Any way to develop an AR iOS app without a developer account?

I am a design student looking to make an AR app for a project. Been doing some research and realise that apple developer account is required to push apps into the phone even for testing. I dun have any money to spend on this kind of thing so is there any way around it?

No. I’m afraid there isn’t. Once Epic fix the mess that is Unreal AR, hopefully in 4.26, then you could perhaps develop AR for Android devices instead.