AI Sticker Generator: WhatsApp, Telegram and iMessage Packs

In practice an AI sticker generator is any image model plus a prompt that forces sticker conventions: a single subject, a flat or solid background, a thick outline and no small detail. Some products wrap that in a sticker-shaped interface; Recraft and Canva do, and Sticker.ly does the photo route without generation. LazyKiwi gives you the model and the prompt box, so the conventions are yours to enforce.

A sticker has to survive being shown at roughly thumbnail size on a busy chat background. Three things carry it: a silhouette you can read without colour, a border that separates it from any bubble colour, and an expression or gesture that says one thing. Everything else, shading, texture, tiny props, gets lost at chat size.

What the platforms agree on

All three targets want a square or near-square canvas around 512 px, a transparent background, and a small file. WhatsApp asks for exactly 512 x 512 WebP under 100 KB for static stickers, per the WhatsApp stickers repository (2026); Telegram wants one side exactly 512 px in PNG or WEBP, per Telegram sticker docs (2026). Design at 1024 or 2048 and downscale, never the other way round.

• One subject per sticker, centred, filling most of the square.
• A solid contrasting outline, white by default; WhatsApp's own guidance suggests an 8 px white stroke.
• Flat colour blocks, not gradients; they compress smaller and read faster.
• No generated lettering unless you will retype it; models still misspell.
• The same character sheet, palette and line weight across the whole set.

This is the pack I built for a pottery studio's group chat: one clay-covered mascot, eight reactions. Model was Nano Banana, chosen because its model page lists ten aspect ratios including 1:1 and output up to 4K, and because it renders flat vector-style shapes cleanly.

1. 1

   Fix the character and the style first

   Write one paragraph describing the mascot: body shape, colours, clothing, line weight. If you are starting from a photo rather than a description, run it through a style template such as the kawaii doodle illustration or the perler bead filter so every sticker inherits the same look.

2. 2

   Write a base prompt with sticker rules baked in

   The prompt box in the promptbox below is the one I reused eight times, changing only the emotion. The important words are 'flat solid white background', 'thick white outline' and 'no text'; the model obeys them most of the time and a re-roll fixes the rest.

3. 3

   Generate the set at 1:1

   Open the AI image generator, pick Nano Banana, set 1:1 and 1K, and run each reaction. The workbench shows the credit cost on the Generate button before you commit, so you can see how far the free allowance goes. Generate two variants per reaction and keep the cleaner silhouette.

4. 4

   Repair strays with the photo editor

   A stray shadow, a second limb or a background smudge is a one-line fix in the AI photo editor: 'remove the grey shadow under the figure' or 'clear everything behind the character'. It keeps the edges and the line weight intact.

5. 5

   Cut out the background

   LazyKiwi's AI background changer replaces a background rather than exporting transparency; its own page says to choose a solid colour when you need a clean base. So render on flat white, then do the cutout where transparency is native: the iPhone subject lift in Photos, Telegram's in-app sticker editor, or Sticker.ly's free editor on Android and iOS.

6. 6

   Add the border and the padding

   Apply a white stroke after the cutout, not before, so it follows the final edge. Leave a margin of transparent pixels around the stroke; a sticker that touches the canvas edge looks cropped in the tray.

7. 7

   Export per platform

   512 x 512 WebP under 100 KB for WhatsApp, 512 px PNG or WEBP for Telegram, and PNG under 500 KB for iMessage, per the spec table in the next section. Keep the 1K masters; you will resize again when a platform changes its limits.

8. 8

   Assemble the pack

   WhatsApp packs need between 3 and 30 stickers plus a 96 x 96 tray icon, per the WhatsApp stickers repository (2026). Telegram packs are created through the @Stickers mini app or the in-app editor, per Telegram (2026). iMessage stickers made from Photos need no pack at all.

Chibi pottery mascot, round clay-coloured body, green apron, big eyes, [EMOTION], flat vector sticker style, thick white outline, flat solid white background, centred, no text, no shadow

These are the current published limits, read on 5 September 2026 from each platform's own documentation. The rows are for static stickers; animated limits follow the table.

WhatsApp's animated stickers may run up to 10 seconds with frames no shorter than 8 ms and a 500 KB cap, per the WhatsApp Android README (2026). Telegram's animated TGS stickers are capped at 3 seconds, 60 frames per second and 64 KB, and video stickers at 3 seconds, 30 FPS, VP9 WEBM under 256 KB with no audio track, per Telegram sticker docs (2026).

Apple's iMessage sticker guidance sets three sizes at 3x, 300, 408 and 618 pixels square, and a 500 KB ceiling per file, per the Apple Human Interface Guidelines (2026). Regular, 408 px, is the sensible default; it downscales to the smaller sizes without a visible line-weight change.

