The shortlist
4 things that do it.
Topaz Labs' browser app for upscaling video; Topaz Video is its desktop app for Mac and PC.
- Free
- The pricing page lists paid plans only; no free plan shown.
- Paid
- from $19 per month (sale price, normally $29)
- Best at
- Upscaling, frame interpolation, slow motion and SDR to HDR in the browser, with nothing to install.
- The catch
- Paid only, in US dollars. The 200 monthly cloud video credits expire at the end of each month, and commercial use is limited to organisations under $1M annual revenue.
- web
A browser video enhancer from HitPaw that sharpens and upscales clips, with a desktop app (VikPea) for Windows and Mac.
- Free
- Free enhancement with preview only; HitPaw's pricing table lists the Video Enhancer as Preview only on Free, and full exports need a paid plan (HitPaw's FAQ).
- Paid
- from $9.99 per week (tax excluded)
- Best at
- Trying an enhancement in the browser before paying, with uploads up to 2GB.
- The catch
- Free use is a preview: HitPaw says exports may be limited on resolution, length or watermark until you upgrade. The page gives 4K as the maximum in one place and 8K in its FAQ.
- web
A free, open source machine learning video upscaler and frame interpolator using Real-ESRGAN, Real-CUGAN, Anime4K and RIFE.
- Free
- Free and open source under the GNU AGPL version 3.
- Paid
- price not checked
- Best at
- Free upscaling on your own computer, or on a borrowed Google Colab GPU if yours is not powerful enough.
- The catch
- Not a website: it installs on Windows or Linux (containers also run on macOS), needs a CPU with AVX2 and a Vulkan GPU, and Colab sessions are capped at 12 hours.
- windows
- linux
Blackmagic Design's full editing and colour software; its Super Scale feature uprezzes HD footage to 4K and 8K.
- Free
- DaVinci Resolve has a free version, but Super Scale is a Studio feature.
- Paid
- from £225 (DaVinci Resolve Studio)
- Best at
- Upscaling inside a professional editor.
- The catch
- Desktop software, not a website. Super Scale is one of the AI features Blackmagic says are exclusive to the paid Studio version, not the free DaVinci Resolve.
- mac
- windows
- linux
How they compare
Which one suits you, and why.
If you want it in a browser with nothing to install
Topaz for Web (Video) is Topaz Labs' browser app for upscaling video. Topaz says its browser apps work anywhere with nothing to install, and the video plan covers upscaling, frame interpolation, slow motion and SDR to HDR, with 200 cloud video credits a month. There is also a desktop app, Topaz Video, for Mac and PC.
Sharper pictures are only half of what people want from a video these days; sometimes the problem is that nobody watching speaks the language. If that's you, it's a different job, and a video translation and dubbing guide covers it. It sets out which tools dub uploads in a cloned voice, what free allowance each gives you, and where YouTube's own auto-dubbing falls short.
What you give up is a free option. Topaz's pricing page lists paid plans only, in US dollars: $19 a month on sale, normally $29, or $199 a year on sale, normally $299. The 200 credits expire at the end of each month and do not roll over, so it suits steady use more than an occasional clip.
If you want to try before you pay
HitPaw Online Video Enhancer is a browser enhancer that sharpens and upscales clips, with a desktop app called VikPea for Windows and Mac. You can enhance a video free with a preview, then upgrade for full exports, and uploads can be up to 2GB, so you see what it does to your footage before paying.
The catch is that free use is a preview. HitPaw says free exports may be limited on resolution, length or watermark until you upgrade. The paid plans cap video enhancing by time: up to 600 seconds on the $9.99 weekly plan, 2,400 on the $24.99 monthly plan and 6,000 a year on the $79.99 yearly plan, all excluding tax. Long footage uses that allowance up quickly.
If you want it free and do not mind installing it
Video2X is a free, open source machine learning video upscaler and frame interpolator using Real-ESRGAN, Real-CUGAN, Anime4K and RIFE, released under the GNU AGPL version 3. It runs on Windows and Linux, and containers also run on macOS. If your own computer is not powerful enough, it can run on Google Colab's free GPUs for up to 12 hours a session.
