The hairstyle-change app that topped Mexico's beauty chart: one template, one set of Spanish titles, a pile of ads

An Android AI app for trying on haircuts and hair colors. It launched in Aug 8, reached 670k installs in three months, and from late October sat at #1 on Mexico's Google Play Beauty Top Free chart nearly every day. Its features are no different from dozens of rivals, and half the reviews complain about ads. It climbed because of Spanish localization, a low-bar category chart, and a distribution network behind it that ships and buys installs in bulk. Here's what it sells, where its installs come from, where the money comes from, who it's fighting, and whether you should get in.

Two reviews from the same day

On Oct 2026 8, a Mexican user named Ana Rosa Solis gave it five stars: "Parece buena opción para ayudar a decidir lo que me queda bien" (it seems like a good option for deciding what hairstyle suits me). 16 people marked it helpful.

The same day, another user, Mari RC, gave it one star: "demasiados anuncios, no se puede usar de tantos anuncios" (too many ads, you can't even use it with this many).

Those two reviews pretty much sum up the app. People who want to cut or dye their hair do want to see the result first, and this app turned that one look into a stream of ads. From late August to late October, of the 108 written reviews visible on Google Play Mexico, one-star reviews make up most of them, and nearly all complain about the same thing.

What it is

Hairisi: AI Hairstyle Try on, developer account CrocoTech, with a listed address in Hai Duong, Vietnam, under "About the developer." Upload a selfie or open the camera, pick a hairstyle and hair color, and AI generates what you'd look like with the new look. It claims to recommend styles by face shape. Contains ads. In-app purchases range from $3.99 to $15.99 (Play store page, 11-06).

In the Mexico store it's called "Hairisi: Peinados y Color IA" and the whole description is in Spanish. In Brazil it's "Hairisi: Cabelo IA e Cor"; in Hong Kong, "Hairisi: AI 髮型髮色模擬"; other regions use English. The English description includes lines like "Users searching for 'AI hairstyle app'" and "Individuals typing 'hair color changer app'", and the FAQ is written around search terms. The package name hairstyle.tryon.haircolor.ai is itself a string of keywords.

How fast it grew

(Google Play, 10-29 to 11-06. Play install counts update in batches, so don't read too much into single-day numbers.)

Listed for 90 days, averaging about 7,500 installs per day. The last two days' increases (+2,974, +4,041) are much smaller than the earlier two jumps. It's unclear whether growth is slowing or the counter just hasn't updated. 11-06 The total number of ratings actually dropped by 11, with five-star ratings down 46 and one-star ratings up 20. This looks like Google removed a batch of five-star ratings, unverified.

On the charts, it appears on the Beauty Top Free chart in 16 regions, but only 5 of those are independent and meaningful: Mexico, where it has sat at #1 nearly every day since 10-29; Argentina, down from #1 to #4; Spain, down from #3 to #8; Brazil, down from #6 to #14; and the US, down from #10 to #43. Apart from Mexico, everywhere else is trending down. Its best rankings come from the regions where it was localized.

Why Mexico's Beauty chart is so easy to climb

Because there's no real competition on it. 11-06 The top 10 on Mexico's Beauty Top Free chart include direct-selling ordering apps (Arabela, Terramar), beauty camera apps and mirror apps, and #2 is an AI video app. Most hairstyle apps use English-only titles, which puts them at a natural disadvantage in search results for Spanish-speaking users.

A few tens of thousands of installs is enough to land near the top here, and a top spot brings organic exposure. This is the only real advantage Hairisi has over others, and what it actually did was translate the title and description.

Where users come from

Paid acquisition, most likely. Reviews say things like "no promete nada lo que dice en sus videos" (it doesn't deliver what its videos promise, 10-17) and "se anuncian con mucho engaño para que descargues la app" (they advertise with a lot of deception to get you to download, 10-01). Users came in from its video ads. Whether it spent on Google or Meta, and how much, isn't visible from outside. Searching "Hairisi" in the public ad libraries for Meta, Google, and TikTok returns nothing, but that doesn't prove there was no spend.

The same network is buying heavily elsewhere. The same template sits behind at least seven or eight developer accounts, including CrocoTech, DQL TechLab, NXL AI Solutions, Astronex, and ATQ - AI Lab. Contact emails all follow the pattern "[email protected]", the websites are numbered web.app URLs, and the descriptions are written the same way. The biggest app in this group has 12.4M installs. Fravix, which started with hairstyle apps, had about 70 ads running on Meta in early November, all with one line of creative: "Try this app before you got your haircut!" in English, Spanish, Thai, and Hindi versions (Meta ad library, 11-01 to 11-04). Hairisi likely uses the same creative and buying approach (inference).

Store search. Keyword-stuffed package name, title, and description, plus its position on category charts.

