What RoundCut is
RoundCut is a suite of free image tools that run entirely in your browser. Today three tools are available: a Circle Crop for avatars, an AI Background Remover, and an Image Compressor. Everything happens on your device — no upload, no signup, no watermark.
The site exists because the alternatives, in our experience, get one of three things wrong: they upload your photos to a server, they paywall basic operations, or they bury simple tools under intrusive ads. RoundCut tries to do none of those.
Why we built it
The first version of RoundCut launched in 2024 as a single tool — a circle crop for profile pictures — built to scratch a personal itch: the existing options either asked for an account or rendered the image at 256 pixels and offered a “Pro” upgrade for the original resolution. Neither felt acceptable for a one-line operation that every browser has been able to do natively for years.
The site grew organically from there. Each new tool answered a recurring question we kept hitting personally — “how do I shrink this PNG without losing transparency?”, “how do I strip the GPS coordinates from this photo before sharing?”, “how do I make a Discord avatar without installing software?”. The 2026 rebuild is the same project, rewritten on top of modern web standards (Astro, WebAssembly, Canvas API) so it can grow to cover the rest of the common image-handling questions without adding servers, accounts, or upsell screens.
Who it’s for
RoundCut is built for anyone who needs to do a small, specific thing to an image and doesn’t want to install software, sign up for an account, or upload their photo to a stranger’s server. The current tools cover three common needs:
- Profile pictures — circle-cropping a photo for Discord, LinkedIn, Slack, Instagram, or any platform that masks avatars to a circle. Export as transparent PNG, WebP, AVIF, or JPEG.
- Background removal — pulling a subject out of its background with an AI model that runs in your browser. Useful for product shots, marketplace listings, avatars on a different background, or thumbnails.
- Image compression — shrinking JPG, PNG, WebP, or AVIF files for the web, email, or a tight upload limit. Uses the same WASM codecs Squoosh ships, with a side-by-side preview so you can choose the trade-off yourself.
Common to all three: the tools work offline after the first page load, so they’re usable in transit or on slow connections where uploading to a server isn’t realistic.
Our principles
Privacy is not a feature, it’s the architecture
“Your photos stay on your device” isn’t a marketing line — it’s a consequence of how the site is built. There are no servers doing image work because the site doesn’t have any to do work. Every tool runs as static JavaScript and WebAssembly in your browser. You can verify this in seconds: open DevTools, switch to the Network tab, and watch zero upload requests leave while you edit. We can’t break the privacy promise without rebuilding the entire site, which is exactly the point.
Free should mean free
Every tool that exists today will stay free. We don’t watermark exports, we don’t cap resolution, we don’t require an account, and we don’t show interstitial ads. A future paid tier (“Pro”) will add capability — batch processing, larger upload sizes, lossless export, server-side AI — but it will not gate anything that’s already shipped.
Truthful copy
What we say a tool does and what the code actually does are the same thing. If the page says “Export as PNG, WebP, or JPEG”, you’ll find all three in the format picker. If the page says “up to 4096 px”, that’s the real cap in code. We’ve got an internal rule that copy and code ship in the same commit, exactly so this never drifts. The full version of that rule is enforced in the codebase itself.
Accessibility from the start
Every page passes WCAG 2.2 AA contrast in both light and dark themes. Every interactive element is reachable by keyboard, has a visible focus ring, and has a minimum 24 × 24 CSS-pixel touch target. Screen-reader landmarks (header, main, footer, nav) are in place. The site is built so that the experience for someone using a screen reader, a keyboard, or a small phone is not noticeably worse than for someone with a high-end desktop.
No tracking by default
The site uses Cloudflare Web Analytics for aggregate page-view counts. There are no tracking cookies, no fingerprinting, no third-party analytics scripts. The full data flow is described in the privacy policy.
How we stay free
RoundCut runs as a static site on Cloudflare’s free tier. The bandwidth and DNS are effectively free at our current scale, and the tools themselves cost us zero per use because the work happens in your browser. Hosting a static site for tens of thousands of monthly visitors costs roughly the same as not hosting it at all.
As the site grows, we plan to fund continued development with two layers, in this order:
- One discreet ad below the tool, served by Google AdSense on tool pages only. The home page, satellite pages, and legal pages will remain ad-free. This is the standard pattern competitors like iLoveIMG, TinyPNG, and Pixlr use, and it’s what funds free tools at scale on the open web.
- An optional Pro tier ($4/month or $19 lifetime) processed through Lemon Squeezy, unlocking ad-free use, batch processing, and a few power-user features. Aimed at people who use the tools daily and want to support the project. Free use stays free.
Neither layer is active today. Ads will turn on after Google AdSense approves the site; Pro will launch after the site reaches sustained traffic.
How to reach us
For questions, feedback, or bug reports, email support@araluma.com. We read every message and try to respond within five business days.
For privacy-related requests, see the privacy policy. For a technical look under the hood, see how it works.