How to Clone BeReal
Daily authentic photo app - one simultaneous front+back shot, once a day
What is BeReal?
BeReal inverted everything Instagram trained users to do. Once a day, at a random time, every user gets the same push notification: you have 2 minutes to post a photo taken with the front and back cameras simultaneously. No filters, no edit pass, no choosing your moment - late posts are labeled, retakes are counted, and you cannot see your friends' posts until you have posted yours. That last rule is the genius: the content you want is held hostage by your own participation, which manufactured a daily ritual that took the app to the top of the App Store in 2022 with tens of millions of daily users.
The business story is more cautionary than the product story. BeReal grew explosively without any monetization, struggled to keep its post-hype retention, and was acquired by French mobile-games giant Voodoo in 2024 for around 500 million euros. Voodoo has since started monetizing primarily through advertising, but revenue is still nascent - BeReal is a case study in how a brilliant engagement mechanic does not automatically become a business. Treat any revenue number for it as small and early.
For a cloner, that is exactly why this entry is interesting: the mechanic is proven and astonishingly cheap to build (one daily notification, a dual photo, a friends feed - no algorithmic feed, no video pipeline), while the monetization layer is wide open for you to do better. The realistic play is BeReal-for-a-context: a daily prompt app for friend groups, families, couples, remote teams or fitness accountability, monetized with a simple subscription (memories archive, multiple groups, custom prompt times) instead of ads. The mechanic transfers; the ad-dependent business model is the part you should not copy.
Who it's for: Gen Z and young millennials fatigued by performative social media - and for a cloner, any small trusted circle that wants a daily ritual: close friend groups, families spread across time zones, couples, remote teams, accountability groups.
How BeReal makes money
- $ Advertising: native ad formats inserted into the friends feed - the primary monetization lever Voodoo has been rolling out since the 2024 acquisition.
- $ Brand partnerships: sponsored moments and brand accounts participating in the daily-photo format.
- $ Acquisition outcome: the company itself monetized via exit - Voodoo acquired BeReal for roughly 500M EUR in 2024, betting it could attach its ad-monetization machine to BeReal's audience.
- $ Untapped premium potential (the cloner's opening): memories archives, multiple friend groups, custom prompts and personalization are obvious subscription features BeReal never charged for.
Rough estimate. BeReal's monetization is nascent - it ran for years with no revenue and only began serious ad monetization after the 2024 Voodoo acquisition (reported at ~500M EUR), so public figures are sparse and this range is speculative. CloneMRR is not affiliated with BeReal; figures are for educational purposes.
Features to build
MVP ship this first
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โ Daily moment notificationA server-scheduled random time each day triggers a push/notification to all users in a region simultaneously, opening a 2-minute window.
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โ Dual camera captureCapture front and back cameras back-to-back and composite them (main photo + selfie thumbnail overlay) - the signature artifact.
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โ Post-gated friends feedA chronological feed of today's posts from friends, blurred/locked until you post your own - the core retention rule.
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โ Late & retake honesty labelsPosts after the window show 'late by Xh', and the number of retakes is displayed - the anti-curation enforcement.
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โ Friends systemInvite links, friend requests, and a friends-only privacy default - the product is built for small trusted circles.
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โ ReactionsEmoji reactions and short comments; BeReal's RealMoji (react with a selfie) is the differentiated version worth copying.
Full version add later
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+ RealMoji selfie reactionsReact to a post by snapping an instant selfie mimicking an emoji - the most-loved feature, drives a second engagement loop.
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+ Memories calendarA private calendar archive of all your daily posts - the long-term retention hook and an obvious premium feature.
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+ Multiple groupsSeparate circles (family, college friends, team) each with their own feed - solves the context-collapse problem BeReal had.
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+ Discovery feedOptional public feed of posts shared beyond friends - growth surface, but requires moderation tooling.
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+ Streaks & statsConsecutive-day posting streaks, on-time percentage, and yearly recap - gamification that fits the daily ritual.
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+ Ad slots or premium tierNative feed ad placements (the BeReal path) or a subscription for memories export, custom prompt times and unlimited groups (the indie path).
Recommended tech stack
| Layer | Our pick | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Mobile app | React Native (Expo) or mobile-first PWA | Camera and push are the whole product; Expo's camera and notifications modules cover both. A PWA works for MVP using getUserMedia with sequential front/back capture. |
| Backend & auth | Supabase (Postgres + Auth + Storage) | Posts, friendships and reactions are simple relational data; Storage handles photos; RLS enforces the 'friends only, and only after you post' visibility rules in the database. |
| Daily moment scheduler | Cron job (Supabase Edge Function or Cloudflare Workers Cron) | One scheduled function picks a random time per region each day, writes a moments row, and fans out notifications - the entire 'realtime' core of the product is a cron. |
| Push notifications | Expo Push / Firebase Cloud Messaging, Web Push for PWA | The simultaneous notification IS the product; delivery speed and reliability matter more here than in any normal app. |
| Image storage & CDN | Cloudflare R2 + image resizing | Two photos per user per day, forever, served to a friends feed - zero-egress storage with on-the-fly thumbnails keeps costs trivial. |
| Analytics | PostHog | Notification-to-post conversion and D7/D30 retention of the daily ritual are the numbers that decide whether the loop works. |
AI prompts to clone BeReal
Pick your builder, copy the prompt, paste it and iterate. Enter your email once to unlock all prompts on every page - we'll also send you this full prompt pack.
