Aiarty Image Enhancer
A conventional desktop upscaler competing on price and on the fact that it is a licence rather than a credit meter — once bought, batch size is limited by your machine, not by a balance. The $109 lifetime licence costs less than two years of the $59 annual plan and covers three machines instead of one, which makes the yearly tier hard to justify. Local processing also means nothing is uploaded, which matters for client work.
Pros
- Runs locally, so nothing is uploaded and batch size depends on your hardware
- Upscaling up to 32K on Windows (16K on Mac) with denoise, deblur, sharpen and face restoration in one tool
- Lifetime licence at $109 with updates for life, covering three machines
- From Digiarty Software, a Chengdu developer active since 2006 rather than an anonymous brand
Cons
- Windows and Mac licences are separate purchases with no cross-activation
- The $59 annual plan auto-renews and covers a single machine, against three on the $109 lifetime licence
- No API and no web version, so it cannot be scripted into a server pipeline
- Free download limits exports rather than being a usable free tier