Best AI Video Upscalers in 2026 (Honest Comparison)
May 29, 2026 · Updated September 30, 2026 · 8 min read
If you upscale footage every week and have a capable GPU, Topaz Video is the most complete option — but it has been subscription-only since October 2025, from $299 a year. To pay once or not at all, look at DaVinci Resolve Studio ($295) or the free, open-source Video2X; with no GPU and only the occasional short clip, a cloud upscaler such as TensorPix or AI Growth Kit is simpler.
Disclosure: AI Growth Kit is our product. We haven't run a side-by-side quality test of these tools, so this guide compares what can be checked — price, limits, licensing and where each one runs. Every price was taken from the vendor's own site on September 30, 2026.
The short list at a glance
| Tool | Runs on | Price (Sept 2026) | Max output |
|---|---|---|---|
| Topaz Video | Desktop app + Topaz cloud | $299/yr or $59/mo; Pro $699/yr | 8K |
| DaVinci Resolve Studio | Desktop editor | $295 one-time | 8K from HD |
| AVCLabs Video Enhancer AI | Desktop (Windows) | $39.95/mo, $119.95/yr, $299.90 perpetual | 8K |
| Video2X | Desktop (Windows, Linux) | Free, open source | Depends on model and scale |
| TensorPix | Browser | Free tier; paid from $5.50/mo billed yearly | 4K (paid plans) |
| Cutout.pro | Browser | Minute bundles, $3.45–$19/min | 4K, 30 fps |
| Pixop | Browser app + API | Pay per gigapixel, $10 minimum | 4K |
| AI Growth Kit (us) | Browser | $4.41–$8.10 per minute of input | 4K |
Desktop upscalers: your hardware does the work
Topaz Video — the most complete toolkit, now a subscription
Topaz Video (formerly Video AI) upscales to 8K and bundles a long list of models for upscaling, frame interpolation, stabilization and SDR-to-HDR conversion. Local rendering is unlimited on every plan, so speed depends on your machine; the newer Starlight models also run in Topaz's cloud, and the Personal plan includes 25 cloud credits a month.
Personal costs $299/year or $59/month and covers commercial use only for organizations under $1M in annual revenue; Pro, with full commercial use, is $699/year. Perpetual licenses stopped selling on October 3, 2025 (existing owners keep theirs). Adobe completed its acquisition of Topaz Labs in September 2026 and says the apps continue as standalone products.
DaVinci Resolve Studio — upscaling inside your editor
Resolve's Super Scale belongs to the Neural Engine in the paid Studio edition, a $295 one-time purchase; the free version of Resolve doesn't include it. Blackmagic pitches it for creating 4K and 8K images from HD sources. If you already edit or grade in Resolve, you pay once and skip the export-and-reimport round trip a separate upscaler needs.
AVCLabs Video Enhancer AI — if you want to own it
With Topaz gone subscription-only, AVCLabs is one of the few dedicated upscalers you can still buy outright: $299.90 list for a perpetual license on one Windows PC, often discounted (it was $149.90 on September 30). Monthly ($39.95) and yearly ($119.95) plans exist too, and its product page advertises upscaling to 8K.
Video2X — free and open source
Video2X packages open-source models — Real-ESRGAN, Real-CUGAN and Anime4K for upscaling, RIFE for frame interpolation — into one app. It's free under the AGPL-3.0 license, runs on Windows and Linux, and needs a Vulkan-capable GPU plus a CPU with AVX2 support. Expect to tune settings yourself: there's no cloud option and no support desk.
Cloud upscalers: no GPU needed
TensorPix — cheapest per minute, by its own math
TensorPix runs in the browser. The free plan caps input at 720p and watermarks the output; paid plans upscale to 4K, starting at $5.50/month billed yearly for 10 credits a month (extra credits $1.50 each). TensorPix's rule of thumb is one credit ≈ 2 minutes of enhanced video, which would make it the cheapest cloud option here by a wide margin — but it says the real cost depends on several factors, and it shows the exact credit charge before each job runs.
Cutout.pro — minute bundles
Cutout.pro sells video minutes in bundles shared across its video tools, including the AI Video Enhancer: $299 for 45 minutes ($6.64/min), $599 for 120 ($4.99/min), $1,299 for 330 ($3.94/min), down to $3.45/min in the 5,800-minute bundle. Small bundles cost far more per minute — 1 minute is $9 on sale, $19 list. Output tops out at 4K, 30 fps and 2 GB per file.