Build a daily authentic photo-sharing web app called Offguard, modeled on BeReal.
## Core concept
Once a day at a random time, every user gets the same alert: post one unfiltered photo within 2 minutes. The photo combines a main camera shot and a selfie taken at the same moment. You cannot see your friends' photos for today until you post your own. Late posts are labeled. No filters, no likes-counting - just small trusted circles being real.
## Pages
1. Landing page: stark black-and-white hero with a phone mockup showing a dual photo (big photo + selfie thumbnail in the corner), headline 'Your friends, with the filters off.', subline explaining the once-a-day mechanic, signup CTA, 3-step how-it-works, FAQ
2. Onboarding: signup, pick a username and avatar, then a screen explaining the rules ('One alert a day. Two minutes. No do-overs.') and an invite-friends step with a shareable link
3. Today (home): if the daily moment has fired and I have not posted - a full-screen capture prompt with a countdown showing the 2-minute window (or 'late by 1h 12m' after); if I have posted - my post pinned on top and the chronological feed of friends' posts below; if I have NOT posted, friends' posts appear heavily blurred with 'Post your Offguard to unlock'
4. Capture flow: webcam capture takes the main photo, then immediately auto-captures a second selfie photo 3 seconds later; composite them as main photo with a rounded selfie thumbnail top-left (draggable between corners); show retake count; publish button
Tools to build your BeReal clone
Describe your app in plain English and Lovable builds a full-stack web app with auth, database and deployment included.
Best for: Full-stack web apps without writing code
StackBlitz's AI builder. Prompt, run and edit full-stack apps directly in the browser, then deploy in one click.
Best for: Rapid prototypes and web apps
AI app builder with built-in database, auth and hosting. Strong for internal tools and CRUD-heavy products.
Best for: Dashboards, marketplaces and internal tools
The AI code editor. Full control over your codebase with AI agents that write and refactor code for you.
Best for: Developers who want full code ownership
Generates production-grade React + Tailwind UI from a prompt, deployable to Vercel instantly.
Best for: Polished UI and front-ends
Workers, Pages, R2 and D1 - host your clone on a global edge network with a generous free tier.
Best for: Serverless apps and APIs
Cheap VPS and managed hosting with an AI website builder. Easiest way to put a clone online on a budget.
Best for: Budget VPS and WordPress-style sites
How to make money with a BeReal clone
Subscription, not ads
BeReal proved the ritual but waited years to monetize and ended up selling. An indie clone should charge from day one: $2.99/month for the memories archive, data export, multiple groups and custom prompt windows - the ritual is free, the keepsakes are premium.
BeReal-for-a-context
The mechanic is a daily-ritual engine. Point it at families ('one photo a day for grandma'), couples, remote teams (async daily standup photo) or fitness accountability groups - contexts with built-in willingness to pay and no need to beat a social giant.
Printed yearbooks and recaps
A year of daily dual photos is an emotional goldmine. Sell printed photobooks, yearly recap videos and anniversary prints - physical-goods margin on top of content users already made.
B2B engagement rituals
License the moment-notification + gated-feed mechanic to communities, schools, events and team-building platforms as a white-label daily check-in - recurring contracts instead of consumer churn.
Frequently asked questions
How much money does BeReal make?
Far less than its fame suggests. BeReal ran for years with essentially zero revenue, and only began monetizing seriously - primarily through ads - after Voodoo acquired it in 2024 for roughly 500 million euros. Public revenue figures are sparse; estimates put it in the low single-digit millions per month, which is small relative to its tens of millions of users.
How hard is it to build a BeReal clone?
The core is one of the cheapest viral mechanics ever to build: a daily cron job, a dual-camera capture, a friends-only feed and a visibility rule. A solo builder can ship that in 1โ2 weeks. The 'medium' difficulty comes from doing push notifications reliably, enforcing the post-to-see rule at the data layer (not just blurring in the UI), and the eternal social-app problem: seeding friend groups.
Is it legal to build a BeReal clone?
Yes - the dual-photo, daily-prompt, post-to-see mechanics are not protectable, and TikTok, Instagram and Snapchat all shipped BeReal-style features themselves. What you cannot use is BeReal's name, logo or assets. Since users upload photos, you do need moderation/reporting tools and standard privacy compliance (GDPR/CCPA).
What tech stack should I use for a BeReal clone?
React Native (Expo) for real dual-camera and push, or a Next.js PWA with Web Push for an MVP; Supabase for Postgres, auth and photo storage with row-level security enforcing the post-to-unlock rule; a cron-triggered function for the random daily moment; Cloudflare R2 for cheap photo serving. The prompts on this page scaffold exactly that.
What does it cost to run a BeReal-style app?
Almost nothing at small scale: two photos per user per day is trivial storage, and zero-egress hosting like R2 keeps serving costs near zero - well under $100/month for thousands of daily users. The real cost is growth: the app only works when whole friend groups join together, so plan for invite mechanics rather than ad spend.
Why did BeReal decline after its 2022 peak?
The ritual was sticky but shallow - one photo a day gives light users little else to do, and the novelty faded while competitors copied the feature. The lesson for cloners: pair the daily ritual with an accumulating asset (memories, streaks, a group archive) so the product gets more valuable the longer you use it, and monetize that asset directly.
More apps to clone
CloneMRR is not affiliated with, endorsed by or connected to BeReal. Revenue figures are rough estimates based on public reports and are provided for educational purposes only. "Cloning" here means building an original product inspired by a proven business model - never copy a brand's name, logo, content or code.