9 Best AI Video Upscalers of 2026

Topaz Video is the specialist tool in this list. Topaz Labs describes it as software that lets you denoise low-light footage, recover and upscale old archival video to 4K, restore focus and change frame rate by generating new frames. The model list is the longest we compared: Starlight Precise, Starlight Mini, Proteus, Iris, Nyx, Rhea, Artemis, Gaia, Apollo, Chronos and more, plus SDR to HDR and stabilization models, and Topaz pitches it for deinterlacing, restoring archival footage and slow motion. It runs as a standalone app on Mac and Windows or as a plugin inside After Effects and DaVinci Resolve, so it fits an existing finishing workflow. The desktop plan is $39 per month with an annual commitment, or $59 per month without one, and includes unlimited local rendering and 25 cloud video credits. The catch is licensing: standard plans cover commercial use only for organizations under $1M USD in annual revenue, and Topaz Video Pro costs $699 a year.

Aiarty Video Enhancer is a desktop app that costs far less than a Topaz subscription. Its page lists AI models to upscale, denoise, deblur and restore flawed videos to 4K, with dedicated use cases for old family videos, anime and AI-generated clips. A frame interpolation module generates new frames for slow motion at 60 or 120fps, a Color and HDR module remasters SDR to 10-bit HDR, and an Audio Denoise module cleans background noise, clicks and wind, which helps with old camcorder tapes. Aiarty says Turbo mode upscaled a 25-minute 2K clip to 4K in about 25 minutes on an Nvidia RTX 5090, so speed depends heavily on your hardware. The Standard License costs $79 a year on the current offer and covers unlimited personal and commercial use on one PC or Mac, and a lifetime license is $149. It has fewer specialist models than Topaz Video and stops at 4K in its own marketing.

UniFab Video Upscaler AI is a desktop module from the UniFab suite that markets output at 4K, 8K and 16K, the highest ceiling in this list. Its newest addition is the Titanus model for cinematic upscaling, and a cloud version, Video Upscaler AI, FabCloud, runs the job on UniFab's servers if your computer lacks an RTX GPU. Installers cover Windows 10 or 11 (64-bit) and both Intel and Apple Silicon Macs. The 30-day free trial has full access and no watermark, which is longer than most rivals and enough to test real archive footage. The lifetime license was $84.99 at checkout on our check, down from $129.99, but the checkout also lists the Titanus model as a $29.99 add-on and offers extras such as a 3PC license, so read the cart before paying. Restoration jobs like denoising, HDR conversion and face repair are separate UniFab modules rather than part of the upscaler.

AVCLabs Video Enhancer AI covers most restoration steps in one local app. Its page lists upscaling of 480p, 720p or 1080p video to 4K or 8K, noise and grain removal, restoration of old videos, colorization of black-and-white clips, stabilization, face blurring and object removal. Frame interpolation inserts frames to raise 24 or 30FPS footage to 60 or 120FPS. Everything runs locally on Windows 11 or 10 (64-bit) or macOS 12 to macOS 26, and batch processing handles long videos and multiple files without uploading anything, which matters for client or archive material. Pricing on our check was $39.95 for one month (list $49.95), $95.96 for a year and $149.90 for a perpetual license, each for one PC. Subscriptions carry a 5-day money-back guarantee and the perpetual plan 30 days. It has fewer specialist models than Topaz Video, but colorization is not in Topaz Video's model list.

DaVinci Resolve is a full editing and finishing suite, and its Studio edition adds Super Scale, which Blackmagic Design describes as high quality image uprezzing that creates 4K and 8K images from HD sources. Studio also includes Speed Warp retiming with optical flow, the DaVinci AI Neural Engine for facial recognition and object detection, and support for up to 120fps at 32K. For an editor, the appeal is that upscaling happens on the same timeline as the cut and the grade, with no round trip to another app. Studio was $236 one-time on our check, down from $295, and the free version of DaVinci Resolve remains available for everything that does not need Studio features. The tradeoff is depth: Super Scale is one upscaling option inside a huge app, without the dedicated denoise, deinterlace and archival restoration models that Topaz Video or AVCLabs ship. Topaz Video also runs as a Resolve plugin for harder restoration jobs.

HitPaw VikPea upscales 480p, 720p and 1080p videos to 4K or 8K and lists more than 10 AI enhancement models, now driven by an AI Enhancement Agent in version 6. Beyond upscaling, its plan features include repairing old, damaged and corrupted videos, colorizing black and white footage, correcting color, converting SDR to HDR, stabilizing shaky clips and boosting frame rates to 60FPS, with batch processing on desktop. It is the only enhancer here with apps on Windows, Mac, iPhone, iPad and Android plus an online version, which suits people who start a job on a phone. The plan also bundles generation with models such as Seedance, Kling and Veo, which restoration users will not need. HitPaw sells monthly, yearly and perpetual licenses, but its buy page showed several sale and list figures without clear labels from our location, so we left the individual price pending; the 5-PC team plan is listed at 459.95 USD a year.

CapCut is a general video editor, and its AI video upscaler is an Enhance quality option in CapCut Desktop. You import a clip, open Enhance quality, choose HD, UHD or 4K, preview the result and export. CapCut says the upscaler uses the Dreamina Seedance 2.5 model and pairs it with AI People Remover and AI Text Remover for cleanup. For creators who already edit in CapCut, that means a 720p clip can be lifted to 4K before upload without another app, and CapCut suggests doing so to ease YouTube compression. Its own page is candid about limits: the final result depends heavily on the condition and usable detail in the original footage. There are no listed models for deinterlacing, film grain or frame interpolation, so it is a convenience tool rather than a restoration workstation. The download is free, but the pricing page did not show USD from our location, so the price is pending.

Media.io AI Video Enhancer runs entirely in the browser. You upload an MP4 or MOV clip of up to 5 minutes, pick a mode (Video Enhancer, Video Denoise, Portrait Upscaler, Anime Upscaler or Smart Color Correction) and download the result in HD or 4K. Media.io says it can lift 240p, 360p, 480p or 720p footage to 4K, up to 8x the original resolution, while removing compression artifacts, grain and motion blur and brightening low-light scenes. That makes it handy for a quick fix on a phone clip or a short old video when you cannot install software. The limits are real for editors, though: the 5-minute cap rules out full tapes or programs, only two formats are accepted, and there are no interpolation, deinterlacing or batch tools. The free plan gives 3 daily check-in credits, and paid membership prices did not render in USD from our location, so they are pending.

Video2X is the free option in this list. It is an open source framework on GitHub that runs two modes, filtering for upscaling and frame interpolation, using Anime4K v4, Real-ESRGAN, Real-CUGAN and RIFE through ncnn and Vulkan. Version 6 is a rewrite in C and C++ with a GUI and installer for Windows, packages for Linux and a universal AppImage, plus container images for Linux and macOS. If you lack a capable GPU, the project's Google Colab notebook can borrow an Nvidia T4, L4 or A100 for free for up to 12 hours per session. The project had 22.7k stars on GitHub on our check. Requirements are strict: the GPU must support Vulkan and the precompiled binaries need a CPU with AVX2. There is no colorization or face repair. Expect to tune settings yourself.