remove.bg is closing on 1 December 2026. What to use instead

Yes, it is true, and it comes from remove.bg itself. A banner across the site and a new FAQ page say that "from 1 December 2026 at 9:00am CET, remove.bg's standalone website will no longer be available". Background removal moves into Canva, which has owned remove.bg since 2021. The self-service API moves to Leonardo.Ai, another Canva company. Enterprise API contracts are not affected.

What that means for your account, according to the same FAQ:

• Credits. Unused pay-as-you-go credits expire on 1 December 2026. The General Terms, last updated 9 September 2026, go further: all credits, including monthly rollover credits, "may be used until December 1 2026 only" and are non-refundable.
• Subscriptions. They keep working until the cutoff and then end on their own. Annual subscribers get a pro-rata refund for the unused time, with no action needed. Monthly subscribers pay nothing for a final renewal that falls on or after 1 November.
• Your account. After the cutoff the website and accounts are gone. Export your credit usage report and invoices before then, because you cannot download them afterwards.
• Photoshop plugin and other integrations. Discontinued on 1 December 2026.
• Desktop app. The FAQ does not give it a separate date. Asked about alternatives to it, remove.bg points to Canva's bulk background removal.

The timeline

We could not find a post in Canva's newsroom or on remove.bg's blog, and we could not pin down the exact day the banner went up. The terms update on 9 September is the earliest date we can confirm. If you are a customer, check your email as well: the FAQ, the site banner and the updated terms are the only official public sources we found.

Where remove.bg sends you, and the catch

Web users go to Canva. The FAQ calls Canva's Background Remover "the same background-removal technology as remove.bg" and says more functionality "will be added before 1 December 2026". As of today, Canva's own help page lists three limits: the tool is for paid plans only, it only accepts photos under 9 MB, and "any uploaded photo with a resolution of more than 10MP will also be downscaled to 10MP after removing its background". Bulk removal works on folders of up to 50 images.

That 10 megapixel cap is the part to watch. remove.bg itself delivered up to 50 megapixels. If you upload full-size print files, Canva today gives back a smaller image than you are used to getting.

API users go to Leonardo.Ai. Leonardo's migration guide prices background removal at US $0.1047 per image. You need a new Leonardo account and API key, and the request and response formats change. Its endpoint reference notes that "PNG output is capped at 10 megapixels", so larger results have to come out as WebP. If your pipeline depends on transparent PNGs above 10 MP, test that before December.

Photoshop plugin users go to Affinity. The FAQ recommends Affinity, which is free and part of Canva. Its built-in background removal runs on Canva AI, so it needs a Canva Pro subscription.

Why full resolution matters if you sell prints or shirts

For print-on-demand, the cutout is the product. Printify's PNG setup guide asks for a 4500 × 5400 px canvas at 300 DPI, which gives a 15 × 18 inch print area, with a fully transparent background. That is 24.3 megapixels. Cap it at 10 megapixels and it shrinks to about 2,890 × 3,460 px, which covers only about 9.6 × 11.5 inches at 300 DPI. Printful's DTG file guide is more lenient, with a 150 DPI minimum, but it too asks for a transparent PNG.

Then there is the edge:

• Soft edges fade from solid to transparent over a few pixels. They look natural on screen, around hair or fur, and on a white mug.
• Crisp edges go straight from solid to transparent. For shirts, that is what the printer wants. Printify explains that DTG software treats any pixel above 0% opacity as a place to lay white underbase ink, which prints a "chalky, rubbery ring" around the design on dark fabric. Its advice: every pixel should be "100% solid, or 100% transparent".
• Halos are leftover background colour in the edge pixels, such as a pale fringe from a white studio backdrop. They are easy to miss on a checkerboard preview and obvious on a black shirt.

So check two things in whatever tool you pick: that the cutout comes back at the full size you uploaded, and whether you can control how soft or hard the edge is.

What to use instead, by need

Prices were checked on each vendor's pricing page on 18 September 2026.

You already pay for Canva. Use Canva. It is the official successor and removes backgrounds in bulk. Its limit is the 10 MP downscale, so it is fine for listing photos, social posts and mockups, and less suited to full-size print masters.

You edit product photos for a shop. Photoroom costs $12.99 a month for Pro, or $89.99 a year. Max is $34.99 a month or $250 a year, and Ultra is $99 a month or $990 a year. Read the plan table carefully: "4K video/image resolution" is ticked only on Ultra, and export allowances apply to images up to 2K. Pixelcut has a free tier with limited background removal and no watermark, and Pro costs $10 a month or $8 a month billed yearly. Its FAQ lists HD exports as a Pro feature.

You want free, with occasional use. Adobe's background remover, which now runs in Adobe Firefly, is free with an Adobe account, takes JPEG, PNG or WebP files up to 40 MB, and gives you a daily allowance. Paint in Windows 11 has had one-click background removal since 2023. On a Mac, Preview has a Remove Background button and Photos can copy the subject alone. They cost nothing and none of them documents a resolution cap like Canva's, but check the output size and the edge on a real file before you rely on one.

You process files in bulk and are comfortable with a command line. rembg is an MIT-licensed open-source tool that runs locally, from the command line or as a Python library. No uploads, no fees, some setup.

You sell AI art and need big, clean cutouts. This is where our own app fits, so weigh it accordingly. AlphaUpscale is a Windows 10 and 11 app that upscales images ×4, ×8 or ×16 on your own graphics card, Intel, AMD or NVIDIA, and can then remove the background of the finished full-size picture. You set how soft or crisp the edge is with a slider from 0 to 100, see a live preview, and get a transparent PNG. Nothing is uploaded, and there are no credits and no monthly cap. The first 20 images are free, with no account; after that it is $29 a year or $4 a month. Its limits: it is Windows only, it needs at least 8 GB of RAM, it has no CPU mode, and it is built for one clear subject. A painting that fills the whole frame has no background to remove.

You call the API from code. Move to Leonardo.Ai if you want the same technology and minimal changes, and budget for $0.1047 per image and the 10 MP PNG cap. To run a model on your own hardware instead, use rembg.

Before 1 December: a checklist

1. Use up your credits. They expire at the cutoff and are not refundable.
2. Download invoices and your credit usage report from your remove.bg account.
3. If you are on an annual plan, expect an automatic pro-rata refund. If you are on a monthly plan, cancel at remove.bg/dashboard whenever you like, since the last renewal is free anyway.
4. Re-process a few of your largest files in whatever replaces remove.bg for you, and compare the pixel dimensions and the edges against your old cutouts before you commit.

Frequently asked

Is remove.bg shutting down? The standalone website is. remove.bg's FAQ says it will no longer be available from 1 December 2026 at 9:00 CET. The technology lives on inside Canva and, for developers, in Leonardo.Ai's API.

What happens to my remove.bg credits? They expire on 1 December 2026 and are not refunded, according to remove.bg's FAQ and General Terms. Annual subscriptions get a pro-rata refund for time left after that date.

Is Canva's background remover free? No. Canva's help centre says it comes with paid plans only, and it downscales results above 10 megapixels.

How do I remove a background at high resolution for free? Paint on Windows 11, Preview and Photos on a Mac, and Adobe's remover with a free account cost nothing and do not document a 10 MP cap like Canva's. rembg does the job on your own computer. For AI art that also needs enlarging, AlphaUpscale does both on Windows, and its first 20 images are free.

Does the remove.bg API still work? Enterprise contracts continue as normal. The self-service API stops accepting requests on 1 December 2026, and remove.bg directs users to Leonardo.Ai's API.