PNG to SVG

Trace a PNG into a real vector you can scale to any size. Free, no sign-up, no watermark, and the image never leaves your browser.

  • 100% in your browser
  • No upload, no signup
  • No account
  • Adjustable quality

Works best on logos, icons and line art. Photos can be traced, but it is worth seeing what happens first. See what happens to each kind of image

Why convert a PNG to SVG

A PNG is a grid of pixels. Blow it up past its native size and you see the grid: edges go soft, then blocky, and there is nothing anyone can do about it, because the detail was never in the file. An SVG is a set of shapes described mathematically, so it is drawn fresh at whatever size it is asked for. Put it on a billboard and the curves are still curves.

That is the real reason to want one. A logo that lives as a 512-pixel PNG is fine on a website and useless on a banner, a vehicle wrap or an embroidery machine. The same logo as an SVG works at every one of those sizes from a single file.

Vectors are also editable in a way pixels are not. Open an SVG in Figma, Illustrator or Inkscape and you can recolour a shape, nudge a corner, or pull one element out on its own. You can even edit the colours by hand in a text editor, because an SVG is text.

And for flat artwork the file usually gets smaller. In our tests a simple logo went from 4 KB as a PNG to 2 KB as an SVG — half the size, at any resolution. That is the best case, and this page is quite specific about when you are in it.

Upload toolsTheir server?This toolYour deviceNothing leaves your device, so there is no copy to delete.
Other converters upload your image to a server. This one traces it where it already is.

What tracing actually does

Tracing looks at where the colours change in your image and draws outlines along those boundaries. It does not recover the shapes the designer drew — it draws new ones that follow the pixels.

This distinction is the single most useful thing to understand about raster-to-vector conversion, and no converter we looked at explains it.

When a designer makes a logo, it starts as shapes: a circle, a triangle, a letterform with control points. Exporting it to PNG throws all of that away and keeps a grid of coloured squares. Tracing cannot get it back. What tracing does is walk around the edges of those coloured squares and lay down a path along them — a new shape that happens to look like the old one.

Most of the time that is fine, and for flat artwork it is very close to exact. But it explains everything else on this page. It explains why the result scales cleanly: it is a real path now. It explains why the paths are not the original shapes, so an SVG with a hundred paths is not pleasant to edit. And it explains why photographs go wrong: a photo has no clean colour boundaries to follow, so the tracer invents thousands of them.

It also explains a result that surprises people. Tracing does not automatically make a file smaller. A path costs bytes in proportion to how many points it has. A logo becomes four simple paths and shrinks. A screenshot of some text becomes a hundred paths hugging every anti-aliased letter edge, and grows — in our tests a 4 KB screenshot came out as a 19 KB SVG that looked identical.

Which is why this tool shows you the result and both file sizes before you download anything. The number is right there: 4 KB → 19 KB. Whether that is a good trade is a judgement about what you need the file for, and it is yours to make, not ours to hide.

PixelsTraced edgeNew outline
Tracing follows the edge of the pixels. It draws a new outline — it does not recover the shape the designer drew.

How to convert PNG to SVG

Four steps, all of them in this browser tab. Nothing is uploaded at any point.

1

Drop your image in

PNG, JPG or WebP, up to 20 MB. We read it locally and look at it — how many colours it uses, how much of it is flat, whether it has transparency.

2

Check what we think it is

We guess whether it is a logo, line art or a photo, and pick starting settings to match. The guess is shown and you can change it in one click; it only sets the starting point.

3

Trace it

The tracing runs in a background thread so the page stays responsive, with a progress bar that reflects real work. A big photo takes a few seconds and can be cancelled.

4

Compare, then download

The traced result sits next to the original, and you can zoom both to 4× or 8× to see how the edges held up. The before and after file sizes are shown plainly. Download when you are happy — or change a setting and trace again.

Going the other way? If you have an SVG and need a PNG out of it, that is the opposite job and much simpler — the conversion back is lossless.

What this converter does

It traces PNG, JPG and WebP images into SVG in your browser, shows you the result before you commit, and asks nothing in return. No account, no email, no daily limit, no watermark, and no queue. One of the tools ranking for this search caps uploads at 4 MB; another makes free users wait behind paying ones.

