remove.bg shuts down on 1 December 2026 at 9:00am CET, and three separate things happen that morning: the website goes dark, unused credits expire, and the API moves to Leonardo.Ai rather than to Canva. Those are three different pages on remove.bg's own site saying three different things, which is why the answer you get depends on which one you happened to read.
remove.bg is closing, not pausing. From 1 December 2026, 9:00am CET the standalone site is unavailable; background removal moves into Canva. Credits expire that same morning — they do not roll over. The API goes to Leonardo.Ai, not Canva, so a Canva subscription does not answer an API question. If you hold credits, they are worth more spent before December 1 than after it.
remove.bg shutting down: what happens on December 1, 2026
| What | Where it goes | Stated on | Read |
|---|---|---|---|
| The remove.bg website | Unavailable from 1 Dec 2026, 9:00am CET | remove.bg FAQ + site banner | Sep 5, 2026 |
| Background removal (consumer) | Into Canva | remove.bg FAQ / pricing | Sep 5, 2026 |
| Your unused credits | Expire 1 Dec 2026, 9:00 CET | remove.bg pricing | Sep 5, 2026 |
| The remove.bg API | Leonardo.Ai (also Canva) | remove.bg API docs | Sep 5, 2026 |
| Developer-facing announcement | Leonardo.Ai | Leonardo announcement, published Aug 27, 2026 | Sep 5, 2026 |
remove.bg is a Canva Austria GmbH brand, stated in its own pricing-page footer (read Sep 5, 2026). Both destinations are Canva properties. What remove.bg states is that the standalone site stops being available on that date; it does not say the site will carry you into either destination.
The three destinations are not interchangeable
"remove.bg moves to Canva" is the short version, and it is wrong for two of the three groups affected.
- If you used the website for one-off cutouts, remove.bg points you to Canva.
- If you called the API, your destination is Leonardo.Ai, not Canva. remove.bg's API documentation states background removal moves to Leonardo starting December 1, 2026 (read Sep 5, 2026), and Leonardo announced the move on August 27, 2026. The consumer destination and the API destination are two different products, so check Leonardo's terms rather than assuming a Canva plan covers it.
- If you hold credits, neither destination inherits them. The pricing page states they expire at 9:00 CET on December 1 (read Sep 5, 2026).
Why this reads as a shutdown and not a migration
A migration moves your account, your history and your balance to the new home. None of those three move here. remove.bg's own pages name a destination for the capability — Canva for consumer background removal, Leonardo.Ai for the API — and a hard stop for everything tied to your account. Credits expire rather than transfer (remove.bg pricing, read Sep 5, 2026), and the site itself is stated as becoming unavailable — not as moving you somewhere.
If remove.bg were migrating, the right move would be to wait. Because remove.bg is shutting down instead, the right move is to use the balance while it is still valid and choose a replacement before December 1.
remove.bg shutting down: what to do with your credits before they expire
The credit expiry is the one part of this with a deadline attached, and it is the easiest to miss: it sits on the pricing page, not in the site banner.
Two practical readings follow from the wording:
- Spend them, do not save them. A credit is worth whatever it buys you today and nothing on December 1, because the expiry is a date rather than a wind-down. If you have a backlog of images that need cutting out, batch them before the deadline.
- Get the files you actually need out first. remove.bg's free tier returns previews capped at 0.25 megapixels — about 625 × 400 pixels (read Sep 3, 2026) — so anything larger is what the paid balance is for. Whatever that balance is worth to you, it is worth nothing after the expiry timestamp.
If you pay remove.bg on a recurring plan rather than in credit packs, check that plan against December 1 before it renews.
What replaces remove.bg after it shuts down
The honest answer is that it depends which of the three things you used it for, and no single product covers all three.
For one-off cutouts, the field it leaves behind is well populated, and the thing that separates one free tool from another is not cutout quality but what you are allowed to download. Slazzer draws the identical 0.25 MP free line remove.bg drew. Icons8 and BgEraser hand back full-resolution PNGs but limit you on count or features instead. We read eleven of these pricing pages on September 3, 2026; the full comparison is in best free AI background remover 2026.
For API work, Leonardo.Ai is the migration path remove.bg itself names in its own documentation. Treat that as the default and price it against alternatives on your own volume, because per-image API pricing varies more between vendors than the cutout quality does.
For the job that removal was only a step in — putting a subject on a new background, cleaning up a product shot, compositing onto a plate — a dedicated cutout tool was always only half the workflow. It hands you the cutout and leaves the actual work ahead of you.
remove.bg shutting down: FAQ
Is remove.bg shutting down?
Yes. remove.bg's FAQ states the standalone website will no longer be available from 1 December 2026 at 9:00am CET, with background removal moving into Canva (read Sep 5, 2026).
Why is remove.bg shutting down?
remove.bg is a Canva Austria GmbH brand (stated in its own pricing-page footer, read Sep 5, 2026). Its own pages state that background removal moves to Canva, that the API moves to Leonardo.Ai, and that the standalone site stops being available on December 1. remove.bg does not publish a reason beyond that.
What happens to my remove.bg credits?
They expire. remove.bg's pricing page states that credits expire December 1, 2026 at 9:00 CET (read Sep 5, 2026). They do not transfer to Canva or Leonardo, so unused credits are worth spending before that morning.
What replaces the remove.bg API?
Leonardo.Ai, also part of Canva. remove.bg's API documentation states that background removal moves to Leonardo starting December 1, 2026, and Leonardo announced the move on August 27, 2026 (both read Sep 5, 2026).
Does a Canva account replace my remove.bg API key?
No. The consumer product and the API go to two different places — Canva and Leonardo.Ai respectively. If you integrated against the remove.bg API, the destination remove.bg names is Leonardo.
Will remove.bg still work before December 1, 2026?
The published date for the standalone site becoming unavailable is 1 December 2026 at 9:00am CET (remove.bg FAQ, read Sep 5, 2026). Credits carry the same expiry timestamp, so both the tool and the credits stop on the same morning.
Is there a free replacement for remove.bg?
Several, with different limits. remove.bg and Slazzer both capped free output at 0.25 MP; Icons8 and BgEraser return full-resolution files but cap count or features. Which limit matters depends on whether you need a thumbnail or a print-size file — the eleven-tool comparison is in best free AI background remover 2026.
After remove.bg shuts down, removal is still only half the job
If the cutout is a step toward a finished image rather than the finished image, the transparent PNG is where a dedicated remover stops and the real work starts.
Our AI green screen background tool does the removal and the replacement in one pass at full resolution, with no 0.25 MP preview gate. Related cleanup steps — old photo restoration and color removal — run on the same credits.
Last updated: September 2026. Every date and limit above was read from remove.bg's own FAQ, pricing and API documentation, or Leonardo.Ai's announcement, on September 5, 2026.
