Best AI Video Upscaler in 2026: Free and Paid Tools Compared

Short answer by situation, based on what each vendor documents rather than on a test of ours:

If you only read one line: upscale the cleanest copy you have, judge the result while it plays rather than on a paused frame, and do not pay for 4K output when your source never held that detail.

Most ranking pages print a score out of ten without saying how it was earned. These are the criteria and weights we use, so you can apply them to your own footage. The tables below list price, free route and stated limits only; use the criteria above to score the two or three that fit your footage.

The three test clips we use: a 480p phone clip with compression blocking, an AI-generated 720p clip, and a 10-second VHS transfer with interlacing. If a vendor would not let us export on a free trial, that is recorded rather than estimated.

Ordinary resizing spreads the pixels you have across a bigger grid. Super-resolution models instead predict the high-resolution frame that would have produced your low-resolution one. Real-ESRGAN, the model behind many web tools, was trained entirely on synthetic degradations: the authors took clean images, ran them through a high-order chain of blur, resize, noise and JPEG compression, and taught the network to reverse it, while also targeting the ringing and overshoot artefacts that earlier models produced, per Wang et al. on arXiv (2021).

That training recipe explains both the strengths and the limits. Compression blocks, soft edges and sensor noise are exactly the degradations the model learned to undo, so a clean 720p file gains real-looking edges and texture. Text the source never resolved, faces that were already a smear, and motion blur from a handheld shot are not degradations the model can invert; it will guess, and the guess is where artefacts come from.

What separates a video upscaler from a photo upscaler?

Consistency between frames. A photo model can invent a slightly different eyelash on every run and nobody notices; run that on 30 frames a second and the eyelash crawls. Video-specific models such as Real-ESRGAN's AnimeVideo-v3 and the video script in the same repository process frames with that in mind, and commercial tools add their own temporal filtering. When you test any upscaler, judge the moving image, not a paused frame.

• Fixes well: compression blocking, soft focus from a low bitrate, a 720p export that has to sit on a 1080p timeline.
• Fixes partly: film grain and sensor noise (the model may over-smooth skin while removing it).
• Cannot fix: unreadable text, faces below roughly a thumbnail's worth of pixels, heavy motion blur, colour that was clipped in the source.

Desktop tools give you model choice and no upload, at the price of a licence and a capable graphics card.

• Topaz Video lists Starlight Precise, Starlight Mini, Proteus, Iris, Nyx, Rhea, Artemis, Gaia and more, plus SDR to HDR and stabilisation, and says it restores archival film, VHS and historical footage, per Topaz Labs pricing and its Topaz Video page. The two pages showed different monthly figures on the day we checked, so confirm at checkout.
• AVCLabs names Ultra, Standard, Anime, Denoise and Colorize modes and deinterlacing for old cameras, DVDs and VHS transfers, per AVCLabs.
• HitPaw VikPea's free licence only previews; exporting needs a paid licence, per HitPaw.
• UniFab lists a Kairo model for anime upscaling and a 30-day trial with no watermark, per UniFab.
• VideoProc Converter AI names Gen Detail, Real Smooth and Anime models and handles VHS, DVD and MiniDV footage, per VideoProc.
• Nero's upscaler runs on Windows only and lists Animation and Restoration models with a 7-day trial, per Nero AI.

Browser tools trade control for convenience: nothing to install, nothing to configure, but your clip is uploaded and limits are set by the plan.

• CapCut says its free upscaler outputs HD, UHD or 4K and mentions restoring historic footage, per CapCut. No duration or file-size limit is published, so test your normal clip length.
• Kapwing's pricing page lists exports with a watermark and 720p quality on the free plan and 4K export on paid plans, per Kapwing pricing. The pricing page does not mention an upscaler, so check the enhancer tool itself before relying on it.
• VEED's help copy says the watermark appears on videos made on the free plan and paid plans remove it, per VEED pricing.
• TensorPix and Pixop are video-first cloud services: TensorPix sells monthly plans and credits, Pixop is pay as you go, per TensorPix pricing and Pixop's pricing help page.

Open-source upscalers cost nothing and never add a watermark. The trade is setup time and a GPU.

• Real-ESRGAN ships portable executables for Intel, AMD and Nvidia GPUs and an anime video model, per the Real-ESRGAN repository. Its training recipe is described in Wang et al. on arXiv (2021).
• Video2X wraps several of these models in one tool and adds frame interpolation, per the Video2X repository.
• SeedVR2's authors state that one H100-80G handles 100 frames at 720 by 1280 and that 1080p and 2K need four, which puts local use out of reach for most laptops; fal.ai hosts it at $0.001 per megapixel of video data.

Yes, with different catches. Searches for a free upscaler often land on tools that only preview for free, so check whether you can export.

On LazyKiwi the enhancer's tool page says you can start free with no card, and the Free plan on the pricing page gives 40 credits a month. Read the Generate button before a long clip: on our September capture the button showed 410 credits at the default settings, more than one month's free allowance, so trim to the seconds you will use.

Which upscaler works on a Mac?

Topaz Video, AVCLabs (macOS 12 and later), UniFab, VideoProc Converter AI and Aiarty all list Mac versions, and Real-ESRGAN offers a portable macOS build. Nero's upscaler is Windows only, and Video2X runs on a Mac only through a container. Any browser tool, including CapCut and the LazyKiwi enhancer, works on a Mac without installing anything.

