A free remove.bg alternative
remove.bg is closing its website on 1 December 2026 and moving into Canva: its API moves to Leonardo.Ai the same day. BGNinja stays free, stays a website, and needs no account. What the shutdown means for you. Until then, remove.bg's free tier hands you a 0.25 MP preview and puts the real download behind a credit or a subscription.
BGNinja skips the preview step: full resolution, free, 10 photos a day, no account. Remove bg free, right here, with no credit to buy and no watermark on the download.
By ShinobiTools Team · Last updated: 2 October 2026
Full resolution. No watermark. Actually free. remove.bg and Slazzer hand you a 625×400 preview for free and charge for the full file. Here the first 10 photos a day come back at full resolution.
remove.bg is shutting down on 1 December 2026
remove.bg announced that it is migrating its background removal into Canva, which has owned it since 2021. Its API page says that starting 1 December 2026, background removal moves to Leonardo.Ai, also part of Canva. remove.bg's own FAQ (checked 2 October 2026) gives the details: the standalone website stops on 1 December 2026 at 9:00 CET, unused pay-as-you-go credits expire that day, subscriptions end automatically (annual plans get a pro-rata refund, and a monthly renewal on or after 1 November is free), and the self-service API and the Photoshop plugin stop too. Enterprise API contracts carry on. Export your invoices and usage report before then; the accounts close with the site.
- Using the website? Drop your photo in the tool above: full-resolution PNG, free, no account, 10 photos a day.
- Using the remove.bg API? BGNinja has a free background removal API too: no key, one POST, same kind of transparent PNG back. The migration notes map remove.bg's parameters to ours.
- Have credits left? Spend them or ask remove.bg about them before 1 December; nothing on our side needs them.
What remove.bg's free tier actually gives you
remove.bg is a capable tool, but "free" there means a preview. Checked on 2 October 2026 against remove.bg's own pricing page and help centre: the free result is capped at 0.25 megapixels (roughly 625×400 pixels), and free use, with or without an account, is restricted to non-commercial work. A free account adds one bonus credit for a full-size download. After that the full-resolution file costs a credit, from €1.00 a photo in a pack of three down to €0.21 each in a bulk pack of 8,000, or a subscription starting at €9/month for 40 photos (€8.10/month, €97.20 a year, billed yearly).
| remove.bg (checked 2 Oct 2026) | BGNinja | |
|---|---|---|
| Still running after 1 Dec 2026? | No: the website closes at 9:00 CET, removal moves into Canva and the API to Leonardo.Ai (FAQ) | Yes, same address, still free |
| Free output | 0.25 MP preview (~625×400 px) | Full resolution, up to 30 MP, 10 photos a day |
| Account needed | Not for the preview; yes for the 1 bonus full-size credit | No |
| Watermark | None (the free file is small instead) | None |
| Free use | Non-commercial only (help page) | No personal-use restriction in our terms |
| Full-resolution price | €1.00/photo (pack of 3) to €0.21 in bulk, or from €9/month for 40 (pricing) | Free; optional pass €3 for 24 hours or €5 for 30 days, one-off |
| Files | JPG, PNG, WebP, up to 22 MB; paid output up to 50 MP (help page) | JPG, PNG, WEBP, HEIC, up to 99 MB |
| Where it runs | Website, desktop app, Photoshop plugin and API, all until 1 Dec 2026 | Website and a free API (10 a day, no key) |
| Your upload | Discarded after 60 minutes, per remove.bg's uploader | Not stored; the cutout goes straight back to you |
Where remove.bg is better
- Hair. In a small spot check on 26 September 2026 we ran 2 photos through both tools. On an old portrait with dark curly hair, remove.bg's cutout was clean; ours left a faint see-through halo along the hair and cut away part of the jaw. On a wine glass the two were level. Two photos is a spot check, not a verdict, but on hair it went their way.
- Bigger files. Paid remove.bg output goes up to 50 megapixels; ours stops at 30 MP on the free tier and 100 MP with a pass.
- More ways in, until December. A desktop app, a Photoshop plugin and an API with 50 free preview calls a month. All of them stop on 1 December 2026.
Best for: remove.bg, a paid job with a lot of hair or fur in it, while the site is still open. BGNinja, a handful of photos at full resolution today, without an account, and still there after 1 December.
