Upscayl Review: Is It Free and Safe? Desktop App vs Cloud Pricing

Upscayl is an AI image upscaler that makes small or blurry photos bigger and sharper, and it now comes in two flavors. Is Upscayl free? The desktop app is: it's free and open source for Windows, macOS and Linux, and it runs on your own graphics card. Upscayl Cloud, the newer online version, is paid: after a 10-credit free trial, the Pro plan starts at $9.99 a month for 100 credits.

What Upscayl is

Upscayl

from $9.99/mo

Upscayl review →

Upscayl started as a desktop app, and that's still its free side. You drop in an image, pick a model, choose how much bigger you want it, and the app uses AI to guess the detail that a simple resize would leave out. Under the hood it relies on Real-ESRGAN, an open research model for image restoration, running through Vulkan on your graphics card. Sorry for the jargon: what it means in practice is that the heavy lifting happens on your machine, not on someone else's server.

The desktop side, as Upscayl describes it, covers the basics well: upscaling of up to 16x, batch processing of several images in one go, a "Double Upscayl" option that runs the image through twice, and a choice of models for different kinds of pictures. The README credits several of the included models, among them one shipped as "High Fidelity", plus Remacri, UltraSharp and Ultramix Balanced. And if none of them suits you, Upscayl keeps a public repository of extra models and explains how to convert your own.

Then there's the new part. The homepage now opens with "NEW Upscayl Cloud is out!", and Cloud is where the newer features live: AI face enhancement, detail recovery, AI image generation from a text description, cloud storage for your files and access from a phone or tablet. That's the paid side, and it changes how you should read the word "free" in Upscayl's case.

Is Upscayl safe?

Short answer: the official app is open source, and that's about as transparent as software gets. The code is public on GitHub, under the AGPL-3.0 license, and anyone can read it. The desktop app processes your images locally, so photos you upscale with it don't have to be uploaded anywhere. If you work with client photos or family pictures you'd rather keep to yourself, that's a real argument in its favor.

The part where you do need to be careful is where you download it. The official places are upscayl.org and the upscayl/upscayl repository on GitHub; from there, the README links each version: AppImage, DEB, RPM, Flatpak, Snap and the AUR on Linux, a DMG or brew install --cask upscayl on Mac, and an installer for Windows. Stick to those two: other sites with "upscayl" in the address aren't the ones the README points to.

One more thing worth knowing before you install: the release in that screenshot is the latest one, from December 2024. The repository itself is still active, and Upscayl says the desktop app keeps getting new features and improvements, but the newest ones, like face enhancement and AI generation, are in Cloud.

Upscayl pricing: Desktop, Free Trial, Pro and Business

Upscayl Cloud's pricing page works with a slider: you choose how many credits you expect to use a month, and the plans update. One credit upscales one image. These are the monthly prices in US dollars:

Paying yearly brings the price down; the page promises up to 40% off. With 100 credits a month, Pro billed yearly is $89.99 a year, and with 300 credits it's $219.99. There's also a "One-Time Purchase" option, marked as new, for credits you buy once instead of every month.

The FAQ answers the questions that matter before you pay. Credits from a one-time purchase never expire. Subscription credits roll over from month to month, but if you cancel, you stop getting new ones and whatever is left expires at the end of the billing cycle, with no refunds for unused credits. The small print adds that your Upscayl history is deleted one month after you cancel. And to change plans, you cancel the current one and subscribe to the new one. The page doesn't say whether tax is included, so check the total at checkout.

The desktop app: what you need before you download

Here's the catch with the free version, and it's a hardware one. Upscayl's README says plainly that you need a graphics card that supports Vulkan, and that many integrated GPUs (the graphics built into a laptop's processor) don't work, "but no harm in trying". A gaming PC or a workstation with a dedicated card is the comfortable case. If your computer has more than one GPU, the settings let you choose which one Upscayl uses.

The other requirements are modest: Windows 10 or later, macOS 12 or later, or a mainstream Linux distribution, where it's often already in the software store as a Flatpak or Snap. The video on this page, Upscayl's own tutorial from its official channel, walks you through the desktop app.

Who Upscayl is for, and who should skip it

Upscayl Desktop makes the most sense for people who upscale often and care about keeping their files local: photographers restoring old scans, designers who need a bigger version of a client's logo or product photo, print shops, and anyone tired of paying per image. For them it's hard to beat a free app whose only limit is their own hardware.

Upscayl Cloud is for the opposite case: you don't have a suitable graphics card, you want face enhancement or AI generation in the same place, or you need it on a phone. At $9.99 a month for 100 images, it's reasonably priced if you use it every month; if you don't, keep an eye on the cancellation rules above.

Skip both if what you need is to fix a photo rather than enlarge it, such as removing objects or changing the background: that's a job for a photo editor, not an upscaler.

Upscayl alternatives

If Upscayl doesn't fit, these are the ones I'd look at:

BigJpg

Free with limits · from $6

Enlarges photos and illustrations up to 16x with deep neural networks, and has an API.

BigJpg review →

Smart Upscaler

Raises image resolution automatically, aimed at people who want sharper visuals for their projects.

Smart Upscaler review →

BigJpg is the one I'd try first if you want to skip the install, and Smart Upscaler is worth a look as a second opinion on the same image. For everything else, the free desktop version of Upscayl is still where I'd start.