remove.bg API alternatives, compared on price

IsraModel AI has no public API for background removal, so it is not in the comparison below. We make a free background remover that runs in the browser, and an app that turns product photos into studio and on-model images. If your images go through code, a scheduled job or an automation, you need one of the APIs on this page.

If a person uploads the photos by hand, a few or up to 20 at a time, you may not need an API at all; see the last section.

Leonardo’s migration guide maps remove.bg’s parameters to their new places. The changes that matter most:

• A new account and a new key. remove.bg credentials do not carry over. The key goes in an Authorization: Bearer header instead of X-Api-Key.
• A new endpoint, and JSON only. Requests go to Leonardo’s sync generations endpoint with the model set to remove-bg. Form uploads become base64 or an image URL, and options such as size, type and bg_color keep their values but move under parameters. Inputs can be up to 25 MB.
• The response is JSON, not image bytes. You download the result from results[0].url, or ask for base64 and decode results[0].dataB64.
• No more “auto” or “zip” formats. Ask for PNG or WebP when you need transparency, JPG otherwise. PNG output is capped at 10 megapixels.
• Cost: $0.1047 per image, reported in a cost object in each response rather than the X-Credits-Charged header.
• Lower default rate limit. Leonardo allows 100 images a minute as standard, against remove.bg’s 500, with higher limits on request.
• Your images are kept unless you say otherwise. remove.bg stored nothing. Leonardo keeps the input and the output in your Leonardo library by default; set ephemeral: true to keep nothing and get a link that lasts 30 minutes. For customer or unreleased product photos, that setting matters.

Sources: Leonardo.ai migration guide, remove-bg reference and announcement, checked October 26, 2026.

• Least work to migrate: Leonardo.ai. It is the route remove.bg itself points to, and its guide maps each parameter, so most integrations need a new endpoint, header and response parser rather than a rewrite.
• Lowest price per image among those we read: Photoroom’s Basic plan, at $0.02 per image. Pixelcut follows at $0.05.
• More than a cutout in the same call: Photoroom’s Plus plan adds AI backgrounds, shadows and ghost mannequin; Claid lets you combine several edits in one request.
• Privacy: check where results are stored by default before you send customer photos. On Leonardo that means setting ephemeral: true.
• Quality on your products: no price table tells you this. Run the same set of your hardest images (hair, lace, glass, white on white, reflective metal) through each candidate and compare the edges on a black background.

If your key only ever ran a plugin or a small script for a weekly batch, and a person chooses the photos anyway, a browser tool may be enough. Ours removes backgrounds from up to 20 photos at a time, free and with no account, and exports transparent PNGs, white JPGs or Amazon-ready squares in one ZIP; see the bulk background remover. It does not run unattended, and it is not built for thousands of images a day.

If you used the API through a plugin, Photoshop, Figma and PowerPoint now have removers of their own: see remove.bg plugin alternatives. For the dates, credits and invoices, see the remove.bg shutdown checklist.