Umax’s TikTok strategy: 134 videos, 219M views, one sketch creator

Umax is an AI app that rates your face from a selfie and gives tips to look better, built for looksmaxxing, the online trend of trying to get better-looking. We track 134 Umax videos with 50,000+ views, 116 of them on TikTok: 218,945,871 views in total, a median of 716,857, and a top video with 9,214,200. 63% of those views came from one comedy creator, @rodrigo.exp, whose 53 skits make the app’s face-score card the punchline. Founder Blake Anderson says Umax made $270,000 in July 2025.

Which Umax videos did best?

View counts are from when we saved each video. We only track app videos with 50,000+ views. Opening line: the on-screen title or first spoken line, with English for Portuguese lines in parentheses.

The top video runs 33 seconds. @rodrigo.exp plays both a caveman and a man in a suit. The suited one holds up Umax, and the caveman scores 05 overall at 0:12. After a costume swap, the same face scores 99 on every line at 0:28. It has 104,691 saves.

What does a Umax TikTok look like?

Five of the top 10 are sketches by @rodrigo.exp, and his 53 skits follow one template.

• The title card: a known story retold in the niche’s words: “Shrek if it was written by looksmaxxers.” 25 of the 60 sketches use this frame or a close variant, with a median of 2,595,183 views.
• The cast: one performer plays every part, with wigs and quick cuts. Almost nobody speaks; the title on screen carries the joke.
• The prop: the Umax rating screen, with scores out of 100 for traits like jawline and cheekbones. It turns up on a phone, a binder at a job interview, a judge’s tablet. Scores like 05 set up the joke, and a row of 99s ends it.
• The timing: the app is on screen at a median of 6 seconds across the 132 videos we logged, and by 0:10 in 46 of the 53 skits.
• The slang: “mewing” (a tongue-posture habit said to sharpen the jaw) and “mogged” (outshone by someone better-looking).
• The ask: none of the 53 skits says download. 40 name the app in a one-line caption joke, like “Mog spray is temporary, Umax is forever”. 13 have no caption at all.

Sketches have a median of 1,706,232 views, almost 10 times the problem-then-app videos (173,919). But 14 of those 20 come from one Portuguese tips account, which explains part of the gap.

Why do the skits work?

• One title reaches two audiences. “The Simpsons since it wasn’t written by looksmaxxers” pulls in fans of the show and people who know the slang.
• The score is the plot. It decides who gets hired, which henchman the Joker picks, and who Fiona chooses. Anderson credits much of Umax’s success to this “Madden style rating screen” (X, September 2024).
• The low score lands on a character. The performer plays the caveman, the minion and the new kid, so the joke is on the trend, not on a real person’s face.
• It runs as a series. “pt.2” titles reuse what worked, and 37 of the 53 skits passed 1 million views.

Which accounts post for Umax?

29 accounts posted the 134 videos, but the top 3 hold 89 of them.

Videos with 50,000+ views we track for each account. Only @bruceaesthetic names Umax in its bio, which makes it the one persona account (an account made for the app) here. @rodrigo.exp’s handle and bio do not name the app. @rodrigomaxxing posts the same sketch titles on Instagram.

88 of the 134 videos are from 2024, mostly @rodrigo.exp’s English skits. From May to August 2026, @bruceaesthetic posted 28 Portuguese tips videos: haircut checks, “three signs” lists, front-camera myths. Umax is often one tip among free TikTok tricks, shown at a median of 12 seconds, and 27 of the 29 scripts name the app stores. The account’s median is 180,012, but 3 of its videos passed 5 million.

@umax.app05 (30 posts) and @umax.irl (11), two handles named after the app, have under 25,000 views each in total. More on that in why top apps post from 20+ TikTok accounts, or browse all 134 Umax videos in the ugcMaxx library.

How did Umax grow, according to its founder?

Blake Anderson built Umax after his first app, RizzGPT, and it reached the App Store in late November 2023 (Aiolum). The working name was Apex (X), and he had a CTO on the project (X). He says he knew nothing about looksmaxxing, so he bought skincare, read the forums and learned to think like a user. He gives 9 million downloads in under a year (X).

He says he got into the creator scene by partnering with Sam Zia, whom he calls one of the biggest looksmaxxers, and using his network (X). Anderson kept quiet about Umax until it passed a billion views on social media (X), and he wrote that while his other apps plugged into content that was already viral, Umax started its own style (X). He told Fortune that glow-up videos work because the score puts a number on the change; the 18 before-and-after videos have a median of 512,161.

In May 2024 he co-founded Cal AI, and @rodrigo.exp made a Cal AI sketch too (see our Cal AI teardown). On the niche itself, he wrote in December 2025 that extreme looksmaxxing hurts people, and that health, grooming and a good personality work best for almost everyone (X).

How much does Umax make?

Every figure is Anderson’s own and unaudited.

• Mid-2024: about $500,000 a month in subscription revenue and over 7 million downloads, he told Fortune, which could not verify the revenue.
• October 2024: $5 million in annual recurring revenue (X post).
• July 2025: $270,000 for the month, next to $3.31 million for Cal AI (X post).

The highest figures date from 2024, the year of 88 of the 134 videos. Aiolum lists more of his figures, plus lower third-party estimates.

How do you use this for your app?

1. Find the screen people can read in a second: a score, a ranking, a before-and-after number. If it needs explaining, it is not the prop.
2. Write the title card first. “[A show everyone knows] if it was written by [your niche]” gives two audiences a reason to stop, with the sound off.
3. Put the result where the plot turns: who gets hired, who gets picked. Show it by 0:10.
4. Let one performer play every part. One consistent face, human or AI, makes a series easy to recognize. See our data on AI actors vs human creators.
5. Match the ask to the format. Skits get a caption joke. Tips videos get the spoken “it’s on the App Store” line.
6. Open a second market with a second format. The Portuguese tips account added 33.6M views two years after the English skits.
7. Keep the joke on the trend, not on real people. Self-image content reaches teens, so never mock a real face.

We script and make comedy and self-improvement content for apps with AI, and a human team edits and posts it. Book a call to plan a sketch series around your app’s result screen, or start with the free campaign planner.

Sources

• Videos: the TikTok posts linked above (views when saved, through November 2, 2026)
• Founder on X (self-reported): the niche and the rating screen, Apex, the CTO, Sam Zia, own style of content, a billion views, extreme looksmaxxing, $5M ARR, July 2025
• Press: Fortune, July 1, 2024 (Fortune could not verify the revenue figure)
• Roundup: Aiolum on Umax (launch date, founder figures, third-party estimates)
• App: Umax on the App Store
• Library data: ugcMaxx UGC library, November 2, 2026, with transcripts