Topaz Video AI pricing, plans and limits

Last updated: 2026-10-07

By the vendor's count, more than 20 AI models sit inside Topaz Video AI, now sold as Topaz Video, a Mac and Windows app that upscales, denoises, deinterlaces and slows down footage. Its diffusion-based Starlight models target badly degraded sources, and jobs render on your own GPU or in a credit-billed cloud service.

About Topaz Video AI

Topaz Video AI is the video enhancement app from Topaz Labs, an Addison, Texas company that Feng "Albert" Yang founded in 2006 in a guest bedroom and that his son and co-founder Eric Yang led as CEO through the sale. The app was sold with a perpetual license until its last build, 7.1.5, then relaunched in September 2025 as subscription-only Topaz Video, restarting at version 1. Adobe announced a deal to acquire Topaz Labs in late June 2026 and closed it in September, and says the Topaz apps stay available as standalone products. G2 and many reviews still use the old name, so this page covers the current app under it.

Using it is a loop of previewing and comparing. You drop a clip into the app, pick a model, render a few seconds as a preview, then try another model, because the best choice changes with the source. ProVideo Coalition ran four clips through the model library in July 2026, from a 320x240 film scan to ordinary beach footage, and concluded that you generally have to try several models to see which one comes out best. Once a setting looks right you export on your own GPU, or send the job to Topaz's cloud, which bills in credits instead of asking for hardware.

It suits post-production and archive work more than quick social edits. Topaz markets it to filmmakers, archivists, creators and hobbyists, and editors can run it standalone or as a plugin inside their timeline. People who only need to push a finished edit to 4K can try the built-in upscaling in CapCut or Runway, and phone-first users with short clips can try Remini. Clips from AI video generators such as Kling and Pika are a growing use, because the vendor says Starlight Precise 2.6 improves generated footage that looks soft or plastic, provided its structure and composition are sound.

Topaz Labs sells the same models in several wrappers. Stills go through Topaz Photo AI, and the Topaz Studio plan bundles the video and photo apps with the web and mobile versions. Adobe's link to the company already shows up in Adobe Firefly and Photoshop, where Topaz models are offered as a third-party option for image upscaling. The guide to AI photo editing and restoration covers the still-image side.

The local-first design is the main reason to pick it over a web editor: footage never leaves your computer unless you choose cloud rendering, which matters for client or archive material, and it ties the experience to your own hardware, a trade-off covered in the guide to running AI locally. Unlike the video generators in the AI video tools category, it works on footage you already have instead of producing new clips. For the editing side, see the guide to AI video editing and creation and the all-in-one versus specialists guide.

Pricing

Read from the vendor's pricing page on 7 October 2026. Personal: $25/mo billed $299 a year, $39/mo on a 12-month term, or $59/mo month to month. Pro (adds seat management and full commercial use): $58/mo billed $699 a year or $74/mo on a 12-month term.

Topaz Studio bundles the video app with Gigapixel, Mobile, Web and the stills app Topaz Photo AI for $399 a year, $45/mo on a 12-month term or $69/mo month to month. Personal licenses allow commercial use only for organizations under $1M annual revenue. 99/mo (9,000 credits), or as one-time packs from $5 to $999 that never expire.

Perpetual licenses are no longer sold.

Key Features

• Starlight diffusion upscalers: Mini, Sharp, Fast 2, HQ and Precise models rebuild detail from degraded or low-resolution sources without manual tuning, and Starlight Precise 2.6 added three selectable sharpness levels in version 1.7.0.
• Enhancement models with manual control: Proteus exposes six sliders (compression, detail, sharpen, noise, dehalo, anti-alias) while Iris targets faces, Nyx noise, Rhea 4x upscales, and Artemis, Gaia and Theia cover balanced, high-quality and detail-focused cases.
• Frame interpolation and slow motion: Apollo, Chronos and Aion convert frame rates and build slow motion, and ProVideo Coalition saw Aion reach a 16x slowdown where Apollo and Chronos stop at 8x.
• SDR to HDR and stabilization: Hyperion maps SDR footage into Rec. 2020 or native HDR color spaces, and an automatic stabilization filter smooths handheld shake.
• Local and cloud rendering: Local renders keep files on your machine, while cloud jobs take AV1, VP9, H.264 and H.265 sources up to 100 GB at up to 8K output, and finished files stay on Topaz servers for 7 days.
• Editor plugins: Plugins load the models inside After Effects, DaVinci Resolve Studio, Final Cut Pro and Nuke, and a free panel sends Premiere clips to the cloud queue.
• Interlaced and legacy footage models: ProVideo Coalition lists Dione models for DV camcorder and broadcast-tape sources and notes that Proteus and Iris also accept interlaced input.

Pros

• Local renders carry no per-clip fee, so a long archive job costs time and power instead of credits.
• Plugins for four editing and compositing tools let enhancement happen on the timeline instead of in a round trip through the standalone app.
• Adobe's completed purchase came with a stated commitment to keep the Topaz apps standalone and supported, which lowers the risk of an abrupt shutdown.
• Picking a model per clip lets an editor trade sharpness against natural texture, a control that one-upload enhancers such as Remini do not offer.

Cons

• Starlight is slow: ProVideo Coalition measured between 0.04 and 0.11 frames per second for Mini, Precise 2.5, HQ and Fast 2 on an RTX 4080, about 2 hours for 10 seconds of 30 fps footage on Mini, and the vendor says renders can run from minutes to several days.
• Starlight needs heavy hardware: at least 10 GB of VRAM on NVIDIA cards (the docs recommend 16 GB or more), twice that on AMD, or a 36 GB Apple silicon Mac, and GTX 10 series cards are excluded.
• There is no free trial of the current app according to a December 2025 Topaz staff reply, and perpetual licenses stopped being sold after October 3, 2025, so owning a version outright now means a purchase made before that date.
• Cloud rendering has gaps: Starlight jobs cap at 9,000 frames (about 5 minutes at 30 fps), and SDR to HDR, stabilization and Rhea XL cannot be sent to the cloud.
• It runs on Windows and Apple silicon Macs only: Intel Macs, Linux, virtual machines and Snapdragon PCs are unsupported, and integrated graphics are technically supported but rarely fast enough to use.
• A Personal license covers one computer at a time, and local Starlight Sharp, HQ and Fast sit on the Pro plan, a split ProVideo Coalition said annoys individual freelancers who are pushed into Pro just to render the newer models locally.

Visit Topaz Video AI Official Website