What you get on BGNinja instead
BGNinja runs the same kind of AI segmentation, on our own servers, and gives the full-resolution PNG back immediately: no credit, no plan, no account to create first. There's a ceiling of 10 photos a day, and a limit of 99 MB and 30 megapixels per photo. If a stray edge needs fixing, the 🩹 Erase and ↩ Restore brushes clean it up by hand, and ✨ Magic erase can paint out an object or person from the same photo.
- Full-resolution PNG, every time, not a preview
- No account, no credit card, nothing to sign up for
- No watermark and 10 photos a day
- JPG, PNG, WEBP and HEIC (straight from an iPhone), up to 99 MB
We're not claiming BGNinja's cutout beats remove.bg's. Our only side-by-side is the 2-photo spot check above, and on hair remove.bg came out ahead (see our notes on hair and fur edges, the hardest case for any tool). What we can say plainly: the file you get here is full resolution and free, with no credit counter standing between you and the download. If a cutout needs touching up, the Erase and Restore brushes are built for that; see the general background remover guide for the full walkthrough.
What about an animated GIF?
Like remove.bg, this tool works on a single still image (JPG, PNG, WEBP or HEIC), not an animated file. To remove bg from GIF files, or remove GIF bg without flattening it to one frame, use VideoBGNinja instead: it processes every frame and keeps the animation intact. A remove bg GIF job is the one case where you need that second tool, because this one cuts backgrounds out of still photos.
The comparison above looks at the tools themselves rather than at what any forum thread says, and it ranks them by what actually differs: full resolution here, a 0.25 MP preview there. If you code against remove.bg, BGNinja has a free background removal API with no key and no account, 10 images a day, and a transparent PNG straight back.
Common questions
Is remove.bg shutting down?
Yes. remove.bg's own FAQ says its standalone website stops on 1 December 2026 at 9:00 CET; background removal moves into Canva and the API to Leonardo.Ai. BGNinja is not part of that and keeps running free at bgninja.com.
When does remove.bg close?
1 December 2026 at 9:00 CET, per remove.bg's own FAQ and the banner on its site. Unused pay-as-you-go credits expire that day, and the self-service API moves to Leonardo.Ai.
What is the best free alternative now that remove.bg is closing?
For a single photo: BGNinja, free, full resolution, no account, 10 photos a day. For code: BGNinja's free API, no key needed.
Is BGNinja really free, not a free trial?
Yes. There's no trial period, no credit allowance that runs out: you get 10 photos a day, reset at midnight, and no account needed. It's supported by the small ads around the tool, not by charging for the download.
Do I get the full-resolution file?
Yes, every time. The PNG comes back at your original resolution (up to 30 megapixels), never a shrunk preview.
Can I use the result commercially?
Yes. There's no personal-use-only restriction here: product photos, client work and commercial projects are fine.
Do I need to sign up?
No. Drop a photo in and download the result. An email is only ever needed if you later want a ShinobiTools pass for bigger files.
Does it work on the same file types as remove.bg?
JPG, PNG, WEBP and HEIC straight from an iPhone camera roll, up to 99 MB per file.
Is there a free alternative for restoring old photos, the same way there's one here?
Yes. Remini and MyHeritage put the restored photo behind a subscription or credits; PicReviver restores and sharpens old photos free, full resolution, up to 5 at a time.
How does this compare to remove bg in Gimp, Illustrator or Procreate?
Same idea, more manual work. Remove bg in gimp usually means the Fuzzy Select or path tool traced by hand; remove bg illustrator means the pen tool, node by node: both take practice and don't handle hair well. Remove bg procreate has no built-in cutout at all, so people mask layers by hand instead. Drop the same file in here and BGNinja does the segmentation automatically, no software to learn.
Does it work on an iPhone, or for a small icon?
Yes to both. Remove bg iphone works the same as on desktop since it's just a website. Open it in Safari and upload straight from your camera roll. And a remove bg icon job (a small app icon or favicon graphic) cuts out just as cleanly as a full-size photo; the tool keeps your original resolution either way.
Is it a free remove.bg alternative in HD, with an API?
Yes. BGNinja has no watermark, no account and no credit card, with 10 photos a day resetting at midnight, and every download is full resolution rather than a preview. There is also a free background removal API: no key, no account, one POST with the image, 10 a day. For small volumes it can stand in for the remove.bg API, which moves to Leonardo.Ai on 1 December 2026.
remove bg music?
Different domain: this page removes the background from an image. For background music in a video or song, StemGrab's remove background music tool splits it out for free.