It tells you what you are getting. Both file sizes, the number of shapes, the number of colours, and a side-by-side preview you can zoom to 8×. Every other converter we looked at hands you a download and lets you find out later.

The settings are explained rather than merely exposed. One competitor offers nine tracing parameters with no indication of what any of them does; we offer three, each with a sentence about whether it makes the file bigger or smaller.

It knows what it is bad at. When an image looks like a photograph, the page says so before you press anything, explains what tracing will do to it, and points you at a tool that probably suits you better. You can still go ahead — it is your image.

Tracing happens in a background thread, so the page keeps responding even on a 12-megapixel photo, and you can cancel a long one instead of waiting it out.

Transparency is kept. A logo with a transparent background comes out with a transparent background, rather than quietly gaining a white rectangle.

People use this for:

  • Scaling a logo up for print, signage or a vehicle wrap
  • Getting a clean shape into Figma, Illustrator or Inkscape
  • Cutting machines and laser cutters that need vector paths
  • Embroidery and vinyl work
  • Icons that have to look sharp on every screen density
  • Recolouring flat artwork without redrawing it
  • Turning a scanned sketch into editable line art

Works on any device

It runs in the browser, so there is nothing to install and no difference between platforms.

§ 01

Windows

Works in Chrome, Edge and Firefox. No software to install and nothing to uninstall afterwards.

§ 02

Mac

Works in Safari, Chrome and Firefox. The SVG opens straight into Preview, Figma or Illustrator.

§ 03

iPhone and iPad

Pick an image from Photos or Files. Large images take a little longer on a phone, but the page stays responsive.

§ 04

Android

Works from the gallery or any file manager. Tracing runs on your device, not on a server.

§ 05

Linux

Works in Firefox and Chromium. The output opens directly in Inkscape.

§ 06

Chromebook

Runs locally in the browser, which on a Chromebook is where everything runs anyway.

Will your image actually work?

This is the question that decides whether tracing is worth doing, and nobody answers it. So we measured it: we traced each kind of image, rendered the SVG back to a bitmap, and compared it with the original pixel by pixel. These are the results, not estimates.

changed · sizeLogo0.6% · 0.5×Line art3.2% · 1.2×Photo25.6% · 1.0×
Measured by tracing each kind, rendering it back to a bitmap, and comparing with the original.
Kind of imagePixels visibly changedFile sizeWorth it?
Logo or icon — flat colours, hard edges0.6%Half the sizeYes, clearly
Line art — black strokes on white3.2%Slightly biggerUsually
Screenshot with text0.9%4.5× biggerLooks right, costs a lot
Photograph25.6%No smallerRarely

Why a photo is the one case with no good answer

Look at the photograph row again: a quarter of the pixels came out visibly different, and the file did not shrink at all. That is the default setting. You can push it either way, and it gets worse in both directions. Ask for fewer colours and the file halves — but now 44% of the pixels are wrong. Push further, down to two colours, and you get a fifth of the original size with 86% of the pixels changed, which is not your photo any more, it is a stencil of it. There is no setting where a photograph comes out both faithful and smaller. Quality and size are pulling against each other, and neither one wins. If you want a smaller photo, an efficient raster format does that properly. If you want a photo you can scale, nothing here can give you one — the detail simply is not in a bitmap to begin with.

PNG 4 KBSVG 19 KB
A screenshot traced to an SVG that looked identical — and took four and a half times the space.

How to judge any traced SVG, from any tool

Open it and zoom to 400%. Flat artwork stays crisp, because the edges really are curves now. If what you see instead is a mosaic of flat patches that only resembled the original at small size, the trace has approximated something it could not follow — and no converter can fix that, because the problem is the image, not the software. Then check the file size against the original. If it grew several times over and you only wanted a smaller file, the conversion worked against you.

Your image never leaves your browser

The tracing happens on your own device. Your image is read locally, traced in a background thread inside this tab, and handed back to you. It is never uploaded, so there is no server copy to delete in eight hours or twenty-four — those deletion promises exist only because the file was taken in the first place.

