I Built My Own Free Background Remover

Description and use

A free, no‑account, browser‑based background remover that supports HEIC/HEIF, runs locally with BiRefNet‑lite and WebGPU, eliminating server limits.

Problem

Existing free background removal tools had limits, required login, or lacked support for HEIC/HEIF images from iPhones.

Outcome

The tool achieves good quality background removal for a variety of objects, including hair and products, without server‑side processing and supports HEIC/HEIF images directly.

Workflow

• 1. User uploads an image (JPG, PNG, WebP, HEIC, HEIF).
• 2. The browser loads the BiRefNet‑lite ONNX model via ONNX Runtime Web.
• 3. If WebGPU is available, inference runs on the client GPU; otherwise WebGL fallback is used.
• 4. The model outputs a mask and the background is removed locally.
• 5. User downloads the resulting PNG with transparent background.

Evidence

I wanted to keep the whole thing simple: Free, No account, No download limits, Supports JPG, PNG, WebP, HEIC and HEIF, Background removal happens locally in the browser

Source

For the model, I went with BiRefNet-lite and converted it to ONNX so I could run inference with ONNX Runtime Web.

Source

It uses WebGPU when available, so the model can run directly on the user's machine.

Source