The iPhone route needs no third-party app and it is the cleanest cutout available, so I use it even for AI renders: generate in LazyKiwi, save to Photos, lift the subject. Apple's own steps, from the iPhone User Guide (2026), are short.

1. 1

   Open the photo in Photos

   Tap it to full screen. For an AI render, save the 1K PNG from LazyKiwi to Photos first; the white background lifts as cleanly as a real backdrop.

2. 2

   Touch and hold the subject, then release

   The subject separates from the background. If the lift grabs a shadow or a prop, go back to the render and remove it with the photo editor before trying again.

3. 3

   Tap Add Sticker

   The sticker lands in the stickers menu, reachable from the keyboard and from Markup, and it syncs across your Apple devices.

4. 4

   Tap Add Effect for a border

   Outline gives the white sticker border; Comic and Puffy are the other listed effects. Outline is the one that matches the WhatsApp and Telegram versions of the same pack.

5. 5

   Use a Live Photo for motion

   The guide notes that a Live Photo subject becomes an animated sticker, which is the quickest animated sticker you can make without an animation tool.

Two limits. Stickers made this way live inside Apple's ecosystem; to reuse them on WhatsApp you still need the 512 px WebP export. And the lift works on the main subject only, so a sticker with two characters needs two lifts and a composite.

Five routes, checked on 5 September 2026. An AI sticker maker that generates but cannot cut out still needs one of the cutout tools, so the table scores both halves.

Recraft AI sticker generator

Recraft's strength is vector output, which means a sticker you can scale to a T-shirt without redrawing. Its pricing page states that images made on the Free plan are owned by Recraft, shown publicly in the community gallery and not licensed for commercial use, per Recraft pricing (2026), so a shop needs a paid plan from the first sticker.

Canva AI sticker generator

Canva's sticker maker page answered every request today with a 403, so I cannot confirm its current AI limits or free allowance. Treat it as the template route: convenient if your brand kit already lives there, and worth checking the plan page yourself before a commercial pack.

Sticker.ly and Sticker Mule

Sticker.ly describes itself as a photo editor that turns photos into stickers with background removal and text, publishes packs with no fees, and exports to WhatsApp, per Sticker.ly (2026). Sticker Mule prints die-cut vinyl from your artwork, from 10 stickers per order and 50 for $60 with free shipping in 4 days, per Sticker Mule (2026); the same 1K masters work there.

Yes, with conditions attached to every free tier. Searching for an AI sticker generator free of watermarks and licence traps narrows the field fast, so here is what each free option actually permits.

• LazyKiwi: 40 credits a month on the Free plan, refreshed monthly, per LazyKiwi pricing (2026). That prototypes a small set; a full 30-sticker WhatsApp pack with variants needs Starter.
• Recraft Free: usable, but the output is owned by Recraft, public and non-commercial per its pricing page. Fine for a family chat pack, not for a shop.
• Sticker.ly: free and built for WhatsApp, with no generation; pair it with LazyKiwi renders.
• iPhone Photos: free with the phone, and the best cutout of the lot. Not a generator either.
• Canva Free: unverified today; the page blocked automated checks.

On rights, two things are worth reading before you sell a pack. The U.S. Copyright Office keeps its registration guidance for works containing AI-generated material and its report on the copyrightability of generative AI output on one page, copyright.gov/ai (2026); register the human-authored parts, the character design and edits, not the raw render. And if you post the art on Instagram or Facebook, Meta applies an 'AI info' label when it detects industry-standard AI signals or when you disclose, per Meta Newsroom (2024).

Every bad AI sticker I have seen in a group chat fails on one of six things, and all six are fixable before export.

• Thin or missing outline. On a dark-mode bubble a sticker without a border dissolves; add the stroke after the cutout.
• Busy background left in. A lift that keeps a corner of the original backdrop looks like a photo, not a sticker.
• Tiny text. Words the model painted at 1K vanish at 512 px and are usually misspelt anyway.
• Inconsistent style. Eight stickers from eight prompts read as eight characters; reuse one base prompt and one model.
• Wrong canvas. A 4:3 render squeezed into 512 x 512 either crops the subject or leaves dead space on two sides.
• Oversized files. A 1K PNG dropped straight into a WhatsApp pack fails the 100 KB rule; export WebP at 512 px.

The fastest check is to send the pack to yourself and view it on a phone in both light and dark mode. If a sticker needs a second look to understand, cut it or redraw it; a pack of six clear stickers beats a pack of thirty muddy ones.