Head to head
One is a cut-out tool bolted onto a large asset library. The other is a set of photo tools that run on your own machine. The useful comparison is about volume, and about where your file goes.
The short answer
Icons8 Background Remover sits inside an asset business selling icons, illustrations, photos and music. Free users get 3 pictures; a prepaid pack starts from $10 for 50 images. Photomop is an on-device studio: models run in your browser tab, so photos are never uploaded and free exports carry no counter and no watermark.
Updated
Not every tool in the catalogue has a working page yet: upscale image, remove object and passport photo are still being built. Everything else runs today, on your own device. We put that first rather than at the bottom, because it is the thing most likely to send you to Icons8 Background Remover instead, and you should find it out here rather than after you have opened a tab.
Side by side
Every cell below is a fact one of the two of us publishes. Where we could not read a number on Icons8 Background Remover’s own pages, the row says so rather than repeating what other sites claim.
| Photomop | Icons8 Background Remover | |
|---|---|---|
| Where processing happens | On your own device, in the tab | On their servers, after your photo is uploaded |
| Free export resolution | No cap we impose. Your device sets the ceiling | Not published |
| Watermark on a free export | No watermark on any export | Not published |
| Free allowance | No per-image credits and no export counter | 3 pictures for free users, with a Limited subscription covering 100 images a month and an Unlimited subscription above it |
| Account to use the free tool | Editing starts the moment the page loads | Not published |
| Paid plan starts at | $8.00 a month, or $5.00 a month billed yearly | Not published |
| Where it runs | Web on desktop, Web on mobile, Works offline once loaded | Web |
| Works with no connection | Yes, once the page and any model are cached | No, the image has to reach their servers |
Slide the table sideways to see every column.
Icons8 is an asset ecosystem before it is a background remover. The business sells icons, illustrations, photos and music, and the AI tools sit alongside that library rather than being the product most people arrive for. If you already pull icons and illustrations from Icons8, having the cut-out in the same account and on the same bill is a genuinely sensible reason to use it.
Photomop is the opposite shape. It is photo tools and nothing else: no library, no assets to licence, no stock to browse. That narrowness is deliberate, because the tools that need it run models on your own hardware and a hosted asset library would defeat the point. If you want a catalogue as well as a cut-out, Icons8 has one and we do not.
Honestly, we do not know where Icons8 runs its model. The bgremover page and the pricing page both returned an access error to automated requests on 10 August 2026, and the only reachable document was Icons8's own help article about AI tool pricing, which does not say. A hosted web tool with a monthly image allowance is almost certainly processing server-side, but that is inference and it is labelled as such.
Photomop is not ambiguous on this point. The model downloads to your device once, caches there, and then runs inside the tab through WebGPU where the browser supports it and WebAssembly everywhere else. Your file is read from disk into memory, processed, and written back out as a download. Nothing reaches a server of ours, and you can check that in your own network tab.
Icons8's own help article is clear about one thing: free users can remove the background from three pictures. Not three a day or three a month, as far as the article says, just three. That is a trial rather than a free tier, and it is worth knowing before you plan an afternoon's work around it. Everything past the third image needs a subscription or a pack.
What we could not establish is what those three images come back as. Whether Icons8 watermarks a free export, what resolution it returns, and whether an account is needed at all are all unread, because the product pages refused automated access. Photomop's side is simpler to state: no export counter, no watermark, no resolution ceiling we impose, and no account needed as things stand today.
Icons8's help article names two subscriptions and one pack. A Limited subscription covers 100 images a month, an Unlimited subscription sits above it, and neither carries a dollar figure in the article. A prepaid pack starts from $10 for 50 images. That last one is the only price we could actually read, and it happens to be the most useful number on the whole page.
Ten dollars for fifty images is twenty cents an image at that entry size, and it is a one-off purchase rather than a recurring charge, which suits somebody who edits in bursts. Against that, Photomop charges nothing per image because there is no per-image cost on our side to recover. Pro is published at $8 a month, or $5 billed yearly, and is not open for purchase yet.
This is where Icons8 makes a real case. If you need five cut-outs this quarter, a prepaid pack of fifty images for ten dollars is a cleaner purchase than a subscription you will forget to cancel, and it is a fair way to price occasional use. Plenty of vendors in this category will only sell you a monthly plan and count the rest as waste.
