PNG to AVIF Converter

PNG vs AVIF — Which Should You Ship?

If the image is going onto a web page and your audience is on current browsers, AVIF is almost always the better file: it is the AV1 codec applied to still pictures, it carries a real alpha channel, and it collapses photographic detail that PNG has no way to compress. If the image is a master copy, needs to survive repeated re-editing, or has to open in software that predates broad AVIF support, keep the PNG. The short version: convert for delivery, keep the PNG as the source.

Side-by-side Comparison

When to Keep the PNG

• It is your source file and you will edit it again. Every AVIF pass here is a lossy re-encode; stacking them degrades the image.
• The picture is a screenshot with small text or thin UI lines. Lossy coding at low bitrates smears exactly the high-contrast one-pixel detail PNG stores perfectly.
• It has to open in old software — a print RIP, an in-house tool, or an image library that never added an AVIF decoder.
• It is a tiny flat graphic. Below a few kilobytes PNG's overhead is already minimal and AVIF's container adds fixed cost of its own.

When to Convert to AVIF

• The image is going on a web page or into an app bundle, and size is the thing you are optimising.
• It is a photograph, a render, or a gradient-heavy graphic. This is where PNG's lossless model is at its worst and AV1 is at its best.
• It has a transparent background and you have been shipping a heavy PNG because JPEG cannot hold alpha. AVIF gives you the alpha channel and the compression.
• You are already serving a <picture> element and can list AVIF first with a PNG or WebP fallback behind it.

How to Convert PNG to AVIF

1. Upload Your PNG File: Drag your PNG onto the page or click "+ Add Files". You can queue several and convert the batch with one set of settings; .apng is accepted too.
2. Pick a Quality Preset: Under "Image Compression" the "Quality preset" dropdown runs Highest, Very High (Recommended), High, Medium, Low, Very Low, Lowest — Very High is preselected and is the sensible starting point.
3. Or Set a Specific File Size: Switch to "Specific file size" to name a byte target instead, in bytes, kilobytes or megabytes. The "Auto Scale" toggle beside it lets the converter reduce the pixel dimensions if quality alone cannot reach your target. "Image resolution" resizes independently of either.
4. Convert and Download: Click "Convert" and save the .avif. No sign-up, no watermark; files are uploaded over an encrypted connection, processed on our servers, and deleted automatically after a few hours.

What Each Quality Preset Actually Sets

There is no lossless switch on this page and no bit-depth control — every preset, including Highest, runs the AV1 encoder in lossy mode at 8 bits per sample.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does AVIF keep the transparency from my PNG?

Yes. The AVIF specification stores alpha as a separate auxiliary picture — an "AV1 Alpha Image Item" encoded at the same bit depth as the main image — and this converter carries it through. In our testing a 1920 × 1080 logo on a fully transparent background came out of the converter with all four channels intact and its corner pixels still reading as completely transparent, so soft edges and drop shadows survive rather than picking up a matte.

Will the conversion be lossless if I choose the Highest preset?

No, and this is worth being clear about. AVIF as a format supports a lossless mode, but this converter does not expose it: the seven presets map to encoder quality values from 100 down to 50 and all of them run lossy AV1 intra coding. "Highest" means quality 100, not bit-exact. If you need a pixel-for-pixel copy, keep the PNG — that is exactly what PNG is for.

How much smaller will the AVIF actually be?

It depends entirely on the picture. In our testing a photographic 1920 × 1080 PNG of 1,501,179 bytes became a 233,747-byte AVIF at the default Very High preset — about 84% smaller. A flat 1920 × 1080 logo on transparency, which PNG already stores efficiently, went from 21,244 bytes to 11,722 bytes, roughly 45% smaller. Detailed and photographic content saves the most; flat-colour artwork saves the least.

Does this converter output 10-bit or HDR AVIF?

No. The AVIF specification allows 8, 10 and 12-bit samples and supports wide-gamut and HDR signalling, but this pipeline writes 8-bit output regardless of the source — a 16-bit PNG comes out as an 8-bit AVIF. Treat this as a delivery converter for standard-range images, not a route into an HDR workflow.

Which browsers and applications can open an AVIF file?

Around 94.7% of global browser traffic, per current caniuse data: Chrome 85+, Firefox 93+, Edge 121+, Opera 71+, and Safari 16.4+ on the desktop with partial support in 16.1–16.3, plus iOS Safari from version 16. Internet Explorer and Opera Mini never will. Desktop image editors are further behind than browsers, so if a colleague needs to open the file in older software, hand them the PNG or run AVIF to PNG.

Should I use AVIF or WebP for this image?

AVIF generally compresses better than WebP at matched visual quality, particularly on photographs and smooth gradients, and both formats carry an alpha channel. WebP's advantages are wider support in older software, faster encoding, and a genuine lossless mode. If your audience is on current browsers and bytes are the priority, AVIF wins; if you need a broader safety net or a lossless option, use PNG to WebP instead. Serving both through a <picture> element with a PNG fallback is the belt-and-braces answer.

AVIF or HEIF — they look like the same container?

They very nearly are. Both wrap coded still pictures in the ISO base media file format using the HEIF structure; the difference is the codec inside. AVIF carries AV1 and is royalty-free, which is why browsers adopted it. HEIF as produced here carries HEVC, which browsers outside Safari do not decode. On the same source and the same quality setting, our AVIF output was substantially the smaller of the two. Choose HEIF only when the destination is an Apple photo library — see PNG to HEIF.

What happens if I upload an animated PNG?

You get a still. AVIF can hold an image sequence, but this page produces a single picture, so an animated source is decoded to its first frame and that frame is encoded. If you want the animation preserved, keep it as an APNG or convert it to a format this site animates — APNG to WebP or APNG to GIF.

Where do my files go after the conversion?

They are uploaded over an encrypted connection, converted on our servers, and both the upload and the AVIF are deleted automatically after a few hours. No sign-up, no watermark, and nothing is shared or made public.