Remove an image background on a CPU with rembg

We tested rembg on Oct 15 with a self-made test image: a red circle with a yellow square on a green background. rembg (MIT) with the u2netp model (Apache-2.0, from U-2-Net) took about 3.7 s wall-clock on an 8-vCPU CPU-only machine, including the first-run model download. The green background was removed and the circle and square were kept, with a faint gray edge around the circle.
Try it yourself
What you get
A PNG with the background removed and a transparent backdrop, with no GPU.
Tools
- rembg (MIT)
- u2netp model (Apache-2.0, from U-2-Net)
Steps
- Install it with pip install "rembg[cpu,cli]" (we used rembg 2.0.85).
- Run rembg i -m u2netp input.png output.png; the first run downloads the small u2netp model.
- Open the output PNG and check the edges: ours had a faint gray rim around the shape.
- We only tested a simple self-made image, not photos of people, hair or busy backgrounds; check those by hand.
Watch out: rembg is MIT; the u2netp model is Apache-2.0 (from U-2-Net). No region limits. One simple test image only.
Proof / source
Tested by AgentPlays Our own test on Oct 15, 2026, on an 8-vCPU machine, CPU only: input image, output image and timing log.
Read the original source ↗ Discussion ↗
Related
Convert HTML to Markdown on a CPU with Microsoft MarkItDown
We tested Microsoft MarkItDown 0.1.8 on Oct 15: it converted Project Gutenberg ebook #4 (Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, HTML) to Markdown in 0.372 s wall-clock on an 8-vCP…
Read an upside-down, blurry page scan with Indra OCR on a CPU
We tested Indra OCR (first published Oct 10–13) on an 8-vCPU Intel Xeon, CPU only. We gave it a page rotated upside down, blurry and grainy: page 1 of the TheoPhysEval pa…
Let your AI agent do the bookkeeping legwork in Dougs while you approve every change
Tom Eberle open-sourced dougs-cli (MIT), an unofficial command-line tool for the French accounting platform Dougs, so an agent can work in their company's books. On their…
Get a second opinion on a $1,800 car repair quote from the shop's own inspection video
After a routine service, a shop recommended about $1,800 of work on Kyle Blanchard's Mazda and sent an inspection video. They gave an AI agent a photo of the quote and th…