The counter-argument is that at low volume the honest comparison is against free. Photomop imposes no export counter and no watermark, so occasional use costs nothing, and the file never leaves your machine either. The catch, and it is a real one, is that our upscaler and object remover are in build, and there is no asset library behind ours. For this quarter that may well settle it.
What each one costs
Both ladders in full, monthly and yearly, because the large number on a pricing page is almost always the yearly rate and almost nobody pays it in month one.
| Plan | Price | What it includes |
|---|---|---|
| Photomop Free | $0 a month | Every tool at full resolution, with no watermark on the way out |
| Photomop Pro | $8.00 a month, or $5.00 a month billed yearly | Unattended batch over a folder, HD background packs, an API with 1,000 images a month, early access to new tools. Not open for purchase yet |
| Icons8 Background Remover Limited | Not published | 100 images a month. Icons8's own help article names the tier and the allowance but gives no dollar figure, and icons8.com's pricing page returned an access error to every automated request on 10 August 2026 |
| Icons8 Background Remover Unlimited | Not published | The subscription tier Icons8 places above Limited. The help article names it without stating an image allowance or a dollar figure, and the pricing page could not be read at source |
| Icons8 Background Remover Prepaid pack | Not published | From $10 for 50 images, bought once rather than as a recurring charge. This is the only Icons8 price we could read at source |
Slide the table sideways to see every column.
Both columns are the same length on purpose. If ours were twice as long you would be reading an advert.
Pick this if the photo should not leave your machine, or you want full-resolution exports with no watermark and no per-image charge.
Pick this if you already licence assets from Icons8 and want occasional cut-outs on a prepaid pack rather than a subscription.
The honest version
The case against us is short and worth saying out loud: upscale image, remove object and passport photo do not have a working page yet, so those jobs need another tool today, and there is no hosted API today, so a workflow that needs one has to look elsewhere. If either of those is the thing you need this week, Icons8 Background Remover is the better answer today and this page is not going to argue otherwise.
Questions people ask
The things people search for once they have narrowed it down to these two.
Only for three pictures. Icons8's own help article states that free users can remove the background from 3 pictures, after which you need a subscription or a prepaid pack. The article does not say whether those free exports carry a watermark or what resolution they come back at, so neither is stated here.
The one figure we could read at source is a prepaid pack from $10 for 50 images. Icons8 also sells Limited, covering 100 images a month, and an Unlimited tier, and its help article gives no dollar figure for either. The pricing page itself returned an access error on 10 August 2026.
No. Every tool runs on your own device inside the browser tab. Your file is read from disk into memory, processed there, and written back out as a download. Nothing is sent to us, which is why the tools keep working when your connection drops. You can confirm it in your browser's network tab in a minute.
One hundred images a month, according to Icons8's own help article on AI tool pricing. What that costs is not stated there, and the pricing page could not be read at source, so this page names the allowance without attaching a price to it. Check the figure at icons8.com before subscribing.
Photomop, because it costs nothing to use and imposes no export counter, though its upscaler and object remover are still in build. If you need the work done today, Icons8's prepaid pack from $10 for 50 images is a fair way to buy occasional cut-outs without committing to a monthly subscription.
We could not confirm it. Icons8's product pages returned an access error to automated requests on 10 August 2026, and the help article we could reach does not mention watermarks at all. Check it before you rely on it. Photomop adds no watermark on any export, on any plan, at any size.
Same cluster
Each one is built the same way: the vendor's own published facts, checked at source, next to ours.
A suite of single-purpose online image tools for compressing, resizing, cropping and converting files
A web AI photo editor whose background remover is free, needs no sign-up and adds no watermark
A Photoshop-shaped image editor that runs in a tab and processes every file on your own device
Background removal for images and short video, sold as one-time credit packs instead of a subscription
AI photo editing and product listing studio built around background removal and product staging
Resize, crop, compress, convert and batch edit all work right now, on your own device, at full resolution and with no watermark. No account, nothing uploaded. Read how the on-device pipeline works if you want to check that claim before you trust it with a client’s photo, or the pricing page for where the paid line falls.