The best AI upscalers for Mac in 2026, by use case

Prices and requirements checked on the vendors' own pages on November 9, 2026. Local Upscale Studio is in development.

There is no single best AI upscaler. The right one depends on whether you upscale photos, video or both, how often, and whether you will pay every year. So this page is organised by use case. For each one we name the options that fit and say why.

We have not tested other apps' output quality, so we make no claims about it. Most of them have a free trial. Run your own photos or a short clip through two or three before you pay.

All the options at a glance

Prices are what you are charged today, in US dollars, before tax. Where a vendor shows a crossed-out "original" price, we list the price charged.

"Photos" and "Video" mean the app itself upscales that kind of file. HitPaw's purchase page shows two different prices for its yearly and lifetime plans without saying which applies, so we give the range. Vendors change prices often; check before you buy. For totals over several years, see AI upscaler prices over 1, 3 and 5 years.

For professional video work: Topaz Video

If you upscale video for paying clients every week, look at Topaz Video. It is subscription-only: $299 a year for Personal, or $699 a year for Pro, which adds full commercial use. Personal allows commercial use only for organisations under $1M in annual revenue.

• Unlimited local rendering, plus 25 cloud credits a month on Personal and 100 on Pro. Unused credits don't roll over.
• Some of its newest models (Starlight Sharp and HQ) don't run locally on a Mac; they use the cloud.
• It needs an Apple silicon Mac with at least 16 GB of memory. Topaz recommends 32 GB or more and a Pro, Max or Ultra chip.

Topaz stopped selling perpetual licences in September 2025. Our Topaz alternative page covers what that means if you'd rather pay once.

For professional photo work: Topaz Gigapixel

Gigapixel is $149 a year for Personal or $499 a year for Pro. It upscales up to 16×, has models for faces, text and art, and works as a plugin for Photoshop and Lightroom Classic. It also runs on Intel Macs from 2016 on, though there the generative models go to the cloud. More detail, and the photo alternatives, are on our Gigapixel alternatives page.

Free: Upscayl for photos

Upscayl is free and open source (AGPL-3.0), runs on macOS 12 or later and uses Real-ESRGAN models. You can download it free from GitHub or pay $12.99 for the Mac App Store version. It doesn't do video. Try it before you pay for any photo upscaler.

Free for video on a Mac is harder. Video2X is free and open source, but it is built for Windows and Linux; the only Mac route its README mentions is a container image. If you are restoring tapes, our home video guide covers the free tools (ffmpeg and HandBrake) for every step around the upscale.

Pay once, for video

These apps sell a licence you pay for once. Read the update terms; they differ.

• VideoProc Converter AI, $54.95 for one Mac or $79.95 for a family licence (3 to 5 Macs). The lowest one-time price here, and it also upscales images. Lifetime updates, major and minor, are listed on the buy page.
• UniFab Video Upscaler AI, $84.99 on sale. The page doesn't say how long updates are included; UniFab sells a separate "New Products Guarantee" at $99 a year that covers new models and updates.
• AVCLabs Video Enhancer AI, $149.90 once, one computer, with free updates listed.
• Aiarty Video Enhancer, $165 for three Macs, with "free lifetime access & update" listed on the store page.
• HitPaw VikPea, about $285–$350 once. Updates are included "within the current big version".
• Coming: Local Upscale Studio, $49 at launch. See below.

Pay once, for photos

• Aiarty Image Enhancer, $109 for three Macs, lifetime updates listed. Runs on Macs back to macOS 11 on Apple silicon and 10.15 on Intel.
• Pixelmator Pro, $49.99, if you also want a full photo editor. See the next section.
• Local Photo Upscaler (ours), $9.99 on the App Store. It is an iPhone and iPad app that also runs on Apple silicon Macs, with upscale, denoise, sharpen and face tools.

Inside a photo editor: Pixelmator Pro or Adobe

Pixelmator Pro has a machine-learning Super Resolution command alongside a full editor. Buy it once for $49.99 on the Mac App Store, or get it in Apple Creator Studio ($12.99 a month or $129 a year), which also includes Final Cut Pro and Logic Pro and can be shared with up to five family members.

Adobe Super Resolution is built into Lightroom, Photoshop and Camera Raw. It doubles the width and height. If you already pay for Adobe (Lightroom alone is $11.99 a month on a yearly plan), it costs nothing extra.

Photos and video in one app

• VideoProc Converter AI does both, from $54.95.
• Aiarty's Image + Video bundle is two apps for $199, three Macs.
• Topaz sells both through Topaz Studio at $499 a year, or the two apps separately for $448 a year.
• Coming: Local Upscale Studio.

On iPhone and iPad as well as the Mac

Our own App Store apps, Local Photo Upscaler and Local Video Upscaler, are $9.99 each, paid once, and run on the device. They use one model family (Real-ESRGAN). They're listed here because they fit this use case; the free tools above may be all you need.

Where Local Upscale Studio fits

Studio is a Mac app we are building. It isn't available yet, and we haven't measured it on ordinary Macs, so we won't place it above anything on this page.

• Pay once. $49 at launch, rising to $79 at version 1.0. Updates for this major version included.
• Photos and video in one app. Fast mode uses Real-ESRGAN and runs on every Apple silicon Mac. Quality mode uses SeedVR2 for photos, which fits a 16 GB Mac at 8-bit, and FlashVSR for video, which is slow, needs about 13–17 GB and is likely limited to Macs with 24 GB or more, for short clips.
• Picks models for your Mac. A short test chooses them, and you can override it.
• Nothing is uploaded. No account.

You can see early results and our development-Mac measurements. Full details are on the pricing page.

How to choose

• A few photos a year: try Upscayl first.
• Already pay for Adobe: use Super Resolution.
• Paid video work every week: Topaz Video's yearly cost may be small next to your fees.
• Old family videos, and you don't want a subscription: try the pay-once video apps above on a 30-second clip with faces in it.
• An Intel Mac: check the requirements column. Topaz Video and AVCLabs need Apple silicon.

Questions

Which AI upscaler gives the best quality? We haven't run a fair test of other apps, so we won't say. Results also differ by source: old film, phone video and web JPEGs each suit different models. Use the free trials on your own files.

Do these apps upload my files? Every app in the table can process on your Mac. Topaz and UniFab also offer cloud processing, which uploads your files. Video2X has no Mac app.

Is 8 GB of memory enough? For some apps. Topaz needs 16 GB. Aiarty and AVCLabs list 8 GB with 16 GB recommended.

Sources

• Topaz Video: plans, system requirements
• Topaz Gigapixel: plans, system requirements; Topaz Studio: topazlabs.com/studio; end of perpetual licences: message from the CEO
• Aiarty: store, Video Enhancer specs, Image Enhancer specs
• VideoProc Converter AI: buy page, product page
• AVCLabs: Mac purchase page, system requirements
• UniFab: prices, Video Upscaler AI
• HitPaw VikPea: Mac purchase page, tech specs
• Pixelmator Pro: Mac App Store, Super Resolution guide; Apple Creator Studio
• Adobe: Super Resolution and plans
• Upscayl: GitHub, Mac App Store; Video2X: GitHub
• Our apps: Local Photo Upscaler, Local Video Upscaler

Topaz Labs, Topaz Video and Gigapixel are trademarks of Topaz Labs. Pixelmator Pro, Final Cut Pro, Logic Pro and Mac are trademarks of Apple Inc. Adobe, Lightroom and Photoshop are trademarks of Adobe. Aiarty, VideoProc, AVCLabs, UniFab and HitPaw are trademarks of their owners. All other names are trademarks of their owners. Local Upscale Studio is not affiliated with any of them.