Photoroom API Pricing per Image and a Lower-Cost Alternative

If you are checking Photoroom API pricing, you probably want the cost per image and a clear idea of your options. Photoroom charges $0.02 per image for background removal and $0.10 per image for its Image Editing API. This post covers how those plans work, how they compare, and a drop-in Python function for moving to an API with a lower cost per image.

Want to compare cutouts first? Try the Background Removal API on one of your own product photos.

Photoroom API pricing per image

Prices from Photoroom's pricing page and docs, checked in October 2026:

Remove Background API (Basic): $0.02 per image
Image Editing API (Plus): $0.10 per image, adds AI backgrounds, AI shadows and virtual try-on
Enterprise: contact sales, annual commitment
Free: 10 Remove Background calls with an account, plus 1,000 watermarked Image Editing sandbox calls a month

Plans are prepaid monthly in fixed amounts, such as $20 for 1,000 images, and unused images do not roll over. At 10,000 images a month, Photoroom Basic comes to $200.

Photoroom vs Clipdrop

Photoroom Basic: $0.02 per image
Clipdrop: $0.144 to $0.50 per image in prepaid credit packs
remove.bg: self-service API closes on 1 December 2026

The AI Engine Background Removal API has a lower cost per image than both Photoroom plans, with flat monthly plans and a free tier. For the full market, see the background removal API comparison.

Request mapping

sdk.photoroom.com/v1/segment becomes background-removal-ai.p.rapidapi.com/remove-background
x-api-key becomes x-rapidapi-key plus x-rapidapi-host
image_file becomes image (or send image_url)
bg_color becomes the /color-background endpoint, with R,G,B,A values such as 255,255,255,255
format, size and crop are handled with Pillow on the returned image
Image bytes in the response become JSON with an image_url to download

A drop-in segment() function in Python

It takes the same image and returns image bytes, so the code that saves or uploads the result stays the same.

import io import os import requests from PIL import Image API = "https://background-removal-ai.p.rapidapi.com" HEADERS = { "x-rapidapi-host": "background-removal-ai.p.rapidapi.com", "x-rapidapi-key": os.environ["RAPIDAPI_KEY"], } def segment(image_file, output_format="png", bg_color=None): """Replaces a Photoroom /v1/segment call and returns image bytes.""" endpoint, data = "/remove-background", {} if bg_color: endpoint, data = "/color-background", {"bg_color": bg_color} with open(image_file, "rb") as f: resp = requests.post(API + endpoint, headers=HEADERS, data=data, files={"image": f}, timeout=60) resp.raise_for_status() png = requests.get(resp.json()["image_url"], timeout=60).content if output_format == "png": return png image = Image.open(io.BytesIO(png)) out = io.BytesIO() if output_format == "webp": image.save(out, "WEBP") else: # jpeg has no alpha channel, so flatten on white  flat = Image.new("RGB", image.size, (255, 255, 255)) flat.paste(image, mask=image.getchannel("A")) flat.save(out, "JPEG", quality=92) return out.getvalue()

The call site becomes:

png = segment("shoes.jpg") with open("shoes-cutout.png", "wb") as out: out.write(png) # Same photo on a white catalog background (R,G,B,A) white = segment("shoes.jpg", bg_color="255,255,255,255")