Side by side

NextGenUp vs Real-ESRGAN

Both stand on image upscaling software. Which one you can start free with, which one lets you read the code, and what each costs once you pay.

NextGenUp

Free plan LinuxMacSelf-hosted+2

NextGenUp combines local processing with image and video enlargement, face restoration, and a non-enlarging Enhance mode. Check the web file-size and cleanup limits, and note that PNG is the listed output format.

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Real-ESRGAN

Free plan Open source LinuxMacSelf-hosted+2

Real-ESRGAN offers restoration models, portable executables and a Python implementation with broader scaling options. Choose the implementation with its feature limits and runtime requirements in mind.

Visit Real-ESRGAN

The facts

	NextGenUp	Real-ESRGAN
Free plan	Yes	Yes
Open source	Not published	Yes
Runs on	Linux, Mac, Self-hosted, Web, Windows	Linux, Mac, Self-hosted, Web, Windows
Lowest paid plan	Free or on request	Not published
Plans published	2	None
Maker	Not published	Not published
Website	matily.org	github.com
On image upscaling software	#3 of 99	#1 of 99

NextGenUp: what it does well

Processes files locally on the user's hardware
Upscales images up to 8K
Upscales video up to 4K
No subscription, watermark, or account required
Offers face restoration with GFPGAN v1.4

What to know first

Web files are limited to 2 GB
Older processed files are cleaned up after 24 hours
Listed output format is PNG

Real-ESRGAN: what it does well

Models cover general images, anime images and animation video.
Portable inference offers 2×, 3× and 4× scaling.
Supports alpha-channel, grayscale and 16-bit images.
Portable builds include binaries and models.
Training code supports fine-tuning on user or paired data.

What to know first

Portable builds omit some Python inference features.
Python implementation requires Python 3.7 or newer.
Python implementation requires PyTorch 1.7 or newer.

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