Is Topaz Video AI free?
No. Topaz Video — the app formerly called Topaz Video AI — is sold as a subscription: $299 a year or $59 a month for the desktop app, and Topaz's own pricing page lists no free plan (topazlabs.com/pricing, read 28 September 2026). Since 23 September 2026 Topaz Labs has belonged to Adobe, which says the Topaz apps continue as standalone products.
What Topaz Video costs today
These are the desktop plans on Topaz's pricing page as read on 28 September 2026. Prices change, so treat the page itself as the source of truth.
| Topaz Video plan | Price |
|---|---|
| Desktop, billed yearly | $299 a year |
| Desktop, billed monthly | $59 a month |
| Pro, billed yearly | $699 a year |
There is no one-time price on that page. Three years of the yearly plan is $897; three years of the monthly plan is $2,124.
How it got here
Topaz used to sell a perpetual licence. It stopped on 3 October 2025, and the app was renamed from Topaz Video AI to Topaz Video along the way — which is why so many people still search for the old name (what changed, and when). Then, on 23 September 2026, Adobe completed its purchase of Topaz Labs. Adobe says the apps carry on as standalone products; what that means for pricing later is not something anyone outside the two companies can know yet.
Free and one-time options on a Mac
Crisp is the one this site is about, so weigh that. Its free tier runs the full editor and the standard AI enhancement, and video exports carry a small “Made with Crisp” mark, about 12% of the frame's width, bottom right; photos come out unmarked. Pro removes the mark and adds the generative Max lane and batch processing for $129 once, or 4 × $32.25 — with a founding price of $64.50 for the first 25 buyers. It runs offline: nothing is uploaded.
Measured on a 3.75-second, 90-frame film clip, Crisp's free Enhance lane upscaled it 4× in 13.0 seconds. The generative Max lane took 30.3 seconds a frame on the same clip — slow, and on video it needs a Mac with 48 GB of memory or more — but on a deliberately degraded 176×144 phone clip it held 1.93× the fine detail of a plain upscale.
Open-source image upscalers such as Real-ESRGAN, and free apps built on it, cost nothing and work well on single images. Using them on video means splitting it into frames and putting it back together, which is where the time and the disk space go (what that route costs, measured).
What Topaz still does better
Topaz has a deeper catalogue of models and more control over each one, a Windows version, and a long record in professional restoration work. If you need those, a subscription can be worth it. If what you want is to make old or low-resolution video look better on your own Mac without a yearly bill, a free tier and a one-time price are a different trade, and the full comparison sets the two side by side.
Questions people ask
Is there a free trial of Topaz Video?
Topaz's pricing and product pages, read on 28 September 2026, list paid plans only. Check topazlabs.com for current trial terms before relying on one.
Did Adobe buy Topaz Labs?
Yes. Adobe completed its purchase of Topaz Labs on 23 September 2026, and says the Topaz apps continue as standalone products.
Can I still buy Topaz Video AI with a one-time payment?
Not from Topaz. It stopped selling perpetual licences on 3 October 2025; the desktop app is now $299 a year or $59 a month.
What is a free alternative to Topaz Video AI on a Mac?
Crisp's free tier upscales and restores video offline on a Mac with a small “Made with Crisp” mark on video exports; Pro is $129 once, or 4 × $32.25.
Related
- Why Topaz ended perpetual licences
- The best Topaz alternative for Mac
- Switching from Topaz Video AI to Crisp
Related guides
What AI upscaling does · UniFab vs Topaz vs Crisp · Upscale video on a Mac