Model · Tencent ARC Lab · Image-Enhance
Real-ESRGAN
The de-facto open-weights image upscaler. Battle-tested across years of community use; runs on CPU or GPU, integrates with virtually every local image pipeline.
- Modality
- Image-Enhance
- License
- BSD-3-Clause (Open)
- Released
- July 22, 2021
- Last verified
- May 10, 2026
- Runs locally
- Yes
Strengths
- Permissive BSD license — fully open commercially
- Decade of community tooling — ComfyUI nodes, Automatic1111, CLI wrappers
- Specialised variants for anime, faces, and general photos
Weaknesses
- Older architecture — diffusion-based upscalers can produce more detail
- Default models can over-smooth on photographic textures
Try it
| Where | Type | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub | local | Reference implementation |
| Hugging Face | weights | Pre-trained weights |
| Replicate | hosted | API key required |
Official sources
Change log
- — Initial entry.
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