ImgUpscaler alternative

imgupscaler.ai is one of the most visible web upscalers, and for good reasons. You can use it without signing up, its pricing page listed 6 free images a day when we checked, and its site says results carry no watermark. That is more generous than our free tier, which gives 3 credits a day with a small watermark on results.

It is also broad. Besides upscaling to presets up to 16K, it offers a long list of tools, from old photo restoration and unblurring to photo-to-anime and a video upscaler. It accepts HEIC files straight from an iPhone, batches up to 20 images, and sells credit packs that never expire, which suits people who upscale in occasional bursts.

If you want one site for many different image jobs, or the most free images per day, ImgUpscaler is the better pick.

We do fewer things on purpose. Enhance is a model for one very common problem: phone photos that come out grainy, blotchy and smeared in poor light, and then get compressed by a chat app. It removes that damage at the same size and keeps the lighting and colours, so a night photo stays a night photo. For many people with a disappointing phone photo, that, not a bigger file, is what they need.

Our upscalers are judged at 100% on photographs. Upscale 8× in particular is built for small images that need to become large prints: landscapes, nature and buildings, with output up to 80 MP. Each example on this page states the exact input and output size.

Our pricing is a monthly plan: Pro is $9.99 for 200 credits, Pro+ $19.99 for 500. One photo uses 1 credit; an 8× upscale uses 2.

• A clean image you just need bigger, now, for free: either works; ImgUpscaler's free tier gives you more images without a watermark.
• A grainy indoor or night phone photo: start with PhotoRescue Enhance.
• A WhatsApp or Messenger photo full of blocks: Enhance first; see how to fix WhatsApp photo quality.
• A thumbnail of a landscape headed for a poster: compare both, then check the print size with our print calculator.
• Video, anime styles or many different tools: ImgUpscaler.

Benchmarks on someone else's pictures tell you little about yours. A fair test takes ten minutes:

1. Pick two or three photos you actually need to fix: the small one, the noisy one, the one with a face or text.
2. Run each through ImgUpscaler and through PhotoRescue at the same scale. Our free plan needs no account; results carry a watermark, which does not get in the way of judging quality.
3. Open both results side by side at 100% zoom, not fitted to the screen. Look at edges, faces, foliage and any lettering.
4. Ask two questions: does it look natural, and is it still the same photo? Extra crispness that changes a face or invents letters is not an improvement.