BiRefNet DIS (birefnet-dis) background removal#

How to run birefnet-dis

birefnet-dis ships with rembg as the session birefnet-dis. The weights download on first use.

pip install "rembg[cpu,cli]"
rembg i -m birefnet-dis input.jpg output.png

from rembg import new_session, remove
from PIL import Image

session = new_session("birefnet-dis")  # load once, reuse for every image
output = remove(Image.open("input.jpg"), session=session)
output.save("output.png")

Other sessions: all rembg models.

BiRefNet DIS as a free, open-source remove.bg alternative

remove.bg is a paid cloud service. BiRefNet DIS is open weights under MIT, so commercial use is allowed. It runs on your own machine (rembg i -m birefnet-dis input.jpg output.png), offline, with no upload and no per-image cost. On Bench v0 it ranks #6 of 17 by accuracy (MAE); withoutBG Open Weights ranks #3.

remove.bg is not in Bench v0, so there is no score against it. See withoutBG Open Weights and remove.bg side by side, or compare all remove.bg alternatives.

Quick take

• Best for: Objects with thin parts: bikes, chairs, plants, wire
• Avoid when: Soft transparency (hair, smoke): DIS masks are close to binary
• Notes: Trained on the DIS5K benchmark, the same task family as IS-Net.

When a hosted model is worth it

birefnet-dis is free and runs on your machine; keep it if the results above are good enough. If you need finer hair and edges, or don't want to run large models locally, rembg also ships the withoutBG Pro Model as the withoutbg session, ranked #1 of 17 by accuracy on Bench v0. Images are sent to withoutBG's servers.

export WITHOUTBG_API_KEY=sk_...
rembg i -m withoutbg input.jpg output.png

Sign up for 50 free credits (no credit card) or See its results.