The four highest-ranking converters for this search all work the other way: your image goes to their server, gets processed there, and is deleted on their schedule. For a logo you are still working on, or a client's artwork under an NDA, that is a decision you might rather not make by accident.

Nothing is fetched from the network while you work either. The tracing code is part of this page, loaded once when you first convert something.

§ 01

No upload

The image is traced on your device.

§ 02

No account

No sign-up, no email, no daily limit.

§ 03

No watermark

The SVG is yours, unmarked.

§ 04

No stored copy

Nothing to retain, because nothing arrives.

Frequently asked questions

Is this PNG to SVG converter free?
Yes, with nothing withheld. No account, no email, no daily cap, no watermark and no queue. That is worth saying because it is not the norm for this search: one popular tool limits you to 4 MB per file, and another makes free users wait behind paying ones on larger jobs.
Do I need to upload my image?
No. Your image is read and traced on your own device, inside this browser tab. It is never sent anywhere, so nothing is stored on a server and there is no retention period to wonder about.
Will my photo convert well?
Usually not, and we would rather say so up front. We measured it: tracing a photograph at the default setting leaves about a quarter of the pixels visibly different from the original, and the file does not get any smaller. Reducing the colours shrinks the file but pushes the error past 40%. There is no setting where a photo comes out both faithful and smaller — a photograph has no clean colour boundaries for a tracer to follow. You can still do it if you want a stylised, poster-like result, which is a legitimate thing to want.
Why did my SVG come out bigger than the PNG?
Because a vector file costs bytes per point, not per pixel. If your image has lots of detailed or soft edges — a screenshot of text, a photo, anything anti-aliased — the tracer draws a great many small paths to follow them, and that adds up. In our tests a 4 KB screenshot became a 19 KB SVG that looked identical. A flat logo goes the other way and halves. This is why both sizes are shown before you download.
Does this turn my PNG back into an editable design?
Not in the way people usually hope. Tracing draws new outlines along the colour boundaries in your image; it does not recover the original layers, live text or the shapes the designer drew. You get real vector paths that scale cleanly and can be recoloured, but a traced logo is a set of outlines, not a rebuilt logo. If the text in the image matters, it will come out as shapes and will not be editable as text.
What kind of image works best?
Flat artwork with clear edges: logos, icons, symbols, simple illustrations, and black-and-white line art. These are exactly what vector formats were designed for, they trace almost exactly, and they usually end up smaller than the original. The more your image looks like something drawn rather than photographed, the better this will go.
Can I edit the SVG afterwards in Figma or Illustrator?
Yes — the output is a standard SVG with plain paths, and it opens in Figma, Illustrator, Inkscape, Sketch and anything else that reads the format. How pleasant it is to edit depends on the shape count shown with your result: a handful of paths is easy to work with, a few hundred is not. That number is one of the reasons we display it.
Does transparency carry over?
Yes. A PNG with a transparent background comes out as an SVG with a transparent background. There is also a setting to keep the background as a filled shape if you would rather have it, which is off by default for logos and on for photos.
Can I convert a JPG or WebP as well?
Yes. The tool takes PNG, JPG and WebP, and treats them the same way once decoded. Bear in mind that JPG is the format photographs usually arrive in, and photographs are the case that traces poorly — the format is not the problem, the content is.
Why does it take a few seconds?
Because the work is happening on your device rather than on a server. Tracing time scales with the number of pixels: a small logo is near-instant, while a 6-megapixel photo takes a couple of seconds and a 12-megapixel one longer. It runs in a background thread so the page keeps responding, and you can cancel a long trace instead of waiting for it.
Is there a file size limit?
20 MB per image, which is far more than any logo needs and covers most photographs too. There is no limit on how many images you convert, and no daily cap.
How do I convert an SVG back to PNG?
That is the opposite job and it is much simpler — going from vector to pixels is exact, because you are choosing the size rather than guessing at detail that was thrown away. It is not on the site yet; for now any browser will do it if you open the SVG and take a screenshot at the size you need.

Trace your image into a vector

See the result and the real file size before you download. Free, unlimited, and it never leaves your browser.

Convert PNG to SVG