TourReady vs Polycam — the honest 2026 comparison.

Polycam is genuinely best-in-class at what it was built for — putting LiDAR-quality 3D capture in the hands of an iPhone Pro user who wants files. That's the creator-tool model. But most local-business owners we talk to don't want a file — they want a tour. One that's live on their website, linkable from their Google listing, and embeddable in a booking confirmation by the end of the week.

That's the gap TourReady was built for. The capture device is any phone — no LiDAR sensor required. The output isn't a file you load into Blender; it's a public tour URL plus an iframe snippet, delivered to your inbox in roughly two minutes. The job is finished, not started.

$99 once. Hosted free forever. Compared to a Polycam paid subscription, the math is straightforward: at $25/month, three months of Polycam equals one TourReady tour with permanent hosting attached. If you want the tour to outlive your subscription decisions, that posture matters.

And if the render isn't right, the free redo is automatic. 14-day full refund sits behind it. The risk is on us.

Polycam is the right call any time you actually want the raw 3D file. We'll be specific about when that is.

If you're a creator, designer, or AEC operator who needs the mesh, point cloud, or Gaussian splat for use in Blender, Unreal, Unity, Twinmotion, or a custom WebGL viewer, Polycam is purpose-built for that. The files you export are yours. You can edit them, re-light them, drop them into a game engine, animate them, retexture them. TourReady doesn't deliver a file — it delivers a hosted tour.

If you have an iPhone Pro or iPad Pro with the LiDAR sensor already, and you want to iterate on captures yourself — recapture a room three different ways, compare them, learn the craft — Polycam's instant-iteration model is excellent. It's a creator app and behaves like one.

If you operate in real estate, MLS listings, or interior design and you need single-room LiDAR scans to share with agents, designers, or clients — Polycam's iOS-native workflow is friction-light and the file ownership matters.

Polycam capture means opening the Polycam app on an iPhone Pro (or iPad Pro), choosing LiDAR or photogrammetry mode, and walking the perimeter of the room you want to scan. LiDAR mode runs roughly 2–5 minutes per room and produces cleaner geometry. Photogrammetry mode runs longer (10–20 minutes) on any phone but is slower to process and less reliable on featureless surfaces.

TourReady capture is a short video or a 15-second walk-through video from any phone. No mode selection, no perimeter walk, no LiDAR requirement. You upload through the form on the homepage and our pipeline reconstructs the walkable 3D scene server-side in roughly two minutes. The render lands in your inbox with a public URL and an iframe snippet.

The capture-experience difference matters most when you don't own an iPhone Pro or don't want to learn a new app. Polycam is excellent if you do; TourReady is excellent if you don't.

Polycam outputs files. The default exports include mesh (OBJ, GLB, USDZ, FBX), point cloud (LAS, PLY), Gaussian splat (PLY), and 360 panoramas (JPG). Those files are designed to load into other software — game engines, CAD tools, design suites, custom web viewers. The output is a starting point, not a finished product.

TourReady outputs a hosted walkable Gaussian splat scene rendered to a public URL with an iframe embed snippet. The scene captures photo-real lighting, reflections, and texture — what makes Gaussian splatting feel like walking into the actual room rather than navigating a 3D mesh. You don't get the underlying file; you get the finished product.

If your end-state is a tour that lives on your website and Google listing, the finished-product output wins. If your end-state is a mesh you'll texture in Blender or load into a game engine, the file output wins. Both products are good at what they output — they output different things.

Polycam's pricing is subscription-based: a free tier with limits on export formats and scan size, and paid plans typically $12–$27/month for individuals (higher tiers for teams and Pro features). The subscription is permanent — paid features lapse when you cancel, though files you exported before cancelling stay on your device.

TourReady is $99 per room, paid once. That covers the render, the embed snippet, and permanent hosting. There is no second invoice. Compared to $25/month Polycam, four months of subscription buys the same dollars as one permanently hosted TourReady tour.

The ownership shape is different too. Polycam files you exported are yours forever even if you cancel — but cloud-hosted scenes depend on your Polycam account staying active. TourReady tours live on TourReady-hosted infrastructure with permanent hosting tied to your $99 payment.

Polycam supports iframe embeds of cloud-hosted scenes — drop the snippet into your site and the scan renders inline. The embed depends on the file remaining in your Polycam account and your account staying active. If you want to keep the embed live indefinitely, you keep paying for the plan that hosts the scene.

TourReady ships an iframe embed snippet by default. The embed points at the permanent tour URL you bought with the $99 payment. There is no renewal mechanism that could take it offline. You drop it into Squarespace, WordPress, Webflow, Shopify, or custom HTML the same way.

Neither product natively auto-publishes to Google Business Profile today. Polycam's path is to export a 360 pano and upload via the Street View Publish API. TourReady's path is to link the public tour URL from your Google Business Profile listing as a custom link. TourReady's native Google Business Profile auto-publish is on roadmap for late 2026.

Polycam's team plans support multi-user capture across a shared workspace. The operational catch is that every location needs an iPhone Pro on site and staff time to capture each room — usually the location manager. That's fine if your operating model already puts iPhone Pros in every location. Most multi-location SMB operators don't.

TourReady's multi-location story is per-location pricing with bulk discounts, typically landing between $99 and $59 per room depending on volume. Capture is a short video per location from any phone — the marketing lead at HQ can request photos from each location manager and submit them centrally, or each manager can capture and submit themselves.

If you have iPhone Pros and want the raw scan files for design or marketing use across locations, Polycam fits. If you want walkable tours at every location with the lightest possible capture process, TourReady fits. Talk to us for a bulk quote.