I built an AI Age Checker in 1 week as a solo dev — here's what I learned

Hey IH fam! 👋

I just launched AI Age Checker — a tool that uses Google's Nano Banana Pro (Gemini 3 Pro Image) to estimate your age from a photo. Thought I'd share my journey and some learnings.

🎯 The Problem I Wanted to Solve

Everyone's curious about how old they look. Skincare brands want objective data. And honestly? I just wanted to build something fun with the latest AI models.

There are age estimation tools out there, but most are:

• Slow (10+ seconds)

• Inaccurate

• Collecting your photos 😬

💡 My Approach

Tech Stack:

• Frontend: Next.js 15 + TypeScript

• Backend: Cloudflare Workers (edge-first)

• AI: Google Nano Banana Pro via API

• DB: NeonDB (Postgres) + Drizzle ORM

• Payments: Stripe

• Auth: Better Auth

Why this stack? Edge-first architecture means fast response times globally. Plus I can keep costs low while scaling.

📊 Pricing Strategy (feedback welcome!)

I went with a credit-based model:

• Free tier: 10 credits on signup

• Basic: $9.9/mo (40 images, 200 credits)

• Pro: $15.9/mo (80 images, 400 credits) ⭐ Most popular

• Max: $29.9/mo (200 images, 1000 credits)

Yearly plans get up to 60% off — trying to incentivize longer commitments.

🔥 What's Working

✅ Fast results — Under 10 seconds for age estimation
✅ Privacy-first — No photo storage
✅ Dark mode — Because we're all night owls here
✅ Mobile-friendly — Works great on phones

🤔 Challenges I'm Facing

1. Marketing — How do you market something that's "just for fun"?

2. Conversion — Free users are trying it but not converting yet

3. Viral potential — Hoping for social sharing, but need to nail the output format

📈 Next Steps

• Add comparison feature (upload 2 photos side by side)

• Celebrity age database for benchmarking

• Better shareable results with branding

🙏 Questions for the Community

1. How would you position this — entertainment or utility?

2. Any creative marketing ideas for an AI tool like this?

3. What's missing that would make you pay for it?

Would love your honest feedback! Drop a comment or try it out at agechecker.app

Thanks for reading! 🚀