Upscayl is a free, open-source AI upscaler for Windows, macOS and Linux. You point it at a low-resolution photo, pick a model, and it rebuilds the detail at two to four times the original size. The app runs that model on your own graphics card, so the image is never uploaded anywhere.
It replaces the paid upscalers people usually reach for. Topaz Gigapixel now runs as a subscription starting at $149 a year, Adobe's Super Resolution sits inside a $22.99 a month Photoshop plan, and the web upscalers charge per image and want an account first. Upscayl costs nothing, has no account, and works with the network cable unplugged.
What it does
- Upscales photos by 2x, 3x or 4x per pass, with a Double Upscayl option that chains two passes for up to 16x.
- Ships with several models and lets you swap between them: General for everyday photos, High Fidelity for anime and illustration, Remacri and UltraSharp for photographic detail, Fast for quick previews.
- Handles a whole folder at once with Batch Upscayl, so a shoot does not have to be done one file at a time.
- Saves as PNG, JPG or WebP, with an option to carry the original file's metadata across.
- Installs from a plain .exe on Windows, a .dmg on macOS, and AppImage, deb, rpm, Flatpak or Snap on Linux.
- Lets you import custom ESRGAN models from the project's custom-models repository.
Why the local part matters
Most upscalers are web apps, so your photos travel to someone else's server and back. Upscayl skips that trip entirely. Client photos, family pictures, medical images, unreleased product shots: none of it leaves the machine. There is no account, no upload quota, no per-image credit to burn, and nothing to keep paying for next year. Once the app is installed it also works offline.
Where it falls short
The honest catch is the graphics card. Upscayl runs on NCNN with Vulkan, so it wants a Vulkan-capable GPU. Most integrated graphics will not do it, and there is no CPU-only mode. If your laptop does not clear that bar, a browser tool will be the easier route.
The second catch is what upscaling can and cannot fix. Upscayl rebuilds resolution; it does not rescue an out-of-focus shot. If a photo is blurred rather than pixelated, no upscaler will save it.
The numbers
50,000 stars on GitHub, 2,500 forks, published under the AGPL-3.0 licence, developed in the open by Nayam Amarshe and TGS963. The project is a front end for the Real-ESRGAN research work, and the command-line version is available separately as upscayl-ncnn if you want to script it.
Read the full review
We compared Upscayl against Topaz Gigapixel, Photoshop Super Resolution and Magnific AI on cost, licence and whether your images leave your machine: Upscayl: Free Open-Source Alternative to Topaz Gigapixel.
