How to Remove a Background in Canva

Can you remove a background in Canva for free?

Not reliably. Canva's Help Center states that the background remover is included with paid plans, and the pricing table marks it as unavailable on the Free plan. The plans that include it are:

• Canva Pro, for one person.
• Canva Business. The older Teams plan is closed to new sign-ups, and existing Teams subscribers keep the feature.
• Canva Education and Canva for Nonprofits, for eligible schools and organisations.

You may also see Canva feature pages promising that the tool is "free to use once". That wording exists, but it contradicts the Help Center and the pricing table, so plan on needing a paid plan if you use the background remover in Canva regularly.

How to remove background in Canva on the web

Here is how to remove background on Canva's web editor, in the order the Help Center gives it. Every other Canva remove background route, from Projects to the mobile app, ends at the same BG Remover tool.

1. Select the photo

Open your design and click the photo whose background you want gone. It has to be a photo rather than a vector graphic, since the tool does not work on vector images.

2. Choose BG Remover in the editor toolbar

Canva's own wording is to select BG Remover from the editor toolbar. Older Canva pages describe it under an Effects section or under Magic Studio; the current Help Center places it directly on the toolbar.

3. Wait, then refine the edges

The background is processed on Canva's side. To tidy the result, reselect BG Remover and pick the Erase or Restore brush, sizing it with the brush-size slider. Show original image lets you compare. Canva's help says zooming and undo or redo do not work while you are brushing, although its own steps also point to Undo and Redo icons, so work in short passes.

Removing a background in the Canva mobile app

The phone steps mirror the web ones: tap the photo, tap BG Remover in the editor toolbar, and wait for it to finish. The brushes are one level deeper on mobile: on the BG Remover tile, tap Configure, then choose Erase or Restore.

You can also start outside a design. On the web, go to Projects, then Images, open the photo's More menu, choose Edit image, and select BG Remover under Tools. In the app the route is Your Designs, then Type, then Images, then the photo's More menu, then Edit image, Image Tools and BG Remover.

For a batch, Canva can process a whole folder from Projects, writing the results to a new folder named after the original with "- Edited" on the end. A folder can hold up to 50 images for this; bigger folders are refused.

Limits of the Canva background remover

The resolution rule is the one that surprises people: a large camera photo comes back smaller than it went in. If you need the full size, keep that in mind before you place the cutout in a print design.

Remove a background without Canva Pro

If you are on Canva Free, or you only need a few cutouts, do the removal first and bring the result into Canva afterwards. CutoutBG AI removes the background in the browser, returns the image at the size you uploaded, and does not stamp a watermark on it. Three images a day need no account, and ten are free once you sign in.

Download the result as a transparent PNG and upload it to Canva like any other image. If the next step is a transparent design export, that part is covered in our guide to the Canva transparent background option.

make a transparent background in Canva→