# Photoroom API vs Pixelixe (slim)

> Photoroom scores 53.5 (D) to Pixelixe's 37.3 (F) for image editing. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

- Full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/photoroom-vs-pixelixe.md (~5,050 tokens) · this version ~3,030 tokens · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/photoroom-vs-pixelixe.json · canonical https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/photoroom-vs-pixelixe
- Index: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt · API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json · MCP: https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp · Updated: 2026-11-07
- Licence: CC BY 4.0, credit Anchor Terminal and link this page (https://www.anchorterminal.com/terms/#data)

Photoroom API scores 53.5 (D) on agent readiness against Pixelixe's 37.3 (F), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. Pixelixe leads on maintenance & community. Both do image editing.

- Photoroom API: D 53.5, rank #946 of 1510 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/photoroom.min.md
- Pixelixe: F 37.3, rank #1377 of 1510 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/pixelixe.min.md
- Photoroom API, good for Product-photo work at volume, such as cutouts, white backgrounds, shadows, generated scenes and clothing shots, one image a call. Ahead on Reliability, 42 against 15; Schema & documentation, 86 against 66; Agent ergonomics, 64 against 49; Security & auth, 49 against 38; Payments & pricing, 40 against 30; Transparency & trust, 69 against 41.
- Pixelixe, good for Template fills and white-label editing for marketing and SaaS teams, with a JSON-to-graphic route for agents. Ahead on Maintenance & community, 19 against 13. Also Free to start without a card.

| Category | Photoroom API | Pixelixe |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability (16%) | 42 | 15 |
| Performance (10%) | pending | pending |
| Schema & documentation (13%) | 86 | 66 |
| Agent ergonomics (13%) | 64 | 49 |
| Security & auth (14%) | 49 | 38 |
| Payments & pricing (10%) | 40 | 30 |
| Task success (10%) | pending | pending |
| Maintenance & community (7%) | 13 | 19 |
| Transparency & trust (7%) | 69 | 41 |

| Fact (where they differ) | Photoroom API | Pixelixe |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Vendor | Photoroom | Pixelixe |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://image-api.photoroom.com/v2` | `https://studio.pixelixe.com/api` |
| Pricing | Freemium | Paid |
| Price for image editing | $0.10 per image | not published |
| Licence | Proprietary service under the Photoroom Terms and Conditions. The sample code repository is MIT | Closed service under the Pixelixe terms of service (last modified 19 March 2026) |
| Tools exposed | 1 | 7 |
| MCP registry | not listed | `com.pixelixe/pixelixe-mcp` |
| Last release | 2026-04-21 | 2026-03-26 |
| Terms last updated | 2026-07-29 | 2026-03-19 |
| Privacy policy last updated | 2026-03-01 | 2026-04-07 |
| Customer content may train models | yes, with an opt-out | not found in the text |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | yes | not found in the text |

