remove.bg Is Shutting Down on 1 December 2026: What to Do Before It Closes

remove.bg is closing its standalone website. Its FAQ says: "From 1 December 2026 at 9:00am CET, remove.bg's standalone website will no longer be available. Background removal is moving to Canva and API access to Leonardo.ai, with upgraded offerings on both. Enterprise API contracts aren't affected and continue as normal."

If you use remove.bg today, you have a few weeks to spend credits, export invoices, move automations and, if you are a developer, port your API calls. This guide is the migration checklist. It covers what closes, what moves where, what happens to your money and data, and what to do before the deadline for each kind of user. Everything is taken from remove.bg's own pages and from Leonardo.Ai, Canva and Affinity, checked October 2026. Where none of them says something, we write "remove.bg does not say".

If you only want a replacement tool, our list of free remove.bg alternatives compares twelve of them, and WipeMark vs remove.bg goes feature by feature.

What closes and when

The deadline is 1 December 2026 at 9:00am CET. CET is UTC+1 in winter, so that is 08:00 UTC. The same banner sits on every remove.bg page, including the pricing page, which adds under the pay-as-you-go pack: "Credits expire December 1, 2026 9:00 AM CET."

On the US West Coast that is the first minute of 1 December, so the last full day there is 30 November. Plan to finish anything important the day before.

Why it is happening, in remove.bg's words: "remove.bg is part of Canva, which has integrated background removal directly into its platform. Rather than maintain two separate products, we are consolidating to give users the best possible experience through Canva's tools."

What moves where

remove.bg's FAQ answers most of this product by product. The map shows where each one lands, and the table gives the exact wording and the gaps.

"Other integrations and plugins" covers a long list. remove.bg's integrations page names Figma, GIMP, Sketch and PowerPoint plugins, a command line tool, a Shopify integration, and Zapier and Make automations. Several of the plugins are built by outside developers, and remove.bg does not say whether any of them will move to Leonardo.Ai. WordPress is not on remove.bg's integrations page at all. If you use a third-party plugin that calls remove.bg with your API key, treat it as an API integration that stops on 1 December unless its developer says otherwise.

For Canva, there is one thing to check before you count on it. remove.bg's pricing page calls Canva's tool "Free to try in HD", and Canva's feature page says you can try it for free. Canva's help center says "Background remover is included with paid plans."

Credits, subscriptions and refunds

This is where money is at stake, so here is the exact position for each kind of purchase.

The key line is in the updated General Terms and Conditions, last updated 9 September 2026: "All credits (including pay-as-you-go (PAYG) credits, monthly rollover credits and any other type of credits) may be used until December 1 2026 only. Any unused credits will expire on that date and are non-refundable."

For annual plans, the FAQ says the refund goes "to your original payment method. No action is required from you to receive this refund." remove.bg does not say how long the refund takes to arrive. Monthly subscribers can cancel early at remove.bg/dashboard, though there is little reason to: the plan ends by itself and the last renewal is free if it falls on or after 1 November.

remove.bg's refunds page still lists its 14-day money-back guarantee for first-time subscribers who processed fewer than 50 images, and calls other purchases "generally non-refundable". The practical rule is simple. Do not buy a credit pack now unless you will use every credit before 1 December.

Your account data and old images

The FAQ says your account stays accessible until the deadline, and then "the website and accounts won't be accessible." It asks you to export two things from your Account page: your credit usage report and your invoices. "You won't be able to download them afterward." If you claim remove.bg on expenses or taxes, do this now.

Images are different. remove.bg's privacy policy says it uploads your files, processes them, provides the results "then delete[s] them shortly after." The FAQ does not mention downloading past results, so remove.bg does not say there is any image history to retrieve. Assume the only copies are the ones on your own disk, cloud drive or shop backend, and keep your originals.

What API users must change

If you call api.remove.bg from your own code, the self-service API stops accepting requests from 1 December. remove.bg's API docs now say "Starting December 1, 2026, background removal moves to Leonardo.Ai," and link to Leonardo's migration guide. Leonardo.Ai published its announcement on 28 August 2026.

Both columns come from Leonardo's migration guide and announcement, which describe the remove.bg API side by side with their own.

