PNG to AVIF — Free, Smaller Files, No Upload

PNG is a lossless format that prioritizes quality over file size, making it the right choice for storing original assets. But when the time comes to deliver those assets on the web, PNG files are often too large for optimal performance. A full-color PNG illustration or UI screenshot can be several megabytes, which contributes to slower page load times and poor Lighthouse scores. Google's PageSpeed Insights increasingly penalizes sites that serve unoptimized PNG images when next-generation formats are available.

AVIF, based on the AV1 codec developed by the Alliance for Open Media, offers extraordinary compression efficiency for both photographic and illustrative content. Compared to PNG, AVIF files can be 50 to 70 percent smaller at visually equivalent quality. Chrome, Firefox, and Safari all support AVIF natively, meaning the vast majority of web users today will receive AVIF images without any compatibility issues. Serving AVIF from a CDN like Cloudflare or Fastly is straightforward with proper Content-Type headers.

Converting PNG to AVIF uses lossy compression by default, which means a small amount of precision is traded for substantial file size gains. For photographic content and complex illustrations, the visual quality at AVIF quality 80 is excellent and difficult to distinguish from the lossless PNG original at normal screen sizes. For images with hard edges, text, or flat colors, you may see slight softening at lower quality settings. Lossless AVIF mode is also available and produces smaller files than PNG while preserving every pixel, though encoding lossless AVIF is slow.

Typical sizes (12MP photo): PNG 8–25 MB → AVIF 0.8–2 MB.

On the free tier, AVIF output has a repeating formatdrop.com watermark; Pro output doesn't.

AVIF output is encoded at quality 85 — a small file with no visible difference for most photos.