Which upscaler is best for anime?

A video upscaler for anime should use a model trained on animation: Real-ESRGAN's realesr-animevideov3, Anime4K or Real-CUGAN through Video2X, UniFab's Kairo model, or the Anime modes in AVCLabs and VideoProc. General models tend to add texture to flat colour areas, which is the opposite of what line art needs.

How do you upscale VHS and old footage?

Deinterlace first, then upscale. VHS is interlaced and noisy, so a tool that only enlarges will magnify the combing. AVCLabs and VideoProc name deinterlacing and VHS transfers, and Topaz says it restores VHS and historical footage. Capture the tape at its native resolution, avoid sharpening before the upscale, and expect a clean 1080p rather than true 4K. If you want the look of tape rather than rid of it, see our VHS filter guide.

Which upscalers export without a watermark for free?

Open-source tools (Real-ESRGAN, Video2X, SeedVR2) never watermark. UniFab's 30-day trial and Nero's 7-day trial state no watermark. Kapwing and VEED watermark free-plan exports, and HitPaw's free licence cannot export at all.

It can output a 4K file. Whether that file looks like 4K depends on the source. 480p (854 by 480) to 2160p (3840 by 2160) is 4.5 times the width and 4.5 times the height, so the model has to predict about 19 to 20 pixels for every one it was given. That detail is plausible, not recorded.

• Clean sources survive it best: AI-generated clips and screen recordings have little noise for the model to misread.
• Noisy phone video and tape show the limits first: plastic skin, halos and invented text.
• For most 480p material, a 2x pass to around 1080p is the safer target, then let the display scale the rest.
• If the clip is generated, regenerating at a higher native resolution beats upscaling a small render.

For stills, the AI photo upscaler handles 2x or 4x enlargement; if the problem is blur rather than size, our guide to how to unblur an image covers the difference.

The whole job is four clicks, which is the point. What takes judgement is choosing the source and checking the result at the size viewers will see it.

1. 1

   Pick the cleanest source

   Use the original export from your generator or camera, not a copy that has been through a social platform. If the clip came from the AI video generator, download it from the workbench rather than from a shared link.

2. 2

   Open the enhancer and upload

   In the video workbench, switch to the Tools tab and choose AI Video Enhancer; the panel's instruction is to upload a video and then pick the two factors. Drop the clip into the Video slot.

3. 3

   Leave the factors at 2 for a first pass

   The upscale selector and the frame-interpolation selector both default to 2. For a 720p to 1080p job the 2x upscale is plenty; leave interpolation alone unless the clip is choppy, since the tool page says frame rate and duration otherwise come back unchanged.

4. 4

   Check the price, then generate

   The credit cost sits on the Generate button and changes with clip length; the pricing page explains that credits vary by clip length, resolution, chosen model and how many outputs you request. Trim first if the button surprises you.

5. 5

   Compare at playback size

   Play the original and the result on the same phone or monitor at the same zoom. A bigger file always looks sharper when it fills more screen; equal display size is the only fair test.

6. 6

   Export for the platform

   YouTube's upload guide recommends H.264, progressive scan and about 8 Mbps for 1080p at standard frame rates, rising to 35 to 45 Mbps for 2160p, per YouTube Help (2026). Export the upscaled master at or above those rates so the platform's re-encode does not undo the work.

Three sources, three answers, and one case where the right move is not to upscale at all.

When is regenerating better than upscaling?

When the clip is short and the model offers a higher native resolution. MiniMax H3 renders at 768p or 2K for 4 to 15 seconds with a 7,000-character prompt, and Kling v3 Omni renders at 720p or 1080p for 3 to 60 seconds, per their model pages. A clip rendered at 2K has real detail at 2K; the same clip rendered at 768p and upscaled has predicted detail. For a hero shot, spend the credits on resolution at generation time and keep the enhancer for the B-roll.

For stills that will be animated or placed on a timeline, use the AI photo upscaler instead of the video tool; its page offers 2x or 4x enlargement and adds detail to faces, edges and textures.

An ai upscaler video pass that went too far is easy to spot once you know the four tells. Each has a fix that does not involve buying a different tool.

• Plastic skin: pores and fine grain smoothed into a waxy surface. Fix: use a lower factor, or feed a cleaner source so the model has less noise to remove.
• Halos: a bright or dark rim along every strong edge, the ringing artefact Real-ESRGAN's authors specifically trained against. Fix: avoid sharpening before the upscale; one pass only.
• Temporal shimmer: hair, foliage and fabric that crawl between frames when the clip plays. Fix: judge at playback speed, prefer a video-specific model, and skip frame interpolation on busy shots.
• Invented text: letters on signs and labels that become plausible but wrong. Fix: mask or crop text, or add it back at full resolution in the editor afterwards.

How do you run a fair before-and-after?

Export a five-second excerpt containing a face, a moving edge and some on-screen text, run it through your two finalists, and watch all three versions at the same display size with the file names hidden. If you cannot tell the upscaled versions from the original at that size, the source was already good enough and you have saved the credits. Anyone who wants to ai upscale video regularly should keep that excerpt as a standing benchmark and re-run it whenever a tool updates its model.