Option names such as size, type, bg_color, crop and shadow_type carry over unchanged; they move under parameters. A few things do not carry over at all. Leonardo's guide lists format=zip, format=auto, raw image bytes in the response, multipart uploads, the X-Type and foreground-position metadata, the /improve endpoint and OAuth login as "Will not be supported". bg_image_file has no direct equivalent; you host the background image and pass a reference.

Five changes are easy to miss in testing:

1. Storage. remove.bg stored nothing. Leonardo stores inputs and results by default. If you process customer photos, set "ephemeral": true.
2. Throughput. The standard rate limit drops from 500 to 100 images a minute. Leonardo says higher limits are available on request.
3. Timeouts. Leonardo's remove-bg docs say a sync request can take up to about 27 seconds before it times out, and point batch work to the Async API.
4. Billing. Leonardo's API is billed in USD from prepaid credit, separate from any Leonardo web subscription, and background removal is not included in its unlimited web plans. Cost per call comes back in the response body, not an X-Credits-Charged header.
5. Large files. File uploads become base64 in the JSON body, which Leonardo caps at about 7.5 MB, and base64 output fails above about 7.45 MB. For big originals or 50 MP results, pass the image by URL or upload it first, and download the result from the returned URL.

Neither remove.bg nor Leonardo sets an earlier migration deadline, but cutting over on 30 November leaves no room for a surprise. Get the new key and a test run done by mid-November.

Desktop app and plugin users

Desktop app. remove.bg's FAQ gives no separate end date for the app. Its app page says "Images are processed through the remove.bg API, which requires an active Internet connection and an API key," and the self-service API stops accepting requests on 1 December, so plan for the app to stop processing then. remove.bg's suggested replacement is Canva's bulk removal, which has tighter limits than the desktop app's "unlimited files in bulk". Canva's help center says bulk removal works on up to 50 images per folder, only on photos under 9 MB, and downscales results above 10 megapixels. remove.bg's high-resolution output went up to 50 megapixels. If you need larger batches or full resolution, the Leonardo.Ai API is the other route remove.bg names.

Photoshop. remove.bg suggests Affinity, also owned by Canva. Its FAQ says Affinity is free, but the background removal "runs on Canva AI, so you'll need a Canva Pro subscription." Affinity's help page confirms it is a premium feature.

Everything else. For Figma, GIMP, Sketch, PowerPoint, Shopify, Zapier and Make, remove.bg points to Canva's App Marketplace instead. List every automation that sends images to remove.bg now, so nothing fails silently in December.

Your checklist before 1 December

Tick how you use remove.bg. The list puts your steps in date order, and the countdown runs on your device's clock. "By 17 Nov" is our suggestion for leaving two weeks of slack; every other date is remove.bg's.

The same steps, by type of user:

• Free website users: save any cut-outs you still need, then pick a replacement for one-off photos.
• Pay-as-you-go buyers: spend your credits, do not top up, and export invoices and the usage report.
• Subscribers: use your credits, rollover included, and export invoices. Monthly plans need no cancelling. Annual plans should look for the pro-rata refund after 1 December.
• API developers: create a Leonardo.Ai account and key, port the endpoint, auth and JSON body, set ephemeral, re-check rate limits and cost, test with a real batch, and switch production before 1 December. Enterprise customers talk to their Customer Success Manager.
• Desktop app users: move batch jobs to Canva bulk removal or the Leonardo.Ai API, and check whether Canva's 9 MB and 10 MP limits fit your photos.
• Plugin and integration users: list every plugin and automation, replace the Photoshop plugin, and rebuild Zapier, Make and Shopify flows on a new tool.

Where to go instead

remove.bg names two successors, Canva for people and Leonardo.Ai for code. The right replacement depends on how you used it.

WipeMark covers that last row, and only that row. It is free with no account and no watermark, and gives you the full-size cut-out of photos up to 25 megapixels as PNG, JPG or WebP. Background removal takes about 15 seconds. Your browser sends a reduced copy of at most 1024 pixels to our server, and nothing is stored. You can use a transparent background or any solid color, fix edges with the Restore and Erase brushes, and remove stray objects with the eraser. HEIC photos open in any modern browser. WipeMark has no API, no batch mode, no desktop app and no plugins, so it does not replace remove.bg for developers or bulk work.

For the full side-by-side, read WipeMark vs remove.bg. To compare the paid tools with batch and API features, start with our list of remove.bg alternatives.