Head to head
One is a cheap generative studio for screen output with a hard 72 dpi ceiling. The other runs on your own hardware and hands the file back at the size you gave it. Those are different purchases.
The short answer
Pixlr is a cloud editor with generative image, video and audio tools, priced from $1.99 a month billed annually. Its web exports are capped at 72 dpi with no print option, and the free tier has an undisclosed save limit. Photomop runs on your own device and exports at the resolution you brought, with 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 Pixlr 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 Pixlr’s own pages, the row says so rather than repeating what other sites claim.
| Photomop | Pixlr | |
|---|---|---|
| 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 | Web exports are capped at 72 dpi, digital output only, with no high resolution or print option |
| Watermark on a free export | No watermark on any export | Not published |
| Free allowance | No per-image credits and no export counter | A monthly save limit applies on the free tier, and Pixlr does not publish the number. Plus removes it and is sold as unlimited saves |
| Account to use the free tool | Editing starts the moment the page loads | No forced login for basic editing in the web editor |
| Paid plan starts at | $8.00 a month, or $5.00 a month billed yearly | $2.49 a month, or $1.99 a month billed yearly |
| Where it runs | Web on desktop, Web on mobile, Works offline once loaded | Web, iOS, Android |
| 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.
It is the single most useful fact on this page if anything you make ends up on paper. Pixlr's own support article states that web exports are capped at 72 dpi, that the output is digital only, and that there is no high resolution or print option. That is a decision about the product, not a bug, and it draws a hard line under what Pixlr is for.
For a social post, a thumbnail, a banner or a video frame, 72 dpi is entirely fine and nobody will ever notice. For a flyer, a poster, a business card, a print-on-demand product or anything a printer will ask you to supply at 300 dpi, it is a wall. Establish which side of that line your work sits on before comparing anything else.
Pixlr does not force a login for basic editing, which is a genuinely good decision and rarer than it should be. Beyond that the free tier is harder to pin down. There is a monthly save limit, confirmed by Pixlr's own announcement that Plus removes it and offers unlimited saves instead, but the number itself is not published anywhere we could read at source.
Photomop needs no account as things stand today, shows no ads and applies no save counter. Exports come back at the resolution you brought, with no watermark and no dpi ceiling of our making. That follows from where the work happens rather than from generosity: your own hardware runs the job, so there is no server bill to ration against.
Generation, and a great deal of it. Pixlr carries an AI image generator, an AI video generator, an AI audio generator, an instruction-driven image editor, face swap, object removal and upscaling. Photomop generates nothing at all and has no video or audio tools whatsoever. If your work involves making an image that did not exist, this is not a close comparison.
It also has finished mobile apps on iOS and Android, so the phone that shot the photo can finish it. And the blunt point: Pixlr generates images and we generate nothing, and our upscaler and object remover are in build. If you need any of those this week, that argument stands on its own and this page will not try to talk you past it.
Every paid tier meters generation. Plus includes 80 AI credits a month with one concurrent generation. Premium raises that to 1,000 credits, all AI models, four concurrent generations and a private generation mode. Ultra reaches up to 10,000 credits a month with unlimited fast-model generations and eight concurrent. Ultra MAX is listed around 20,000 credits at $49.99 a month, shown at a $39.99 promotion.
The pattern is worth reading carefully, because credits and concurrency are two separate ceilings. You can hold enough credits and still queue behind your own jobs on a lower tier. Photomop has no credit system at all, but that is because it does no generation, so this is a difference in what the products are rather than in how fairly they meter.
Pixlr is cheap at the bottom and expensive at the top. Plus is $2.49 a month or $1.99 billed annually. Premium is $9.99 or $7.99. Ultra is $24.99 or $19.99, and Ultra MAX is $49.99 a month with no annual figure readable at source. Which one you need depends entirely on how much you generate.
Photomop is free to use today, with Pro published at $8 a month or $5 a month billed yearly and not open for purchase yet. If all you want is resizing, cropping, compressing and converting at the resolution you brought, then paying a generative studio's subscription to get it is money spent on server capacity you are never going to touch.
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 |
| Pixlr Plus | $2.49 a month, or $1.99 a month billed yearly | Ad free, unlimited saves, 80 AI credits a month and 1 concurrent AI generation |
| Pixlr Premium | $9.99 a month, or $7.99 a month billed yearly | All AI models, 1,000 AI credits a month, 4 concurrent generations and a private generation mode |
| Pixlr Ultra | $24.99 a month, or $19.99 a month billed yearly | Up to 10,000 AI credits a month, unlimited fast-model generations and 8 concurrent generations |
| Pixlr Ultra MAX | $49.99 a month | Roughly 20,000 AI credits a month. The monthly price is shown at a $39.99 promotion, and no annual figure was readable 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 anything you make may end up in print, or the file should not be uploaded to a server at all.
Pick this if you want cheap generative image, video and audio tools in one subscription and your output is for screens.
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, Pixlr 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.
No. Pixlr's own support article states that web exports are capped at 72 dpi, that output is digital only, and that there is no high resolution or print option. If your work goes to a printer, this is the fact that decides it. Photomop exports at the resolution of the file you brought.
Basic editing runs without a forced login, but the free tier carries a monthly save limit whose number Pixlr does not publish. Its own announcement confirms the limit exists by selling unlimited saves as a Plus feature. Web exports are also capped at 72 dpi on any tier of the web editor.
Plus is $2.49 a month or $1.99 billed annually. Premium is $9.99 or $7.99. Ultra is $24.99 or $19.99, reaching up to 10,000 AI credits a month. Ultra MAX is listed at $49.99 a month, shown at a $39.99 promotion, with no annual figure readable at source.
No. Photomop has no image, video or audio generation of any kind. It is single-purpose tools for cutting out, resizing, cropping, compressing, converting, batching and similar work. If generation is what you need, Pixlr does far more than we ever will.
Yes. Pixlr is a cloud service, so your image is sent to its servers, processed there and returned. Photomop runs every tool on your own device inside the tab, so nothing is uploaded. For a holiday snap that difference is academic, and for a client file under an embargo it is not.
Photomop, if resolution matters, because exports come back at the size you brought rather than through a 72 dpi ceiling, and there is no save counter to run into. Pixlr can crop and resize perfectly well for screen output, and it does so alongside generative tools Photomop does not have.
Same cluster
Each one is built the same way: the vendor's own published facts, checked at source, next to ours.
An automatic background remover sold in credit packs, with desktop applications and a documented API
AI photo and video editor whose free web background removal exports at HD with no watermark
Automatic background removal with the widest plugin and API range in the category, metered by image credits
Broad creative suite where background removal is one credit-metered tool among many across web and mobile
Background removal specialist with monthly credit plans, rollover credits and apps on every desktop platform
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.