remove.bg alternatives: what to use before it closes on December 1
remove.bg’s website and self-serve API close on December 1, 2026. Its official replacement, Canva, puts background removal behind a paid plan. Here’s what to use instead, free and paid.
The short answer
Pick by how you used it. For a few cutouts a month you don’t need a new app: an iPhone or a Mac already lifts the subject out of a photo for free, and Adobe’s web remover is free too. If you sell online and cut out photos in batches, switch to Photoroom (Pro is $7.50 a month billed yearly). Pixelcut Pro, at $8 a month billed yearly, is the cheaper unlimited option. Canva is remove.bg’s official new home and uses the same technology, but its Background Remover needs a paid Canva plan. If you have pay-as-you-go credits left, spend them now: they expire on December 1.
The tools in this take
PhotoroomApp and web editor for product photos. Removes backgrounds, adds shadows or studio scenes, and can batch-edit many listings. Free plan for simple cutouts; paid plans from $7.50 a month billed yearly.Free plan · from $7.50/month · Beginner-friendly
PixelcutWeb and mobile image editor with background removal, upscaling and AI backgrounds. Free plan includes limited background removal and watermark-free exports; Pro is $8 a month billed yearly.Free plan · from $8/month · Beginner-friendly
Canva AICanva's built-in AI. Describe a social post, flyer or slide and it makes a first draft you finish in Canva.Free plan · from $18/month · Beginner-friendly
Adobe FireflyAdobe's image generator. Safe to use for business images, and works with Photoshop.Free plan · from $9.99/month · Beginner-friendly
remove.bgBackground removal website and API for photos of people, products and more. The standalone site and self-service API are scheduled to shut down on December 1, 2026; consumer use moves into Canva and the API into Leonardo.ai.Free · Beginner-friendly
Leonardo.AiKeeps the same character or product looking consistent across many images. Game artists like it for that.Free plan · from $12/month · Beginner-friendly
In this take
Side by side
| Tool | Best for | Free? | What it costs | Skip if |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| iPhone or Mac Preview | A few cutouts of a person, pet or product | Yes, built in | Free | You need dozens at once |
| Adobe Firefly | One free cutout in the browser | Yes | Free for background removal | You want batches |
| Photoroom | Product listings, in batches | Yes, simple cutouts | Pro $7.50/mo billed yearly; Max $20.99; Ultra $82.50 | You only need one cutout a month |
| Pixelcut | Cheap unlimited cutouts on phone or web | Limited, no watermark on exports | Pro $8/mo billed yearly ($10 monthly) | You want studio shadows and scenes |
| Canva | remove.bg’s official home, if you already pay for Canva | No, it’s a Canva Pro tool | Canva Pro or a team plan | You won’t use the rest of Canva |
Checked October 22, 2026 on each maker’s own pages. remove.bg’s shutdown details are from its own FAQ. Photoroom and Pixelcut figures are for yearly billing.
What closes on December 1, and what happens to your money
The remove.bg FAQ gives the date: the standalone website stops working on December 1, 2026 at 9:00am CET. That’s midnight on the US West Coast and 3am on the East Coast, so treat November 30 as your last day.
Pay-as-you-go credits expire that day, and the FAQ doesn’t mention refunds for them, so use them up. Monthly subscriptions keep working until the close, and any renewal on or after November 1 is free. Annual subscribers get a pro-rata refund to the original card for the unused time, with nothing to do. Accounts close too: download your invoices and credit usage report from the Account page before December 1, because remove.bg says you can’t get them afterward.
The Photoshop plugin and the other integrations stop on the same day. Only enterprise API contracts carry on as normal.
The catch in the official replacement
remove.bg belongs to Canva, and its FAQ sends everyone to Canva’s Background Remover, which it says uses the same background-removal technology. Canva also does bulk removal in its web and desktop apps, which the FAQ offers in place of the remove.bg desktop app.
What the FAQ doesn’t say is the price. Canva sells Background Remover as a Canva Pro feature, so a free Canva account won’t run it. The same goes for Affinity, the free design app Canva owns: the remove.bg FAQ says its built-in background removal runs on Canva AI and needs Canva Pro. If you already pay for Canva, this is the easy move. If you used remove.bg for a free cutout now and then, Canva isn’t a free swap.
Free: you may already have one
On an iPhone with iOS 16 or later, open a photo, touch and hold the subject, then tap Copy or Share. It works on people, pets and most objects. On a Mac, Preview has a Remove Background command.
On any computer, Adobe Firefly’s background remover is free in the browser for JPG, PNG and WEBP files up to 50MB. These all go one photo at a time, which is fine for a profile picture or a sticker and slow for a shop.
Photoroom if you sell online
Photoroom began as a cutout app for marketplace sellers and is the closest thing to remove.bg for people who process a lot of photos. The free plan covers simple cutouts. Pro is $7.50 a month billed yearly and runs 50 images per batch; Max ($20.99) raises that to 250, per Photoroom’s own comparison with remove.bg. Background removal is a core tool on paid plans, so it doesn’t use up the AI credits.
Watch the export cap. Pro includes 1,000 exports a month, and sellers on r/Flipping complained about limits they didn’t expect after paying.
Pixelcut for cheap unlimited cutouts
Pixelcut is the cheaper pick when you just want the background gone. Its free plan includes limited background removal and exports without a watermark. Pro is $8 a month billed yearly, or $10 month to month, with unlimited background removal, 1,000 batch exports a month, a commercial license and room for 3 people. People on r/Flipping who tried both tend to call Pixelcut cheaper and fine on a phone, and Photoroom better for batches with matching shadows.
If you called the remove.bg API
The self-service API stops accepting requests on December 1. remove.bg points you to Leonardo.Ai, another Canva company, which now offers the same background removal API next to upscaling and scene generation, and has a migration guide. It’s a separate account with its own keys and billing, so plan for a small rewrite, not a settings change, before the end of November. Enterprise contracts aren’t affected.
What we’d do
A cutout now and then: your iPhone, Mac Preview or Adobe Firefly, all free. A shop with weekly listings: Photoroom. Unlimited cutouts as cheaply as possible: Pixelcut Pro. Already paying for Canva: use its Background Remover and stop there. Whatever you pick, spend your remove.bg credits and download your invoices before November 30.
Related reading on ShipRadar: best AI background remover, best free AI photo editor and AI tools for editing photos.
Sources
Show all 13
- remove.bg FAQ: shutdown, credits, refunds, API
- Canva Pro: Background Remover
- Canva pricing
- Leonardo.Ai: remove background API
- Leonardo.Ai: migrate from the remove.bg API
- Apple: photo cutouts on iPhone
- Apple: remove a background in Preview
- Adobe Firefly: remove background
- Photoroom pricing
- Photoroom vs remove.bg
- Pixelcut pricing
- r/Flipping: Do NOT get a Photoroom plan
- r/Flipping: Photoroom vs Pixelcut
Published October 22, 2026. This is ShipRadar’s editorial opinion. Claims are paraphrased from the sources above; we don’t invent quotes, ratings or numbers.