What's missing. Searching "Hairisi" on TikTok turns up no relevant videos. On X, 90 posts in 0 days. No press coverage. Online, it appears only on APK download sites and data aggregators (11-06). No word of mouth, no creators.

Where the money comes from

Mostly ad-driven. A review describes the monetization clearly: "te hace ver 50 propagandas para ofrecerte un segundo de app y que mires 50 propagandas más para que te diga si quieres ver el resultado paga servicio pro", meaning it makes you watch 50 ads for one second of the app, then 50 more, then asks you to pay for the pro version to see the result (Oct 22). Another review says "más anuncios que nada y te cobran 350" (more ads than anything else, and they charge you 350, Oct 22). 350 Mexican pesos, roughly $19.

In other words: unlock the result by watching a rewarded video, or pay for a subscription. Losing users doesn't matter much, because ad impressions during the first few minutes of use can cover part of the acquisition cost. It has never charted on any top-grossing list, so in-app purchase revenue is probably small. A third-party estimate puts CrocoTech's total in-app spending across the account at $0–$15k per month (AppGazers, model estimate).

Who it's competing with

This category on Google Play is already crowded, and the newcomers are bigger:

Beyond these, there's a long tail of near-identical apps with tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of installs. EPIK (SNOW) uses TikTok creators in Latin America to promote its hairstyle feature, with single videos reaching 5.44M views. CapCut and Hypic offer free AI hairstyle templates with no separate app. Canva, Krea, and a pile of web tools let you try styles for free online. On iOS, Glowify, Hairify, and ReStyle run subscriptions and have charted in Top Grossing. Hairisi has no iOS version.

Among Play competitors in this category, it's medium-to-small in scale and not the fastest-growing. It isn't the one being copied; it's one of the copiers.

If it were you

The bottom line: This is a standard product from a factory-style distribution network. The features are identical, the category is saturated, and big companies offer free alternatives. If you build "yet another hairstyle try-on app," you'll most likely be the fiftieth. What's worth taking is the playbook, not this category.

Who it suits: Small teams that already run paid acquisition on Google Play and have ad monetization and multi-account workflows in place. For you, "the same AI image backend in a new shell, shipped again" is a repeatable product line, and hairstyles are just one shell.

Not for who: people who haven't run paid ads and are counting on organic store traffic or content to get installs; people who want to win on product quality (retention in this category is already weak, with the rating at 3.89 and one-star reviews making up most of the feedback); and anyone only targeting English markets (even in the US, it only reaches around #40 on the beauty chart, with more competition there).

How to do it: Don't copy the features, copy the distribution layer. First, language: find markets where similar apps use English-only titles and local category charts are easy to get onto. Translate the title and full description into the local language. Mexico and Argentina are already taken by others. In Portuguese-speaking Brazil it only reaches the teens, and other Spanish-speaking countries and smaller languages are probably not being worked seriously (inference). Second, fix what it gets wrong: its users complain that ads block the result. A version that shows one free result first, then unlocks HD and more styles through a subscription or one-time purchase, could earn much better ratings and retention. iOS already shows that subscriptions bring in money in this category.

How to get users: Store search is the base layer. Write the package name, title, and description around the search terms locals actually use. For acquisition, use short-form video ads. The creative is a "try it before your haircut" before-and-after, with one hairstyle per ad and versions by language. Test first with small budgets in cheap countries, and only scale creative that brings install costs below what day-one ad revenue can cover.

Timing: There's no seasonal deadline, but open spots on the category charts are being filled one by one by the same network and other factories. If you're going to do this, get a version live in the target language and start testing within three months. Wait until next year, and those Latin American charts will very likely be full.

What would mean I misread it: If Hairisi drops off Mexico's beauty chart at #1 within a month or two because some other AI hairstyle app takes its slot, then that spot is available to anyone and there's no lasting value in it. If Google Play starts pulling keyword-stuffed apps built on the same template in bulk, or Google bakes AI hairstyle changes into Photos and the camera, this path narrows. On the other hand, if the same network keeps re-skinning and re-launching the same playbook, and keeps hitting #1 on local category charts in other niches, then the playbook itself is still making money and is worth copying.

Data and sources

• Installs, ratings, and charts: Google Play store data by region, 2026-10-29 to 11-06.
• Reviews: 108 written reviews on Google Play Mexico (2026-08-25 to 10-31); dates are in Mexico time.
• Store pages: play.google.com, Mexico store, Spanish and English versions (11-06). Developer address is listed under "About the developer" on the store page.
• Same-network ads: Meta ad library, 2026-11-01 to 11-04. Hairisi itself was not found in the Meta, Google, or TikTok ad libraries.
• Revenue estimate: AppGazers developer page for CrocoTech (model estimate).
• Exposure: searches for "Hairisi" on TikTok and X, 2026-11-06.
• Competitor scale: Google Play and App Store store data, 11-06. EPIK creator videos from TikTok.