FotorPea sells a subscription with credits attached. The plan costs $22.39 per month, $90.39 per year, or $130.39 as a perpetual license. Every tier was discounted the day we checked, so the list price and the checkout price rarely match.
Prices below were taken from the HitPaw purchase page on 12 July 2026. Every plan was on discount that day, so the list price and the price you actually pay are different numbers. HitPaw rotates these promos, so check before you buy.
| Plan | Price (12 Jul 2026) | Credits | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Monthly | $22.39 / month (list $27.99) | 100 | Auto-renews; cancel any time |
| Yearly | $90.39 / year (list $112.99; $73.44 with the 20% code) | 500 | Auto-renews |
| Perpetual | $130.39 (list $162.99; $105.94 with the 20% code) | 800 one-off | Future major versions cost extra |
| Credit pack | $4.99 one-off / $14.99 per month | 200 / 1000 | Requires an active subscription |
| Free version | $0 | - | No export |
That table is the sticker price, not the bill. Credits sit underneath it, and they have earned the section directly below this one. Two smaller facts belong here though. Buying the Windows version throws in a 3-day trial of the iOS, Android and Photoshop-plugin builds. HitPaw also advertises a 30-day money-back window on the purchase page.
Performance is where vendor copy and independent testing part ways. HitPaw hosts its own review page with 444 self-reported reviews and a "Great" score, which is marketing, not evidence. The independent picture is more mixed. A VideoProc hands-on test ran FotorPea across four cases, including an old-photo restore and a black-and-white colorization. Their colorized result showed "several other obvious inconsistencies throughout the image", and face restoration on old photos produced "noticeably blurry" areas that lacked fine detail. VideoProc sells a rival product, so read their conclusion with that in mind. Artifacts they photographed are still artifacts.
The independent blog NetLingo lands in the same place from a different angle: the app "may take longer on older PCs" and, on the hard cases, "if a photo is heavily damaged, results may vary". Two reviewers, no coordination, same two weak spots.
Pros:
Nine models give you real control over which fix runs
Covers Windows, Mac, phones plus Adobe's editor from one purchase
Batch mode handles a folder without babysitting
Good at ordinary enhancement: blur, noise, low light, mild upscaling
Cons:
Free version cannot export anything
Subscription plus credits makes the true cost hard to predict
Independent tests found blurry faces and color drift on old photos
Reviewers report it takes longer on older PCs
What FotorPea really costs to own
The plan price is a floor, not a total. Every tier ships with a credit balance. Monthly gives you 100, yearly 500, the perpetual tier 800. AI features spend that balance down, and whatever is left expires after six months on a subscription, twelve on a one-off pack.
You are buying two things and only one of them is on the price tag. There is the plan, and there is the credit balance the plan hands you. AI work draws on the balance. When it empties, the app still opens and the expensive models stop running until you top up.
HitPaw's credits page, cited in the Sources at the foot of this article, prices the top-ups. A one-off pack of 200 credits runs $4.99. A thousand credits a month runs $14.99. Then comes the catch stacked on the catch. Credit bundles require an active subscription before they unlock FotorPea's AI tools, so a pack bought on its own does nothing at all. Two meters, one price tag.
Then the balance evaporates. Credits that arrived with a subscription die after six months, credits from a one-off pack after a year. That is not unique to HitPaw, and it is also not the number anyone weighs when the yearly plan looks reasonable in the checkout.
The complaints follow the design. Buyers on PissedConsumer describe credit requirements that only became clear after they had paid for a subscription, a charge of $43 for the next month arriving six days into a trial, repeated failed attempts to cancel, and one refund settled at 50 percent with the buyer told the problem was their own fault. Those are complaints about HitPaw the company, not about image quality. They still cost money.
Work out how many credits your job needs before you pay, then find out what happens when they run out. A shoebox of scans is a batch job, and a batch job is exactly what drains a credit balance fastest.
Here is the arithmetic against our own product, because the cheap move would be to shout "cheaper" and walk away. Photo Retoucher is a one-time license, $49.99 for Home and $69.99 for Pro. No credits, no balance, nothing that expires. FotorPea's perpetual tier costs $130.39, which is more than either of ours, and it also buys a far wider set of jobs, so a straight price comparison would be a trick. The claim we are making is not that we are always cheaper. It is that one of these two bills you once and then goes quiet, while the other keeps a counter running behind the work.
How to use HitPaw FotorPea
Download and install FotorPea
Get the installer from hitpaw.com and run it. Windows and Mac builds are separate downloads, so grab the one that matches your machine.
Register to start the trial
Launch the app and sign in with an email address. That activates the 7-day trial. Remember that the free version will not let you export the result.
Load your photo
Click Choose File or drag an image into the window. JPG, PNG, WEBP, TIFF, RAW all work.
Pick the AI model that matches the damage
This is the step that decides your result. Faces go to the Face model, grain to Denoise, soft focus to Sharpen, a black-and-white print to Colorize, and white specks to Scratch Repair.
Adjust the strength and hit Preview
Where a model exposes an intensity slider, start low. FotorPea renders a live preview so you can judge the result before spending anything.
Run a batch if you have a folder
Switch to batch mode, add the folder, and apply the selected model across every file at once.
Compare, then re-run with another model
Look at the preview at 100 percent zoom, not fit-to-window. If skin looks waxy or the color drifted, switch models and run it again.
Export the finished image
Click Export and pick a format. Export is a paid feature, so this is where the trial ends and the plan begins.
Photo Retoucher
Restore and enhance old photos with SoftOrbits Photo Retoucher, AI-based photo restoration software. Remove scratches, reduce noise, and colorize black-and-white images automatically with AI.
Photo Retoucher
