Developers & API

Is there a free background removal API?

Short answer

Free tiers rather than fully free APIs. bgclear gives unlimited free preview-size results (up to 800 px, no watermark) and 10 full-resolution credits with your first key, plus a free plan on RapidAPI. The open-source rembg is free to run on your own hardware.

Preview size covers a lot: avatars, thumbnails, docs, chat bots, demo apps and test fixtures. Full resolution is one credit — $9 for 100 — and previews let you check quality on your own images before paying anything.

The GitHub projects guide shows how to keep the key out of a public repo and includes a GitHub Actions workflow that runs free in pull requests.

Try it on your own photo

Free, unlimited, no signup, no watermark. About five seconds per image.

Get a free API key →

Related questions

How much does the bgclear API cost?

Credit packs, no subscription: $9 for 100 credits ($0.09 per image), $39 for 500 ($0.078) and $129 for 2,000 (about $0.065). One credit is one full-resolution image; preview-size results (up to 800 px) are free and unlimited. Credits never expire and failed requests are never charged.

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Does bgclear have an API?

Yes. The bgclear REST API removes backgrounds with one HTTP call — multipart or JSON in, PNG/WebP/JPG out — plus async jobs up to 50 MP, batches of 50 images, callbacks and usage endpoints. Its request fields match remove.bg's. Preview-size results are free; full resolution is one credit.

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What should I use instead of the remove.bg API?

If you only need background removal, a field-compatible API is the smallest change: bgclear accepts remove.bg's image_file, image_url, image_file_b64, size, format, bg_color and crop, so you swap the URL and the auth header. Leonardo.Ai is the official successor if you want its wider generative toolkit.

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