remove.bg made one-click background removal mainstream, and its cutouts are still very good. The catch is the free download: it's capped at 0.25 megapixels, which is fine for a thumbnail and useless for a print or a product listing. If you want a full-size cutout for free, our Background Remover runs in your browser, keeps your photo's original size and never uploads it. Here's how it and six other options stack up.
remove.bg says it's free for low-resolution images up to 0.25 megapixels processed on its website. Anything larger costs a credit. Here's what that cap means in real pixels, worked out for common photo shapes.
| Photo shape | Free download size (0.25 MP) | Typical original | Share of the original |
|---|---|---|---|
| 3:2 (most cameras) | 612 × 408 px | 6,000 × 4,000 (24 MP) | About 1% |
| 4:3 (most phones) | 577 × 433 px | 4,032 × 3,024 (12.2 MP) | About 2% |
| 1:1 (square) | 500 × 500 px | 3,024 × 3,024 (9.1 MP) | About 3% |
| 16:9 (widescreen) | 667 × 375 px | 3,840 × 2,160 (8.3 MP) | About 3% |
| 2:3 (portrait) | 408 × 612 px | 4,000 × 6,000 (24 MP) | About 1% |
A full-resolution download costs one credit and goes up to 50 megapixels, according to remove.bg's API documentation. Credits come in subscriptions or pay-as-you-go packs. Third-party pricing trackers list subscriptions starting at around $9 a month for 40 credits in 2026, which puts each full-size image at roughly 20 cents or more. Developers also get 50 free API calls a month at preview size.
The size cap. A 612-pixel cutout looks fine in a chat window. Put it on a marketplace listing that zooms, a slide on a projector or anything printed, and it falls apart.
The cost adds up. If you sell online and shoot 50 products a month, that's 50 credits every month for a job a free tool can often handle.
Uploads. remove.bg processes images on its servers. That's how it gets its quality, but it means every photo, including photos of people, leaves your device.
| Tool | Cost | Full-size output | Uploads your photo? | Best at |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ToolAspect Background Remover | Free | Yes | No | People and products, transparent or solid background |
| Apple Lift Subject | Free, built in | Yes | No | iPhone and Mac users, one photo at a time |
| Windows 11 Paint | Free, built in | Yes | No | Windows users, one click from the Image menu |
| rembg | Free, open source | Yes | No | Developers and batch jobs, several models to choose from |
| Adobe Express | Free with an Adobe account at the time of writing | Yes | Yes | Quick cutouts you'll design with straight away |
| Canva Background Remover | Canva Pro feature | Yes | Yes | People already paying for Canva |
| GIMP (Foreground Select) | Free | Yes | No | Manual control when AI gets it wrong |
On an iPhone or iPad, touch and hold the subject in Photos, then tap Copy or Share. On a Mac, right-click the photo in Preview or Photos and choose Copy Subject. In Windows 11, open the image in Paint and click Remove background in the Image section of the toolbar.
Better than they were, with a clear weak spot. Our tool uses MODNet, a portrait matting model, through Transformers.js. The first run downloads the model once, either the 25 MB full-precision version for the best edges or a 6.3 MB quantized one if you're on a slow connection. After that, all the processing happens on your device.
It's strongest on what it was trained for: people. Product shots, pets and objects with clear edges usually come out cleanly too. Where it falls behind remove.bg is the hard stuff: flyaway hair, fur against a busy background, glass and sheer fabric. Expect a softer edge there. Semi-transparent pixels around hair stay semi-transparent, which helps the cutout sit naturally on a new background.
A sensible routine is to try the free tool first. If the edges are good enough for where the image is going, you're done. If you need a perfect cutout of curly hair for a magazine cover, that's when one remove.bg credit earns its keep.
For a step-by-step walkthrough, see how to remove an image background. And if the photos you're cutting out came off a phone, it's worth stripping their GPS data before posting with the Image Metadata Remover.
Partly. remove.bg is free for low-resolution images up to 0.25 megapixels, which works out to about 612 by 408 pixels for a typical 3:2 photo. A full-resolution download costs one credit per image, and credits come from a subscription or pay-as-you-go packs.
Use a tool that doesn't cap the download. Browser-based removers that run on your device, Apple's Lift Subject on iPhone and Mac, and the Remove Background button in Windows 11 Paint all keep the photo's original size at no cost.
remove.bg processes images on its servers, so your photo is uploaded. Its privacy policy covers how long files are kept. If you don't want to upload at all, use an in-browser tool, the built-in options on iPhone, Mac or Windows, or the open-source rembg on your own computer.
Paid server-side services, remove.bg included, are generally strongest on flyaway hair, fur and semi-transparent edges because they run large models. Free in-browser models get people and products right but leave softer edges around fine hair. For a headshot that matters, try the free option first and pay only if the edges bother you.
remove.bg was built by Kaleido, an Austrian company. Canva acquired Kaleido in 2021, and remove.bg still runs as its own service with its own pricing.