PNG to AVIF Converter

How to Convert PNG to AVIF

PNG has long been the go-to format for high-quality images on the web, especially when transparency is needed. However, PNG files can be quite large, which impacts page load times and bandwidth consumption. Converting PNG to AVIF gives you the best of both worlds: dramatically smaller file sizes with transparency support and excellent visual quality. AVIF is one of the most efficient image formats available today, and adopting it can yield significant performance improvements for websites and applications.

Size Savings with AVIF

The file size reduction from PNG to AVIF is often dramatic. For photographic content, AVIF files are typically 60 to 80 percent smaller than their PNG equivalents. Even for graphics, icons, and illustrations, which PNG handles relatively well, AVIF usually achieves 40 to 60 percent smaller files. For a website serving hundreds or thousands of images, this translates to meaningfully faster load times, lower CDN costs, and improved performance metrics like Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), which directly influences search engine rankings.

Consider a typical product image: a 2 MB PNG file might compress to just 300-500 KB as an AVIF with no perceptible loss in quality. For an e-commerce site with thousands of product images, the cumulative bandwidth savings are substantial.

Quality and Visual Fidelity

AVIF uses the AV1 codec for image compression, which was developed through extensive research by major technology companies. At equivalent visual quality, AVIF consistently outperforms not only PNG but also JPG and WebP. The format is particularly good at preserving smooth gradients, fine textures, and sharp edges, areas where older lossy formats introduce noticeable artifacts.

When converting from PNG (a lossless format) to AVIF (typically used in lossy mode), you can control the quality-to-size trade-off with the quality slider. For web usage, a quality setting between 65 and 80 delivers excellent results with maximum compression benefit. For archival or high-fidelity use cases, settings of 85 to 95 preserve virtually all detail from the original PNG.

When to Convert PNG to AVIF

The best candidates for PNG to AVIF conversion are web assets: hero images, product photos, blog illustrations, and any images served to end users via a browser. If your images require transparency, AVIF is especially compelling because it offers the same alpha channel support as PNG at a fraction of the file size. It is also worth converting PNG assets for mobile applications and progressive web apps, where bandwidth efficiency directly impacts user experience.

For production workflows, consider keeping your original PNG files as source assets and generating AVIF versions for distribution. This gives you the lossless originals for future editing while serving optimized AVIF files to your audience.