Kanto Labs
AI Image Upscaler icon

Media · Apify actor

Enlarge images 2x or 4x with AI, not blur

Paste image links and get back public download links to upscaled files with sharper detail, cleaner edges and less blur and JPEG noise than a normal resize. Two models: one for photos and real-world images, one for anime, cartoons, illustrations and line art. It runs Real-ESRGAN, the widely used open-source model, inside the actor: no third-party AI API, no watermark.

$0.01 per image$0.06 per large imageFailed inputs are freeLaunching soon

Launching soon. AI Image Upscaler is built, tested and priced, and is waiting to go public on the Apify Store. The button below opens its Store page, which will be live shortly.

What it does

AI Image Upscaler, in short

  • Real-ESRGAN general x4v3 for photos, products, screenshots and scans; AnimeVideo v3 for drawn art
  • 4x or 2x at the same price
  • Transparency kept; JPEG, PNG or WEBP output
  • A public download link for every upscaled file, with input and output dimensions
  • Standard size: inputs up to about 0.3 megapixels, output up to 2560x1920 at 4x
  • Large mode (allowLargeImages): inputs up to about 2.1 MP (1920x1080), output up to 7680x4320

Who it's for

Built for

EcommerceTurn small supplier product photos into sharp 2,000+ px images for your store.
Print and merchEnlarge artwork and photos towards print resolution.
Anime, game and illustration artThe anime model keeps flat colours and clean lines.
Before OCR or computer visionUpscale tiny text and small images first.

Example

Input and output

One dataset row per result, downloadable as JSON, CSV or Excel, or read through the Apify API.

Input
{
  "imageUrls": ["https://example.com/product-small.jpg"],
  "scale": "4",
  "model": "general",
  "outputFormat": "png"
}

From a real cloud run with allowLargeImages on, shortened; the 960x431 input is above 0.3 MP, so it was upscaled at full size and charged as a large image.

Output (one row)
{
  "imageUrl": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/.../960px-Fronalpstock_big.jpg",
  "outputUrl": "https://api.apify.com/v2/key-value-stores/.../records/0000-960px-Fronalpstock_big-x4.jpg",
  "model": "general",
  "scale": 4,
  "width": 960,
  "height": 431,
  "outputWidth": 3840,
  "outputHeight": 1724,
  "tier": "large",
  "hasTransparency": false,
  "inferenceMs": 15684,
  "chargedAs": "large-image-upscaled",
  "error": null
}

Pricing

Pay per result. Failures are free.

$0.01image upscaled · $10.00 per 1,000

No subscription, no monthly minimum. Apify platform compute is included in the price; Apify also adds a tiny start fee per run ($0.00005 per GB of run memory).

Example costs
You runYou pay
100 product photos, standard size$1.00
1,000 standard images$10.00
20 full-HD images, large mode$1.20
Worked example. You upscale 300 small supplier photos at 4x and 6 of the links are dead.294 upscaled × $0.01 = $2.94
6 failed downloads = $0.00

Not charged:

  • Failed downloads and unreadable files
  • Images refused because they are already bigger than the result would be
  • Links from social networks and stock-photo sites, which are refused on purpose

Without allowLargeImages, bigger inputs are first reduced to about 0.3 MP and charged $0.01. On the default 4 GB memory, a standard image takes about 12 seconds and a full 1920x1080 input about 80 seconds. You can set Maximum cost per run in the run options and the actor stops cleanly when it is reached.

FAQ

Questions

How good is it?

Real-ESRGAN is the reference open-source upscaler used by many desktop and web tools. It recovers edges and textures and removes compression noise; it does not invent faces or text that were never there. Tiny text and faces benefit less than landscapes, products and art.

Which model should I pick?

general for photos, product shots, screenshots and scans; anime for anything drawn: anime, cartoons, comics, game art, logos and line art.

Is my image stored anywhere else?

No. It is downloaded by the run, processed inside the actor and saved only in your own run storage.

Which images can I use?

Any direct image link you have the right to process. Links from social networks and stock-photo sites are refused.

Try AI Image Upscaler on Apify

Apify's free plan includes monthly platform credit you can use to try it. Also callable from AI assistants through the Kanto Labs MCP server.

Run it on Apify