Elf Yourself Alternative

Side by side

What you get instead of a face cut-out

This is one unedited test video, shown at 480p before the HD upscale your video gets. The person is AI-generated, not a real customer.

Elf Yourself in short

1. Dec 2006
   OfficeMax launches ElfYourself as a holiday campaign: upload a face and it lands on a dancing cartoon elf.
   Source: Wikipedia
2. 2008
   OfficeMax partners with JibJab and adds a sign-up step before you can make a dance.
   Source: Wikipedia
3. 2023–2025
   App Store reviewers keep returning to the same complaints: dances cut off behind a paywall, and a subscription for something used once a year.
   Source: App Store reviews
4. 2025–2026
   Some long-time users push back on AI being added to the app, while others ask for videos that look more like themselves.
   Source: App Store reviews

Why people look for an Elf Yourself alternative

Elf Yourself has been a December tradition since 2006, and its reviews are full of families who make one every year. The complaints in those same reviews keep coming back to a few things:

• The price shows up late. Reviewers describe making a video, then hitting a message asking them to pay to see the whole thing or to download it in hi-res.
• Subscriptions for a once-a-year laugh. Several reviewers ask why something they use one week a year bills like a subscription, and some say it was hard to cancel.
• Videos taken down when shared. A few reviewers say their video was muted or removed on Facebook over the song's copyright.
• It doesn't look like them. A face cut-out on a cartoon body was the joke in 2006. Today people want the video to look like themselves.

What we do better, and what we don't

Here, your whole body is in the video, not just your face. An image model dresses your photo as an elf first, then a video model makes that elf dance in the selected scene. Solo choices include a living room, office party, Santa's workshop and snowy street; two adults can also dance by the fireplace or at an office party, and solo or trio videos can use one clip that cuts between three places. The scene previews are reference clips, before your photo is added. You see the price before you upload anything, you pay once, and the video is yours to download in HD with no watermark.

We are not better at everything. We don't take photos of children, so a video for the grandkids is still an Elf Yourself job. We fit three people, not five. We offer two styles (classic and big-head) with a handful of scenes, not a large catalogue. And at $7.99 for the first video, then $9.9 a video, one video costs more than a season of free dances if the free ones are all you need.

Other alternatives

• JibJab works the same way as Elf Yourself: your face on animated characters, inside a subscription app with a big library of holiday cards and birthday ecards.
• General AI video apps such as Kling or CapCut templates can make elf clips from a prompt or a template. They are flexible, but you write the prompt yourself, and whether the dancer still looks like you depends on luck.
• AI elf photo tools turn your picture into an elf image. They are good for a card, but the picture doesn't move.

How to make yours

Use the tool at the top of this page: pick classic or big-head, add one to three photos of adults, choose a scene when there is a choice, confirm everyone agreed, and pay. Your elf photo appears after about a minute and the video is ready in about six. For photo tips, the test videos and both styles explained, see the elf video maker page.

Last updated November 1, 2026 · tested on 1 AI-generated people

Not affiliated with, endorsed by or connected to Elf Yourself, Office Depot, OfficeMax, JibJab, Kling or CapCut. Product names are used only to compare them. Details about other products come from their public app listings and user reviews as of November 2026.