AI Background Remover: Where to Go After remove.bg Closes

One of the best-known AI background removers is going away as a standalone product. remove.bg's website "will no longer be available from 1 December 2026 at 9:00am CET", and its self-service API stops accepting requests the same day. The background removal is moving into Canva, which remove.bg has been part of since 2021, and API access is moving to Leonardo.ai, also part of Canva.^[1]

If you use remove.bg in a browser, Canva is the official continuation. If you call its API, you have about four weeks from this article's date to move, and the choice is wider than the official route. Below are the details of the shutdown, then the options: the official successors, another commercial API, free open-source tools and reAPI's endpoint, all checked on November 4, 2026.

What changes on December 1, 2026

From remove.bg's own FAQ:^[1]

The standalone remove.bg website closes at 9:00 CET.
The self-service API stops accepting requests. Enterprise API contracts "continue as normal".
Unused pay-as-you-go credits expire on December 1, 2026, so spend them first.
Subscriptions keep working until that time and then end automatically.
For the API, remove.bg points to Leonardo.ai, which it says uses "the same background-removal technology" and adds upscaling and scene generation.

Leonardo published its own notice, "remove.bg API is Moving to Leonardo.Ai", on August 28, 2026, and remove.bg's FAQ points self-service users to a migration guide.^[2]^[1]

AI background remover options compared

Option	Type	What we could confirm	Best fit
Canva background remover	Web app	Official home of remove.bg's consumer feature	Occasional photos, design work
Leonardo.ai API	Hosted API	Same technology as remove.bg's API, per remove.bg	Direct migration of remove.bg API code
Photoroom API	Hosted API	Remove Background API on the Basic plan; 1,000 free images in sandbox mode	Product photos at volume
rembg	Open source (MIT)	CLI, Python library and HTTP server; several models	Self-hosting, batch jobs
reAPI `mj-v7-remove-bg`	Hosted API	$0.088 per request; takes a public image URL	Teams already using reAPI for image models

Sources: remove.bg, Leonardo.ai, Photoroom and rembg documentation; reAPI model page.^[1]^[2]^[3]^[4]^[5] Leonardo's and Photoroom's per-image API prices were not readable on their public pages when we checked, so compare them inside each dashboard at your own volume.

Free AI background remover: rembg and BiRefNet

rembg is an MIT-licensed tool that runs locally as a command, a Python library or an HTTP server, and was still being updated in November 2026.^[4] It is a front end to several segmentation models rather than one model. Its README separates the newer bria-rmbg, birefnet-* and isnet-general-use models from the older u2net, u2netp and silueta, which it says "tend to produce firmer, blockier" edges. For portraits it suggests starting with birefnet-portrait and its color-decontamination option, which "only changes color, never coverage".^[4]

BiRefNet itself is an MIT-licensed research model for "high-resolution dichotomous image segmentation", published at CAAI AIR 2024, if you want to work with the model directly.^[6]

A typical single-file command looks like this, using a model name from rembg's README:

rembg i -m birefnet-portrait input.jpg output.png

The cost moves from per-image fees to your own compute. Our view: on a large catalog that tends to be the cheaper route, and on a dozen photos a month a hosted option is less work.

Background removal by API on reAPI

reAPI exposes background removal as the mj-v7-remove-bg operation of Midjourney V7, priced at $0.088 per request on the model page.^[5] It takes a fresh public image URL rather than a previous Midjourney task, so it works on any photo you can host. Its public contract returns image URLs; it does not promise a particular file type or alpha channel, so download a real result and confirm transparency before building a PNG-only pipeline.^[7] Our background removal API pricing guide works through cost per usable image, retries and failure handling for this endpoint.

Moving remove.bg API code

If you are an enterprise customer, nothing changes on December 1; your contract continues.^[1] For self-service accounts, this is our suggested order of work:

Find every caller. Search code, scheduled jobs and no-code automations for the remove.bg endpoint and API key, including integrations a colleague set up and forgot.
Spend or write off credits. Unused pay-as-you-go credits expire on December 1.^[1]
Compare the request contract, not only the price. Check how the new service accepts images (upload or public URL), which output format it returns and whether it includes an alpha channel, plus its size limits and rate limits.
Add a fallback. Keep a second provider or a local rembg path behind a flag, so a single provider outage does not stop your pipeline.
Cut over before the deadline. Leave a week of margin rather than switching on November 30.

Testing a replacement before December

Run the same 20 to 50 images through each candidate, chosen from your hardest real cases rather than easy product shots. Check four things: hair and fur edges, transparent or reflective objects such as glass, holes inside the subject such as the gap in a mug handle, and whether shadows you want to keep survive. Count the outputs you would ship without manual retouching; that acceptance rate matters more than the sticker price.

FAQ

Is remove.bg shutting down?

Its standalone website closes and its self-service API stops on December 1, 2026 at 9:00 CET. The feature continues inside Canva, the API continues through Leonardo.ai, and enterprise API contracts are not affected.^[1]

What happens to my remove.bg credits?

Unused pay-as-you-go credits expire on December 1, 2026. remove.bg recommends using them before then.^[1]

Is there a free AI background remover?

rembg is free and open source under the MIT license, and runs on your own machine.^[4] Photoroom offers 1,000 free images in its API sandbox for building and testing.^[3]

Picking a replacement after remove.bg

For browser use, follow remove.bg to Canva. For an API, the lowest-effort migration is Leonardo.ai, since remove.bg says it runs the same technology. If you want to control cost and data, self-host rembg with a BiRefNet model. If your stack already calls reAPI for image generation, its mj-v7-remove-bg endpoint adds an AI background remover on the same key and balance.

References

remove.bg. FAQ: remove.bg is moving to Canva. Retrieved November 4, 2026 from remove.bg/faq
Leonardo.ai. remove.bg API is Moving to Leonardo.Ai. August 28, 2026. Retrieved November 4, 2026 from leonardo.ai/news/removebg-api-leonardo
Photoroom. API pricing. Retrieved November 4, 2026 from photoroom.com/api/pricing
danielgatis. rembg repository and README. Retrieved November 4, 2026 from github.com/danielgatis/rembg
reAPI. Midjourney V7 model page (Remove BG). Retrieved November 4, 2026 from reapi.ai/models/midjourney-v7
Peng Zheng et al. BiRefNet repository. Retrieved November 4, 2026 from github.com/ZhengPeng7/BiRefNet
reAPI. Background removal API pricing: cost per usable image. Retrieved November 4, 2026 from reapi.ai/blog/background-removal-api-pricing