BigImg API: Add AI Image Upscaling to Your App

What's live today

One endpoint: POST /api/v1/upscale, running the same Real-ESRGAN model as the website's upscaler. Send it a public image URL and a scale factor (2x, 4x, 8x, or 16x), and it returns a link to the upscaled result. Background removal, watermark removal, denoise, and enhance aren't wired up to the API yet — upscaling was the obvious first pick since it's BigImg's most-used tool.

Why there's no separate API pricing

A lot of "API access" products charge a second, API-only price on top of the consumer product — a different credit rate, a mandatory monthly minimum, sometimes a whole separate signup flow. We didn't do that. An API call spends from the exact same pool as a click on the website: your 10 free images a month if you haven't used them, then credits ($0.06 per image at the $3/50-credit rate), or unmetered access if you're on the $10/month Unlimited plan. One account, one balance, whether you're calling it from a browser or from your own code.

Getting started

1. Open your dashboard and click + New key under API Keys. Copy it — it's only shown once.
2. Send it as Authorization: Bearer bigimg_live_... on your request.
3. POST an imageUrl (must be publicly fetchable) and a scale to /api/v1/upscale.

curl https://bigimg.ai/api/v1/upscale \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer bigimg_live_..." \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"imageUrl": "https://example.com/photo.jpg", "scale": 4}'

The response is a temporary result URL (good for roughly an hour — download or re-host it if you need it longer) plus a via field telling you which quota it drew from: free_pool, credit, unlimited, or share_bonus.

Revoking a key

Every key can be revoked from the same dashboard card with one click — it stops working immediately, no need to email anyone. Up to 10 active keys per account, useful if you want a separate key per project or environment.