- withoutBG Pro Model API
- ProprietaryLicense: Paid cloud API
- remove.bg
- ProprietaryLicense: Paid cloud API
withoutBG Pro Model API vs remove.bg
Qualitative comparison, 10 photos. These photos have no ground-truth matte, so there are no scores: judge the outputs by eye. Use the view controls on each row to switch between transparency, chroma key, and alpha matte on all outputs.
Disclosure: withoutBG includes BiRefNet
withoutBG Open Weights and Pro Model API are routed pipelines. A classifier sends fine strands, soft detail and transparency to withoutBG's own matting model, and hard opaque objects, flat scenes and vehicles to BiRefNet (MIT license), which is part of the pipeline. On this page, 1 of 4 images went to BiRefNet. Pro Model API also runs an edge refiner on the result of either branch, so its BiRefNet-routed images are refined BiRefNet output, not raw BiRefNet.
Photo by Alexander Dummer on Unsplash
Photo by Carlo Sierra on Unsplash
Photo by Conor Samuel on Unsplash
Photo by Lars Bo Nielsen on Unsplash
Photo by Mayer Tawfik on Unsplash
Photo by Niko Tsviliov on Unsplash
Photo by Norbert Braun on Unsplash
Photo by Vinicius Wiesehofer on Unsplash
Methodology
- Alpha mattes are grayscale masks encoding per-pixel foreground probability. They capture fine edge detail (hair, fur, semi-transparent regions) that binary masks discard.
- Qualitative comparison: these photos have no ground-truth matte, so the page shows outputs side by side without scores. Comparisons with ground truth show MGE and MAE per image.
Photo Credits
Source images are courtesy of the photographers below via Unsplash.
Why use it as a remove.bg API alternative#
- Hosted on AWS in Frankfurt (EU).
- Returns the cutout or the alpha matte, so you can composite it yourself.
- Refine: fix an edge with Keep / Remove strokes and run it again.
- Self-host on CPU with Pro Model Self-Host, or run the free Open Weights locally.