrite your project code for a new SDK and to pay per-seat or per-view licences. Zappar, for example, requires agencies to be on its Enterprise plan.

Option 3: Rebuild it without code, or have it rebuilt for you

This is for brands, smaller agencies, museums, publishers and e-commerce teams whose experience is basically “show this 3D model or this video when someone scans this.”

Here is something that surprised me while going through the projects: most of them didn’t need a custom engine at all. They were a 3D model or a video, a trigger and a share button. Agencies built them because 8th Wall required code. The ideas themselves were simple. Projects like these can be rebuilt quickly, either by the platform’s team or by your own team in a no-code editor.

Where Overlyapp fits, and where it doesn’t

I’d rather tell you upfront what we can’t do than have you find out after a migration. Overlyapp has two parts:

• WebAR, no app needed: a link or QR code opens your 3D model in the phone browser. It uses ARKit on iPhone and ARCore on Android to place the model on a floor, a table or a wall. WebAR in Overlyapp is 3D only. There is also a Shopify embed for product pages.
• The Overlyapp mobile app: it recognizes printed images such as labels, packaging, posters, books and menus, and plays video, including transparent video, or shows 3D models on top of them.

So, mapped against typical 8th Wall projects:

• 3D product in your space (“view in your room”): ✅ Yes, with WebAR and no app.
• QR code that launches a 3D model or character: ✅ Yes, with WebAR. Point the new QR code at the Overlyapp experience.
• Video or animation on top of a printed label, page, poster or menu: ✅ Yes, through the Overlyapp mobile app.
• Image tracking directly in the browser, without an app: ❌ Not supported. Choose option 1 or 2, or switch the trigger to a QR code that opens WebAR.
• Face filters, world tracking or SLAM, VPS, custom game logic: ❌ Not supported. Choose option 1 or 2.

If your project falls into the green group, this is how it works with us. You send us the link to your live 8th Wall experience and your source assets. Our team rebuilds it, optimizes the 3D models for mobile, publishes it and gives you the new QR code, with scan analytics included. For brands and agencies this runs as an Enterprise project, and we agree on the price once we understand what you need. If you’d rather do it yourself, the same editor is available on the Pro plan, from €19.99 per experience per month, and you can try it for free first.

Migration checklist

Whichever option you choose, I’d go through these steps before February 28, 2027:

1. List every live trigger. Find every QR code, label, package, menu, poster and web page that links to an 8thwall.app or 8thwall.com address.
2. Sort them by lifespan. Printed pieces that will still be around after February 2027 come first. Seasonal campaigns can wait for their next rebuild.
3. Save your assets now. Download 3D models, videos, textures and target images while the experiences still load. The 8th Wall editor no longer exports anything.
4. Pick a path for each project. Projects that need code go to option 1 or 2. Content-driven projects go to option 3.
5. Use QR codes you control from now on. Point new QR codes at an address on your own domain (for example yourbrand.com/ar/label) that redirects to the AR platform. The next time a vendor closes, you change one redirect and the packaging stays as it is.
6. Test on real phones. Check iPhone Safari and Android Chrome, and if you can, an older mid-range Android phone too.
7. Switch the redirects and keep measuring. Compare scan numbers before and after the move.

FAQ

When do 8th Wall experiences stop working?
On February 28, 2027. Until then, already published projects stay online in read-only mode.

Can I still edit or export my 8th Wall project?
No. Editing and exporting ended on February 28, 2026. If you didn’t use the Buildable Code Export before then, the project has to be rebuilt from your source assets.

Is 8th Wall really open source now?
The engine framework is, under the MIT licence at 8thwall.org. SLAM (world tracking), Lightship Maps and the Geospatial Browser are not included.

What is the best 8th Wall alternative?
It depends on what you built. For custom, code-heavy WebAR with browser image tracking or world tracking, look at Zappar, Blippar or the self-hosted open-source engine. For 3D products in the shopper’s room, QR-launched 3D content or video on print, Overlyapp is faster and cheaper: our team rebuilds the project for you, or you do it yourself in the editor.

Does Overlyapp support image tracking in the browser?
No. Overlyapp’s WebAR places 3D models on floors, tables and walls in the phone browser, without an app. Image recognition, where content sits on top of a printed label, page or poster, runs in the free Overlyapp mobile app on iOS and Android.

How much does it cost to move from 8th Wall to Overlyapp?
For brands and agencies, we rebuild the project for you as an Enterprise project. We agree on the price after we’ve talked through what you need, so send us your 8th Wall link and we’ll start from there. If you prefer to do it yourself, the Pro plan starts at €19.99 per experience per month, with a free trial.

I hope this blog gives you a clear picture and, just as importantly, a realistic one. I believe it is better to plan this calmly now than to discover in March 2027 that the QR codes on your bottles lead nowhere. If you have a live 8th Wall project and aren’t sure which way to go, send us the link and I’ll tell you honestly whether Overlyapp can take it over, or point you to a platform that can. You can also leave a comment below or get in touch with me on LinkedIn.