A cheaper Aiarty alternative for Mac
Aiarty Video Enhancer became a popular answer to Topaz going subscription-only: $149 for a lifetime licence covering three machines, running locally. Crisp is $19 once for up to five Macs. Here's what the $130 gap actually buys, and when it's worth paying.
Both are answering the same question
Topaz ended perpetual licences in October 2025 and moved to $299 a year. Aiarty and Crisp are both replies to the same frustration — people who want to buy software once and keep it. Aiarty answers it at $149; Crisp answers it at $19. Neither is trying to out-feature Topaz.
Where Aiarty is stronger
- Restoration model range. Aiarty ships several models tuned for different damage — compression artefacts, low resolution, soft focus — and lets you pick per clip. Crisp gives you fewer choices on purpose.
- Windows too. Crisp is Mac-only.
- Batch as standard. Aiarty's batch queue is included; in Crisp it's part of the $19 unlock.
If you process a lot of archival footage and want to choose a model per clip, that control is the thing you're paying for and it's real.
Where Crisp is stronger
Aiarty enhances video. It doesn't edit it. There's no timeline, so trimming, ordering clips, building a montage, stacking a split-screen or adding titles happens somewhere else.
Crisp does the enhancement and the edit in the same app. For the common workflow — take a few clips, cut them together, make the result sharper, export once — that's one pass instead of bouncing between two tools and re-encoding in between. Every extra transcode costs a little quality, so doing it once genuinely matters.
| Crisp | Aiarty Video Enhancer | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $19 one-time | $149 lifetime |
| Machines | 5 | 3 |
| Timeline editing | Yes | No |
| Model choice per clip | Limited | Yes |
| Runs offline | Yes | Yes |
| Platform | Mac only | Mac + Windows |
| Try before buying | Free tier, watermarked exports | Limited trial |
How to decide without guessing
Both let you test before paying, and vendor sample footage is chosen to flatter — so use your own worst clip. Judge three things: faces at full zoom, fine repeating texture like brick or fabric, and whether the picture shimmers during playback rather than on a paused frame. That last one is where cheap upscalers fall apart, because they sharpen each frame independently with no regard for the next.
If Aiarty's models visibly win on your footage, $149 is money well spent. If the results look close, the honest conclusion is that you're paying $130 for model selection you may never touch.
The short version
Archivist restoring damaged footage with per-clip control, on Windows and Mac: Aiarty. Someone making videos on a Mac who wants them sharper without a subscription: Crisp, at a tenth of the price, with the editor included.
What "lifetime" means in practice
Both of these are lifetime licences, and it's worth being precise about what that promises. You keep the version you bought, forever, offline. What it does not promise is that every future model or feature arrives free — vendors reserve the right to charge for major new versions, and most eventually do.
That's still a fundamentally different deal from a subscription. With Topaz at $299 a year, stopping payment means losing access to new models entirely. With a lifetime licence, stopping payment means you simply keep what you have. For occasional users that distinction is the whole argument.
A note on machine limits
Aiarty's $149 tier covers three machines and Crisp's $19 covers five, which sounds like a detail until you own a laptop and a desktop. Most people comparing these two are not comparing one install to one install, and licence limits are the sort of thing that only becomes annoying eighteen months later when you buy a new Mac.