Pixop — built for broadcasters
Pixop's site now targets broadcasters (it upconverts live HD channels to 4K), but its web app and API still bill pay-as-you-go per gigapixel processed: Super Resolution is $0.079/GP and Deep Restoration 2 is $0.486/GP before volume discounts, plus encoding, storage and download fees, with a $10 minimum credit purchase. Because cost scales with resolution, frame count and filters, use the estimate Pixop shows before each job.
AI Growth Kit — what our upscaler does and doesn't do
Our 4K Upscaler takes MP4, MOV or WebM files up to 30 minutes long and returns a 4K version. There is no model picker, no target-resolution setting and no frame interpolation — it does one job. It costs 3 credits per second of input; failed jobs refund their credits automatically, and the same balance pays for translation, subtitles and our other tools. The 20 free credits you get at sign-up cover 6 seconds, with no watermark.
What upscaling really costs per minute
A minute of input uses 180 of our credits. Here's what that means at each price on our pricing page:
| How you buy credits | Cost per minute | Upscaling it buys |
|---|---|---|
| Pro plan, $49/mo (2,000 credits) | $4.41 | 11 min 6 s a month |
| Starter plan, $19/mo (600 credits) | $5.70 | 3 min 20 s a month |
| Power Pack, $59 (1,800 credits) | $5.90 | 10 min, never expires |
| Pro Pack, $29 (750 credits) | $6.96 | 4 min 10 s, never expires |
| Starter Pack, $9 (200 credits) | $8.10 | 1 min 6 s, never expires |
That's fine for ads, social clips and a few minutes of B-roll. It is not the cheapest way to upscale hours of footage: Topaz Personal works out to about $24.92 a month on the yearly plan, so past roughly 6 minutes of footage a month it beats our best rate — if you have hardware that can run it. A one-time license (Resolve Studio, AVCLabs perpetual) gets cheaper with every minute you process, Cutout.pro's bundles of 330 minutes or more ($3.94/min and below) undercut us at high volume, and if TensorPix's 2-minutes-per-credit rule holds for your footage, it undercuts us at any volume.
Where your footage goes, and commercial use
For client work under NDA, where the files live matters as much as the price. Desktop tools keep everything on your machine — Topaz states that files never leave your computer with local rendering. Cloud tools require an upload: TensorPix's free plan deletes files after 30 days while paid plans keep them until you delete them; Pixop bills stored files at $0.023 per GB per month; AI Growth Kit deletes uploaded source videos after 30 days, keeps outputs until you delete the task, and our terms leave you all rights to both. On licensing, the one limit to watch is Topaz Personal, which only covers commercial use for organizations under $1M in annual revenue.
How to choose
- You upscale weekly and have a recent GPU → Topaz Video, or Video2X if $0 matters more than convenience.
- You already edit in Resolve → Resolve Studio's Super Scale.
- You want to own the license → Resolve Studio or AVCLabs perpetual.
- A few short clips a month, no GPU → TensorPix if per-minute price is what matters; AI Growth Kit if you also translate or subtitle with us.
- You edit social clips in CapCut → try its built-in upscaler first; CapCut's help center (April 2026) lists 4K export on desktop as a Pro feature.
- Broadcast or archive pipelines over an API → Pixop.
Test before you pay
Don't judge an upscaler by its demo reel. Pick a 10-second clip containing the hardest parts of your footage — small text, fine texture, fast motion — and run it through two or three free tiers. Compare results cropped at 100% rather than scaled to fit your screen, then step through frame by frame: AI upscalers can introduce flicker between frames that no single still will show. Our AI vs bicubic upscaling test walks through what to look for, and when plain bicubic scaling is good enough.
What AI upscaling can't fix
- Heavy compression. Blocky artifacts get sharpened along with everything else.
- Motion blur and missed focus. The detail was never recorded; the model can only guess.
- Interlaced sources (VHS, old broadcast). Deinterlace first or the combing gets upscaled too.
- Accuracy-critical footage. AI invents plausible detail, which is the wrong trade-off for evidence or archival records.
- 1080p deliverables. If the platform or client only needs 1080p, a 4K upscale adds cost and file size for nothing.