You pay in effort instead. It is not a website. It needs a CPU with AVX2 support and a GPU that supports Vulkan, so older or low-powered machines may not run it at all, and you set it up yourself.
If you edit video professionally
DaVinci Resolve Studio is Blackmagic Design's full editing and colour software, and its Super Scale feature creates 4K and 8K images from HD sources inside the editor. It is £225 on Blackmagic's UK page. If you already cut and grade there, upscaling becomes another step in the same project.
You give up the free route. DaVinci Resolve itself is free, but Super Scale is among the AI features Blackmagic says are exclusive to the paid Studio version. It is also desktop software for Mac, Windows and Linux, not a website, which is a lot of software to fix one clip.
When paying is worth it
Pay only if you cannot install software. In that case Topaz for Web is $19 a month on sale, normally $29, with 200 cloud video credits a month, and HitPaw's weekly plan at $9.99 suits a short burst of work within its 600 second cap. If you can install things, Video2X costs nothing, so it is worth seeing whether it is good enough for your footage before you subscribe to anything.
What to watch for
The catches worth knowing first.
HitPaw's FAQ says free exports may be limited on resolution, length or watermark, and its page gives 4K as the maximum resolution in one place and 8K in its FAQ. Treat the higher figure as unconfirmed until you have seen an export.
Topaz's prices are marked as a limited time offer, so the $19 a month could return to $29 when the sale ends. Commercial use on the standard plans is limited to organisations under $1M USD annual revenue, which matters if you edit for a larger company.
Video2X asks Colab users to use the free resource fairly and not run upscaling back to back around the clock, which it says might get you banned.
Enhancing has limits with poor source footage. CapCut's FAQ says heavily compressed or degraded footage has limited detail for AI to recover, so preview the result before exporting, whichever tool you use.
The same shortlist, as a table
| Thing | Free tier | Paid from | Platforms | The catch |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Topaz for Web (Video) | The pricing page lists paid plans only; no free plan shown. | $19 per month (sale price, normally $29) | web | Paid only, in US dollars. The 200 monthly cloud video credits expire at the end of each month, and commercial use is limited to organisations under $1M annual revenue. |
| HitPaw Online Video Enhancer | Free enhancement with preview only; HitPaw's pricing table lists the Video Enhancer as Preview only on Free, and full exports need a paid plan (HitPaw's FAQ). | $9.99 per week (tax excluded) | web | Free use is a preview: HitPaw says exports may be limited on resolution, length or watermark until you upgrade. The page gives 4K as the maximum in one place and 8K in its FAQ. |
| Video2X | Free and open source under the GNU AGPL version 3. | not checked | windows, linux | Not a website: it installs on Windows or Linux (containers also run on macOS), needs a CPU with AVX2 and a Vulkan GPU, and Colab sessions are capped at 12 hours. |
| DaVinci Resolve Studio (Super Scale) | DaVinci Resolve has a free version, but Super Scale is a Studio feature. | £225 (DaVinci Resolve Studio) | mac, windows, linux | Desktop software, not a website. Super Scale is one of the AI features Blackmagic says are exclusive to the paid Studio version, not the free DaVinci Resolve. |
How we checked
What we read, and what we haven't tested yet.
On 2026-10-02 we read Topaz Labs' pricing page, HitPaw's online video enhancer page and HitPaw Online's pricing page, the Video2X project page on GitHub, Blackmagic Design's UK pages for DaVinci Resolve Studio, and CapCut's AI video upscaler page. CapCut's page calls CapCut a free upscaler but describes the steps in its desktop app and does not set out what a free export includes, so we left it off the shortlist. Topaz's pricing page shows sale prices marked as a limited time offer. Nothing was tested hands-on.
If none of these fit
The manual way.
If you already edit in CapCut, its upscaler page says the desktop app has an Enhance quality setting under Video, Basic, with HD, UHD or 4K levels. CapCut's own FAQ says results depend on the source, so heavily compressed footage has limited detail to recover, and to preview before exporting.
Stills are a slightly different job, though, and if you're also sharpening photos or old screenshots there's AI that enhances image quality. That page covers Topaz Gigapixel, Upscayl (which is free) and Let's Enhance, and it explains Topaz's split between "precision" models that try to leave the source alone and "generative" ones that don't.