Remove the background from an image
AI running inside your browser cuts out the background of profile photos and product shots. Pick the fast people model or the general model that handles objects, animals and products. Keep it transparent or fill with white or any color. Photos never leave your device. remove.bg's standalone site closes on 1 December 2026 and moves into Canva; this tool stays free, unlimited and signup-free.
The first run downloads an AI model (about 25 MB); later runs use the copy stored in your browser. Your files are never uploaded.
Settings
How to use
- 1
Add images
Drop your photos. Choose “People” for portraits, or “General” for products, animals, cars and other subjects.
- 2
Choose the background
Keep it transparent as PNG / WebP, or fill with white, black or any color. The AI model (25MB for people, 100MB for general) is downloaded on first use.
- 3
Run and check
Compare with the original using “Compare”. If hair or areas that share the background color look off, press “Touch up” and paint with the erase / restore brushes before saving.
Choosing between the two models and fixing what the AI misses are explained in the article “How to Remove an Image Background” on our blog.
Choosing between the two models
“People” uses MODNet (25MB) and cuts out hair and outlines of portraits naturally. It suits ID photos with a white background or social media avatars, and finishes in seconds even without WebGPU.
“General” uses BiRefNet_lite (MIT license, 100MB) and extracts accurate outlines of products, animals, cars, buildings and other non-human subjects. It works on people too, but it processes at full 1024×1024 resolution, uses a lot of memory and requires WebGPU (devices without it can use “People” only). Both can leave areas that share the background color or lose fine details, so use “Touch up” on the result to erase or restore with a brush. Before running, “Select area” lets you outline the object to keep so only that area is sent to the AI, and “Cut out by hand” skips the AI and uses the brush alone.
Frequently asked questions
Are my photos sent to a server?
No. The AI model (25MB for people, 100MB for general) is downloaded to your browser on first use, and inference runs on your device. Processing statistics used to fix bugs (device specs, error types and so on; never the photos themselves or their file names) are sent to this site's server. You can turn this off with the switch under “Help us improve the service” at the bottom of the page.
Can I make an ID-photo background white?
Yes. Choose White under Background to save a JPG or PNG with the transparent area filled in white. PNG and WebP keep transparency; JPG cannot, so choosing JPG gives an image filled with the background colour.
Does it work on product photos or animals?
Yes. Choose “General” under Subject. That switches to BiRefNet_lite, a model for objects, animals and products, which extracts accurate outlines where the people model struggled.
Can I use this instead of remove.bg?
Yes. remove.bg shuts down its standalone website on 1 December 2026 at 9:00 CET and its background removal moves into Canva. This tool is free, has no usage limit, needs no account, and never sends your photos to a server. It offers two models, people and general (products, animals), and processes multiple images at once with a ZIP download. It does not offer an API or a Photoshop plugin.
Help us improve the service
If a conversion fails, sending us the circumstances helps us track down the cause. Knowing which devices and formats fail most often, and how long processing takes, lets us revise the supported formats and fix the bugs behind them. If you don't mind, leaving this on is a real help.
What is sent
- The tool you used and the settings you chose (output format, quality, etc.)
- Your device specs (GPU, memory, core count)
- The input format with a rough size
- How many files succeeded or failed and how long it took
- The error type and details when something fails
What is never sent
- The files themselves and file names
- Text, subtitles or prompts you add to a video
- The text to be read aloud, voice descriptions, the pronunciation dictionary and saved voices
- The text in PDFs, the text you rewrote or redacted, passwords, font names and the page ranges you enter
- IP addresses
The data goes only to this site's own server, never to a third-party service.
Details sent by specific tools (counts, times, kinds and yes/no only)
In addition to “What is sent”, text to speech and the PDF tools send the following details.
- Text to speech
- The approximate number of characters and sentences, how many parts the text was generated in, and how long the AI model took to load.
- PDF tools (all)
- The page count range, whether editing is restricted, whether a permissions password was entered, and whether the PDF is signed or encrypted.
- PDF text editing and redaction
- The numbers of rewrites, deletions, white-outs and redactions, the number of rewritten characters by source (original font or fallback font, the latter as a range) and the fallback typeface, the kinds of reasons why lines cannot be edited, and the number of pages turned into images by redaction and the reasons.
- PDF page operations and conversion between images and PDF
- The numbers of inputs and outputs, of pages rotated, deleted, duplicated or moved, of images inserted as they are, converted, in HEIC format or with corrected orientation, and of pages rendered at a lower resolution (all as ranges), whether the original was updated in place or a new document was created, and whether the original protection was reapplied, form fields were written into the page and bookmarks were added back.
- PDF compression
- The numbers of inputs and outputs, of images downsized, not downsized and black-and-white, of downsized images whose transparency was also downsized, that stayed lossless or that were converted from CMYK to RGB, and how many times the file was compressed (all as ranges), the kinds of reasons images were not downsized, whether the target size was met and the kind of reason it was not met, the range of how much smaller the file got, whether the original protection was reapplied, and whether the original PDF was returned unchanged.
- PDF cropping and page numbers
- The numbers of inputs and outputs and of pages cropped, numbered or with their margins reduced (all as ranges), how the margins were set, how the pages to crop or number were chosen, the number format and position, the range of the starting number, that the original was updated in place, and whether the original protection was reapplied.