remove.bg API Alternative — Background Removal on KeyoAPI

If you integrated remove.bg’s self-serve API and need a prepaid matting endpoint that stays under your control after Dec 1, 2026, KeyoAPI exposes BRIA RMBG-2.0 on POST /v1/images/mattings — same Keyo key you already use for chat, Whisper, and TTS. This page is for developers migrating API traffic, not a free browser cutout tool.

Migration options at a glance

Indicative figures for planning. Confirm live Keyo sell rates on interactive Model Square or the static pricing list.

Independent API option

KeyoAPI is not Canva, not Leonardo.Ai, and not a claim to be remove.bg’s official successor. Consumer click-to-cutout traffic is pointed at Canva by remove.bg itself. Keyo’s lane is developer-metered matting on a multi-model relay: authenticate, upload, get alpha — then continue to OCR, TTS, or chat on the same balance.

Migration details

Published transition (verify on remove.bg FAQ / API pages): standalone remove.bg website unavailable from 1 December 2026, 9:00am CET; self-serve API background removal moves to Leonardo.Ai; existing Enterprise API contracts are described as unaffected. Unused PAYG credits expire at that cutoff — treat vendor pages as source of truth if wording changes.

Keyo sell rate for RMBG-2.0 is about $0.0068 per request (indicative). Confirm live at /pricing/RMBG-2.0. Typical legacy SaaS remove-bg APIs often sit near $0.05–$0.20 per image on public marketing pages; use that only as planning context, not a contractual quote. Worked example: 10,000 product photos / month at ~$0.0068 ≈ $68 indicative on Keyo RMBG — recompute with your live rate and retry policy.

Migration checklist for API traffic: (1) inventory every remove.bg call site and note image size / QPS; (2) create a Keyo key at /sign-up and top up Wallet; (3) open /pricing/RMBG-2.0 for interactive try/buy (no separate upload playground); (4) switch clients to POST multipart https://www.keyoapi.xyz/v1/images/mattings with model=RMBG-2.0 and field image=@file; (5) compare alpha quality on a golden set of SKUs before cutting over; (6) keep a feature flag so you can roll back during the Dec 2026 window.

When plain subject/background cutouts are not enough — for example open-vocabulary masks, multi-object labels, or promptable regions — escalate to sam3 via POST /v1/images/segmentation. Guides: /model/RMBG-2.0 and /model/sam3. Price row also appears on /compare.

Pipeline tip: many shops matte first, then run OCR (/model/Unlimited-OCR or /model/MinerU2.5-Pro), then chat or TTS on the same prepaid key. If the next step is speech or talking video, continue to /tts-api or /ai-avatar-video-generator without opening a second vendor wallet.

Operational notes: send reasonable image sizes (downscale huge originals before upload), log HTTP status and Keyo request ids for support, and treat matting as a metered request — empty or corrupt files still consume budget when accepted. Confirm live rates after every catalog change on Model Square.

# cURL — RMBG-2.0 matting (multipart)
curl https://www.keyoapi.xyz/v1/images/mattings \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $KEYO_API_KEY" \
  -F model=RMBG-2.0 \
  -F image=@./product.png \
  -o ./product-alpha.png

# Python — requests multipart
import requests
url = "https://www.keyoapi.xyz/v1/images/mattings"
headers = {"Authorization": "Bearer YOUR_KEYO_API_KEY"}
files = {"image": open("product.png", "rb")}
data = {"model": "RMBG-2.0"}
r = requests.post(url, headers=headers, files=files, data=data, timeout=120)
r.raise_for_status()
open("product-alpha.png", "wb").write(r.content)

FAQ

Also see /compare, /free-models, and model guides under /model/.