Recraft background removal at $0.01 vs the Sume cutout route

Recraft's pricing page lists image background removal at $0.01 per request. Sume's cutout route, POST /v1/rmbg-1.0/remove with model id sume/rmbg-1.0, is described in Sume's tool descriptions at about $0.0198 per image after margin. At small volume the gap is cents; at tens of thousands of images, the difference is real money, so do the arithmetic for your own count before you choose.

The prices

Vendor figures from Recraft's pricing page.

What each buys

The two prices are not like-for-like until you test them. Compare cutout edge quality on your own product photos, how each handles hair, glass or shadows, and whether you need the other things around the call, such as Sume jobs, webhooks and one wallet. Sume returns a PNG with alpha.

Cost at volume

A few lines of arithmetic keep the decision honest.

def monthly(count, unit_cost):
    return round(count * unit_cost, 2)

for n in (1_000, 10_000, 50_000):
    print(n, "recraft", monthly(n, 0.01), "sume", monthly(n, 0.0198))

Before you decide

Re-read both price pages the day you decide; they change. If cutout is a small part of a wider pipeline, a single wallet may matter more than the price per call.