Why the edge:
- Transparency & trust, Photoroom API +28: Photoroom API 69 (Per the 9 October check, not re-read on 4 November. Closed hosted service under the Photoroom Terms and Conditions effective 29 July 2026, which name the application programming interface. Sample code is MIT (15). The security page gives retention figures (images discarded after the call, operational logs 15 days, API access logs one year). The statements on training disagree. The privacy policy of March 2026 says model improvement does not apply to API images, the security page says self-serve API plans train by default with an opt-out, and the terms authorise training on user content with an opt-out. A DPA is for Enterprise customers only (14). Preview and alpha functions carry a two-week notice, the 2024 base URL change gave a dated deadline, and the AI Backgrounds v2 model is marked deprecated with no removal date (12). The security page names GCP, AWS, Cloudflare, Datadog and Vercel and says hosting is in the United States. The full list is in the trust centre, which was not read (16).); Pixelixe 41 (Closed service under terms of 19 March 2026 that choose French law but name no company (12 of 30). The privacy policy of 7 April 2026 keeps account data while the account is active and 'as long as reasonably necessary' after, with no periods, and says nothing about AI processing or training (10 of 30). V1 is marked deprecated in the docs with no dates or notice period (5 of 20). Processors are described only by category, with Google Analytics named, and data processed in France, the EEA and other vendor countries (5 of 20). 12 + 10 + 5 + 5 = 32.)
- Reliability, Photoroom API +27: Photoroom API 42 (Read with the hosted lines. Photoroom's terms (clause 2.7.a, effective 29 July 2026) bar copying any part of the Services by automated or non-automated scraping, so photoroom.com hosts were not re-read on 4 November and the 9 October readings are kept. No status page was found on photoroom.com, the docs or the security page, and status.photoroom.com did not answer one request, per the 9 October check (0). With no history to read, the incident line takes the floor of 5. The security page states one incident on record, a 30-minute availability disruption in October 2024, which is the vendor's own account (5). Limits are published, 60 images a minute by default and 1,000 a month and 100 a day in sandbox mode (15). The docs say a 429 is returned at the limit, tell callers to back off exponentially and to retry a 500 up to three times, and say failed calls are not billed. No `Retry-After` header or idempotency key is documented, so safe-retry guidance without keys (12). The API page states a 99.9 per cent uptime target on Enterprise accounts, but no SLA document was found and the terms say availability is not guaranteed, so no SLA could be read (0). The Image Editing API left beta on 3 April 2024. Upscale, text-guided segmentation and templating are labelled preview (10).); Pixelixe 15 (Hosted lines. No status page found on the site or in the docs (0). No readable incident history (5). No rate limit is published; the terms only forbid circumventing them (0). No 429, Retry-After or backoff guidance. Every error, a wrong key and exhausted credits included, is a 400 with a message (0). No SLA found; the terms supply the service as is (0). API v2 is current and not labelled beta (10). 0 + 5 + 0 + 0 + 0 + 10 = 15.)
- Schema & documentation, Photoroom API +20: Photoroom API 86 (Per the 9 October check, not re-read on 4 November. A public OpenAPI 3.1.0 description at image-api.photoroom.com/openapi, read as embedded on the docs reference page, with four operations (25). `llms.txt`, a Markdown twin of every page and a page with a prompt written for coding agents (10). 86 of the 87 parameters of `GET /v2/edit` carry a description, the operation description lists every edit, and the agent page says when to call each of the two APIs (17). 31 of 87 parameters have enums, but booleans are strings, no field of `/v2/edit` is marked required, and the embedded description declares neither the `x-api-key` header nor the `pr-*` model headers (10). Curl examples on every page and 400, 402 and 500 bodies in the description. 401, 403 and 429 are documented in prose only, and the two APIs use different error shapes (11). Paths are `/v1` and `/v2`, models are pinned by dated headers and the changelog is dated back to June 2023, but the description's version is fixed at 1.0.0 and the last changelog entry is 21 April 2026 (13).); Pixelixe 66 (OpenAPI 3.1 (version 2.0.0) at pixelixe.com/pixelixe-openapi.json, but it covers four endpoints, authentication, document search, graphic automation and photo effects, and leaves out the JSON-to-graphic and image processing APIs (18 of 25). llms.txt exists but routes readers to marketing pages; the MCP reference is written for LLMs (7 of 10). The MCP reference says what each of the seven tools maps to, that `pixelixe_generate_graphic_variant` 'is not a free-form layout API', lists common mistakes and how to present outputs (17 of 20). The MCP layer documents canonical field names and refuses legacy aliases; the REST modifications are open structures keyed by element name (10 of 15). Request examples throughout, but errors are one table of message strings all returning 400 (8 of 15). /v2 paths and a deprecated V1, with no changelog (6 of 15). 18 + 7 + 17 + 10 + 8 + 6 = 66.)
- Agent ergonomics, Photoroom API +15: Photoroom API 64 (Per the 9 October check, not re-read on 4 November. The response body is the image itself, so an agent saves a file and reads nothing into context. `outputSize`, `maxWidth`, `maxHeight`, `export.format` and the `size` presets set what comes back, and the MCP server has one tool, per Photoroom (18). Nothing to paginate. Output size, format and DPI controls (15). JSON errors with a message and a documented meaning for 400, 401, 403, 402, 429 and 500, but the two APIs use different shapes and `Unauthorized` covers both a missing key and an empty balance (13). No idempotency key. Calls keep no state, failed calls are not billed and `background.seed` repeats a generated background, but a retried success is billed again. The MCP tool's annotations were not read (10). Only the image is required and defaults are sensible. No official SDK, only sample code for four platforms (8).); Pixelixe 49 (Seven compact MCP tools (25). Document and design-set search filters, with no pagination documented (10 of 20). All errors are 400 with free-text messages, so an agent can't branch on a code (6 of 20). No idempotency keys, and annotations couldn't be read on the closed server. The MCP tools only read and create, with nothing that deletes (5 of 20). Few required fields, but no official SDK (3 of 15). 25 + 10 + 6 + 5 + 3 = 49.)
- Security & auth, Photoroom API +11: Photoroom API 49 (Per the 9 October check, not re-read on 4 November. A team can hold several API keys and revoke each in the dashboard, with no scopes found. The key travels in the `x-api-key` header only. The hosted MCP server's published OAuth metadata gives an authorisation code grant with PKCE, dynamic client registration and a revocation endpoint, per the 9 October reading, and the connector page says it creates its own key for the connection (20). No read-only key. The API stores nothing to change, a sandbox key cannot spend, and a prepaid monthly allowance bounds spend (8). Returns images, not untrusted text (10). The dashboard shows usage history, `GET /v2/account` returns the balance, and the security page says API access logs are kept for one year on Photoroom's side (6). The security page states a SOC 2 Type 2 attestation scoped to the API with a report of April 2026, held in a trust centre drawn by script that was not read. `security.txt` returns 404 and no disclosure policy or bug bounty was found, so a SOC 2 claim with no readable report or disclosure route (5).); Pixelixe 38 (A bearer API key per account, plus a public key for the embedded editor. The MCP server accepts the key or an OAuth token from studio.pixelixe.com/oauth/mcp with one `pixelixe.mcp` scope. No key scopes, rotation or revocation documented (18 of 30). No read-only mode, though the MCP tools can't delete or change account settings (10 of 20). Tools return the account's own templates and renders (10 of 15). No audit log or per-call record documented (0). No security.txt, disclosure policy, bug bounty or certification found (0). 18 + 10 + 10 + 0 + 0 = 38.)
- Payments & pricing, Photoroom API +10: Photoroom API 40 (Per the 9 October check, not re-read on 4 November. No x402, MPP or L402 in the docs, the OpenAPI description or the pricing pages (0). Per-image prices are public, $0.02 for background removal and $0.10 for an Image Editing call (20). Sandbox mode gives 1,000 free watermarked calls a month and a new account 10 free production calls on the Remove Background API, with no card, per the pricing page (20). A person has to create an account and activate the API in the dashboard. The MCP server also needs a Photoroom sign-in (0).); Pixelixe 30 (No x402, MPP or L402 (0). Plan prices with monthly document counts are public, with no per-image price (10). 10-day trial with no card (20). A person signs up and copies the key, or approves OAuth in a browser (0). 0 + 10 + 20 + 0 = 30.)