Why Topaz ended perpetual licences

What actually changed

Topaz Labs moved its whole line to subscription. The trade press reported it first: CG Channel, Topaz Labs to end perpetual licenses of its software, by Jim Thacker, published 30 September 2025. Its words: Topaz Labs is “discontinuing perpetual licenses of its software”, and “perpetual licenses of Gigapixel, Video AI and Photo AI available until 3 October”.

This was not announced in a Topaz press release we can point you at. The primary public source is that trade article plus the company’s own pricing page, which no longer offers a perpetual option. We would rather say that plainly than imply a statement that does not exist: if Topaz published one, we have not found it.

The prices that ended

From the same article: perpetual licences cost $99 for Gigapixel, $199 for Photo AI and $299 for Video AI. You bought the version line and kept it.

What replaced them

Read from topazlabs.com/pricing on 15 October 2026, from the page itself rather than a summary of it:

• Topaz Video (Mac and PC): $299/year. Month by month it is $39/month if you commit to a year (billed monthly for 12 months, $468 over the year by our arithmetic), or $59/month, which Topaz’s Video page calls “no commitment”. Pro, which the pricing page says adds full commercial use for organisations over $1M annual revenue, is $699/year, or $74/month on an annual commitment.
• Topaz Studio, the all-apps bundle: $399/year, or $45/month billed monthly for 12 months; a $69/month Studio price is also listed with no commitment wording. Studio Pro $799/year.
• Studio tiers include monthly cloud credits (300 on Studio, 600 on Studio Pro) and the page states that credits “expire at the end of each month and do not roll over”.

Across that whole page, the words perpetual, one-time and lifetime appear zero times. Checked 15 October 2026.

If you already own one

The change ran ahead of its own deadline. CG Channel noted on 30 September that Topaz Labs “has already removed perpetual licenses from its online store”, while a route to buy one remained open until 3 October, so the shop front changed before the date did, which is worth knowing if you remember checking the store and finding nothing.

What happens to a licence you already bought? We found no Topaz page that says. The best public report is a second trade source, Digital Production’s Topaz drops perpetual licences, bets on subscriptions with Studio launch, by Bela Beier, 2 October 2025. It says “Existing perpetual licences continue to function,” but that “users will need a subscription for updates and new features”. It also says founding customers “will receive discounts on Studio subscriptions and additional access privileges”, without saying how large the discount is. That is a trade report of the plan, not a Topaz statement and not a licence document, so if you hold a licence, check with Topaz before you rely on it.

Adobe now owns Topaz

On 25 June 2026 Adobe announced a definitive agreement to acquire Topaz Labs, and on 23 September 2026 it said the purchase was complete. Adobe’s posts say Topaz Labs “will continue as a standalone brand” and its apps and models “continue to be available as standalone products”. Neither post says anything about pricing, subscriptions or perpetual licences, so nothing Adobe has published tells you whether the subscription-only terms will change. Read 15 October 2026; the pricing page above still shows subscription plans only.

The arithmetic worth doing

Video AI was $299 once. Topaz Video is $299 a year. A customer who bought the perpetual licence in, say, 2023 and would have kept using it has, from October 2025 onwards, a choice between staying on the version they own and paying annually to keep moving.

That is not a scandal, a company can change how it sells. It is simply a different deal from the one that existed, and it is the reason a lot of people are suddenly looking for something they can buy once.

Where Topaz is still better

Read 15 October 2026 from topazlabs.com/topaz-video unless a line says otherwise:

• Windows as well. The page says “Available for mac and windows”. Crisp is Mac only: Apple Silicon, macOS 14 or later.
• It runs inside other editors. Topaz says to use it “as a standalone app, or as a plugin to your favorite video editing software”, and lists After Effects and DaVinci Resolve. Crisp is a standalone app with no plugin.
• More models and modes. The page names sixteen for Video, from Starlight Precise and Proteus to Chronos, SDR to HDR and Stabilization. Crisp’s Enhance tool has five presets (Auto, Enhance to 4K, Max, Low-light and Anime) and no per-artefact sliders.
• Cloud-run models. Starlight Sharp, HQ and Fast run in Topaz’s cloud on Personal plans, and the page says they are “not supported locally on Mac”. Crisp has no cloud models; everything it does runs on your Mac.
• A long public record. Trustpilot shows Topaz Labs at 3.7 from 56,621 reviews, 64% five-star and 5% one-star, and says Topaz replied to 98% of negative reviews (Trustpilot, read 15 October 2026). Crisp is new and has nothing like that to show.

If you need those, the subscription buys something real. If what you wanted was to own the tool, that option is no longer on their price list.

Where Crisp sits

Crisp is $129, once · or 4 × $32.25, on up to 3 Macs at a time, for personal and commercial work. No subscription, no credits, no render minutes, no monthly cap and no per-export fee. It runs offline on your own machine, and it has a real timeline and an auto-montage, which the upscalers in this category generally do not.

Sources: CG Channel, 30 September 2025, and Digital Production, 2 October 2025, both linked above; Adobe, 25 June and 23 September 2026; topazlabs.com/pricing and topazlabs.com/topaz-video, read 15 October 2026; Trustpilot, read 15 October 2026. Prices move. We date every figure so you can tell how old it is.