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Cleanup.pictures still erases objects, people and text for free at 720px, but its Pro price, refunds and data retention need a closer look. Our 2026 review.

Cleanup.pictures was one of the breakout AI tools of 2021: drop in a photo, brush over a person, a logo or a date stamp, and the gap fills itself in. It hit #1 Product of the Day on Product Hunt on 20 October 2021 with 757 upvotes, and for a while it was the go-to free object remover on the web.
In September 2026 the site is still live on its own domain, but it reads like a product nobody is minding. The footer still says ©2022 Init ML, the mobile apps were pulled in early 2024, the Terms and Privacy links point to Clipdrop, whose pages now say "Clipdrop is part of Jasper now", and the page quotes three different numbers for its Pro plan. This review covers what you get for free, what Pro costs, how it compares with Clipdrop's own Cleanup tool, and what the fine print says about refunds, renewal and your uploads. All live pages were checked on 30 September 2026.
Cleanup.pictures is a single-page web app for removing things from photos. The page title promises to "Remove objects, people, text and defects from any picture for free", and the FAQ adds that it "is also useful to remove any unwanted text, logo, date stamp, or watermark." It does one job. Background removal is not part of it, and the FAQ sends you to Clipdrop for that.
The history explains the loose ends. Init ML, a Paris startup founded in July 2020, built both cleanup.pictures and Clipdrop. Stability AI bought Init ML on 7 March 2023, and Jasper agreed to buy Clipdrop from Stability AI in a deal announced on 22 February 2024. Cleanup.pictures came along but never got a redesign: /pricing, /terms, /privacy and /api all return the same home page, and pricing is just a section of it.
The legal operator is still Init ML, a French company registered in Bobigny. The shared Terms cover "Clipdrop.co & Cleanup.pictures", but the support contact is now [email protected]. So the fair description is that cleanup.pictures is run by Init ML, the Clipdrop company Jasper bought, and support goes through Jasper.
The iOS app (ClipDrop - Cleanup Pictures) and the Android app are no longer listed. Archived snapshots show the Play Store page returning 404 from January 2024 and the App Store page from March 2024. The cleanup.pictures FAQ still says "Your subscription will work on both mobile and desktop", which is out of date: today it is a web-only tool.
You upload a photo, paint over what you want gone, and the app sends the image and the mask to its servers, which return a filled-in version. The editor code carries an HD mode and a "refiner" option, and the processing runs on Google Cloud in the US.
It works well on the kinds of shots the site shows off: an empty snowfield with a rock in it, a bathroom photo for a property listing, a stamped watermark, a product photo with a stray object. Soft, repeating backgrounds such as walls, floors, sky and grass are the easy case for any tool like this. Busy patterns, faces and text crossing complex edges are where these tools usually leave smears.

We could not run a full upload through the editor for this review, so the quality comments above come from the vendor's own examples and the tool's track record, not our own before/after tests. Try the free tier on one of your own photos before you pay.
The free plan offers unlimited images, but exports are capped. The FAQ says: "Export will be limited to 720px for the free version. There is no size limit for the Pro version." 720 pixels is fine for a social post or a marketplace listing. It is too small for print or for a photo you want to crop later.
Pro is where it gets confusing, because the page lists three different prices:
So the best reading is $5 a month or $36 a year, but we could not confirm the amount the Stripe checkout actually charges. Check the figure on the payment screen before you confirm. For history only: the discontinued iOS app charged $9.99 a month or $49.99 a year in 2023.
Two more limits apply. "Each cleanup subscription is individual and limited to 1 user", and the shared Terms allow "up to 2 devices (1 mobile and 1 desktop) per Account." The trial lets you test HD output for free, and the site calls it a "free look period".

Clipdrop has its own Image Cleanup tool ("Remove objects, defects or people in seconds") from the same team, inside a larger suite. The pricing card on cleanup.pictures even advertises it as "ClipDrop Pro", "11 starting from", covering Cleanup, background removal and replacement, Uncrop, generative fill and "a lot of other tools".
If all you ever do is erase objects, cleanup.pictures is the cheaper way to do it, and its free tier has no daily cap. If you also cut out backgrounds or upscale images, Clipdrop Pro covers all of it under one subscription. Our Clipdrop review goes through that plan in detail.

The API card on cleanup.pictures says "Usage-based pricing" and points to the Clipdrop Cleanup API. That API takes a JPG or PNG "with a maximum resolution of 16 megapixels and a max file size of 30 Mb", offers a fast mode and a quality mode ("the equivalent of the HD mode"), and bills one credit per successful call. Signing in gives you 100 free credits.
Past that, the docs say to "Contact Jasper.ai for more credits", and Jasper's developer docs say image API access "is available for customers on the Jasper Business plan with an API subscription." That is fine for a large team that already pays for Jasper. For a developer who just wants pay-as-you-go object removal, it is a dead end.

The cleanup.pictures FAQ and the shared Clipdrop Terms don't fully agree, so here is what each one says.
In practice, cancel through the "manage subscription" section of your account menu at least a week before a monthly renewal, or a month before a yearly one. Don't count on a refund unless something is actually broken.

The privacy policy is Clipdrop's, dated 21 June 2022, and Init ML is the data controller. It says the company may "store your photos on our cloud for service improvement purposes". Without an account, "images, photographs and texts are retained during two year." With an account, data is kept for as long as the account exists, and personal data may be archived "for probationary purposes for a period of 5 years." Hosting is on Google Cloud Platform in the United States.
The policy doesn't say whether uploads are used to train AI models, and the Terms don't say who owns the edited images you download. The Terms do forbid users from using the service to generate AI training data. If you handle client photos, people's faces or anything confidential, a two-year retention period for an anonymous upload is the detail to weigh.
Cleanup.pictures is still a quick, no-signup way to erase a stray person or a date stamp from a photo, and its free tier has no daily limit. For quick web images at 720px it does the job and costs nothing.
Pro is harder to recommend. The page can't agree on its own price, the FAQ still talks about apps that no longer exist, the refund promise in the FAQ is looser than the Terms, and support now goes through Jasper for a product Jasper doesn't promote. If you need full-resolution output often, look at Clipdrop Pro or a maintained alternative first. If you only need it for a month, pay monthly, check the price at checkout, and cancel at least 7 days before renewal.
Yes. The free plan offers unlimited images with export capped at 720px. Full resolution requires Pro.
The FAQ lists $5 per month or $36 per year. The pricing card says "3 starting from" and the upgrade dialog shows a crossed-out $60 a year, and the checkout price is loaded from Stripe, so confirm the amount on the payment screen.
No. Both mobile apps were removed from the stores in early 2024. The tool now works only in a web browser.
Only in limited cases. The FAQ offers a full refund within 14 days, or a prorated one after that, only for problems like technical faults or incompatibility. The Terms give just a refund email address and remove the EU withdrawal right once the service has been used.
Use "manage subscription" in your account menu. Under the Terms, monthly plans must be cancelled at least 7 days before the period ends and yearly plans at least 1 month before, or they renew.
Yes, for a while. The privacy policy says photos may be stored for service improvement, and kept for two years if you have no account or for as long as your account exists if you do. It doesn't say whether they are used for AI training.
Same company, different product. Both come from Init ML, now part of Jasper, but Clipdrop's Cleanup sits inside a bigger suite with a 20-a-day free cap and a US$15 monthly Pro plan, while cleanup.pictures is a standalone remover with unlimited free use at 720px.
Technically yes, but the FAQ says to "Only remove watermarks on images for which you have an explicit license." Stripping a watermark from someone else's photo can breach copyright.
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