My Lens vs Presenton

My Lens and Presenton are both design tracked by AIDiveForge. Below is a side-by-side comparison of pricing, capabilities, platforms, and ownership — sourced from each tool's live website and verified before publishing.

My Lens

MyLens accepts PDFs, Word files, PowerPoint decks, spreadsheets, images, YouTube links, and raw pasted text, then generates interactive timelines, flowcharts, mindmaps, and charts from that content in a single pass. The vendor states every element in the output is clickable and drillable, with citations traceable back to the original source — which means you're not just getting a pretty diagram, you're getting one your audience can interrogate. The Chrome extension extends this to any live webpage, dashboard, or YouTube video without uploading. The ceiling appears when you need diagrams that react to live data feeds or iterate based on downstream logic — this is a one-shot generation tool, not a pipeline.

Presenton

Presenton is an open-source AI presentation generator built for the teams that cannot, or will not, route slide content through a third-party cloud. You bring a PPTX or PDF as a template, point it at your LLM of choice, and it generates full decks that inherit your colors, fonts, and layout — exported as editable PPTX or PDF. The API is the core value proposition for developers: one endpoint to generate or update a deck from your data pipeline. The visual editor covers prompt-based editing and slide variants, but the docs describe it as lacking the elaborate editing controls designers expect. Teams hitting that ceiling handle final polish in PowerPoint or Google Slides after generation.

Attribute	My Lens	Presenton
Pricing	Paid	Paid
Price	—	$25.00/mo
Free trial	No	No
Open source	No	Yes
Has API	No	Yes
Self-hosted option	No	Yes
Platforms	—	Docker, Windows (Electron), macOS (Electron), Linux (Electron), Web (browser)
Released	—	2024
Pros	Accepts text, PDFs, slides, spreadsheets, images, webpages, and YouTube links in one composer, so you're not pre-processing sources into a single format before you can start. Every output element is clickable and drillable with AI-powered expansion, which means a presentation audience can ask 'why?' and you can navigate deeper without switching tools. Source citations are embedded in the visualization, so conclusions are verifiable on the spot — the alternative is a stakeholder who can't trust the diagram and demands the raw document instead. The Chrome extension works on live webpages, YouTube, and private portals without uploading, which means content locked behind a login or a video timestamp is not a blocker. The vendor states user data is never used to train AI models and never shared, which removes a common procurement objection for teams handling client or proprietary documents.	Full self-hosted deployment with no external API dependencies when paired with Ollama, which means regulated teams can generate hundreds of client-facing decks without a single byte leaving their infrastructure. Apache-2.0 open-source license with active maintenance, so there is no vendor lock-in risk and the codebase is forkable if the project direction diverges from your requirements. Template system ingests existing PPTX or PDF files and preserves colors, typography, and spacing, which means brand consistency does not require rebuilding assets from scratch inside a proprietary format. Clean API for programmatic generation and deck updates, so developers can wire presentation output directly into data pipelines or product features without building a custom rendering layer. Outputs editable PPTX compatible with Microsoft PowerPoint and Google Slides, which means the generated deck is not a dead artifact — teams can hand it to a human for final polish in tools they already use.
Cons	MyLens generates visuals in a single pass from static sources — there is no mechanism for a diagram to update when the underlying spreadsheet changes or a live data feed shifts. Teams that need diagrams reflecting current data on a recurring schedule hit this wall immediately and move to BI platforms like Tableau or Looker. The tool offers no described API access, so teams that want to trigger diagram generation programmatically — as part of a content pipeline or document processing workflow — cannot integrate it without manual intervention at each step. Customization is described as refinement of content, colors, fonts, and layouts after generation — complex structural edits that require moving nodes or redesigning the AI-chosen hierarchy are not described as a supported workflow, meaning you get what the AI decides or you start over.	The built-in editor is prompt-based and covers slide variants and element targeting, but the vendor explicitly states it lacks elaborate editing tools. Any team with a designer who needs fine-grained layout control will finish every deck in PowerPoint — at which point the in-app editor adds no value and the tool becomes a generation-only step in a two-tool workflow. LLM output quality depends entirely on the model and provider you configure. Teams self-hosting with smaller local models via Ollama will see noticeably weaker narrative structure and content quality compared to frontier model outputs — there is no built-in fallback or quality floor. The white-label and API-first positioning means the browser UI is functional but not the product's strength. SaaS teams that need a polished, end-user-facing slide editor embedded in their product — not just generation — will hit the UI's ceiling quickly and evaluate dedicated white-label editor SDKs like Slidesgo or Pitch's embed offerings instead.

Bottom line

Presenton is open source; only Presenton exposes a public API. Choose based on which difference matters most for your workflow.

Frequently asked questions

What is the difference between My Lens and Presenton?

My Lens is Paid, while Presenton is Paid and open source. Compare pricing, free trial, API, platforms, and pros/cons in the table above on AIDiveForge.

Is My Lens better than Presenton?

It depends on your workflow. Use the side-by-side attributes (pricing, open source, API, self-hosted, platforms) to decide. AIDiveForge does not rank a universal winner — we publish verified facts so you can choose.