Convert PNG to AVIF — Free Online, No Upload
Drop a PNG (or a batch) into PicBrewery and get an AVIF version generated right in your browser — alpha channel intact, no upload, no watermark. For photo-like PNG sources AVIF typically cuts the file size by 70–90%; for flat graphics the win is smaller but still meaningful.
For the full picture of where AVIF outperforms PNG and where it does not, see the formats comparison table.
How to convert PNG to AVIF
- Open PicBrewery in any evergreen browser.
- Drag your PNG (or several) onto the upload area. Clipboard paste (Ctrl/Cmd+V) works too — useful for dragging a region from screen-capture tools.
- AVIF runs after JPEG, PNG and WebP finish. Expect 1–3 seconds per megapixel; PicBrewery encodes in Web Workers so the UI stays responsive.
- Click the download icon on the AVIF cell, or Download all as ZIP to grab the smallest format per source from a batch.
Why convert PNG to AVIF?
PNG is an excellent lossless container for UI graphics, but on the wire it is heavy — and if the PNG happens to contain photo-like content (screenshots of photos, illustrations with gradients, frames from a video), it is almost always the worst format you could be serving. AVIF fixes both cases: 70–90% size savings on photo-like PNGs at quality 60, and 40–60% savings on flat UI graphics compared to tuned PNG.
AVIF also unlocks capabilities PNG cannot touch: HDR, wide gamut (BT.2020), 10/12-bit depth and film-grain synthesis. Even if you never use those today, they are there for the day you ship on a high-DPI, HDR-capable device. And unlike PNG, AVIF stores alpha on a separate plane — so transparent regions compress particularly well, which is why iconography and overlays see such large wins.
Expected file-size savings
Rules of thumb from real-world benchmarks: photo-like PNGs shrink 70–90% when converted to AVIF quality 60; flat UI graphics 40–60%; screenshot PNGs with mixed content (text + photos) about 60–80%. Pixel art and extremely sharp line drawings are the exceptions — AV1 sometimes introduces faint ringing on single-pixel edges, so keep PNG (or try lossless WebP) for those. PicBrewery shows all formats side by side so you can pick the smallest one per file.
Browser support for AVIF
AVIF decode is available in Chrome 85+ (2020), Firefox 93+ (2021),
Edge 121+, Safari 16+ (2022 — macOS Ventura, iOS 16) and most
modern Android browsers. For legacy browsers use a
<picture> element with AVIF on top and PNG as
the fallback — the PNG is only fetched when the browser cannot
decode AVIF, so nobody pays for the fallback on modern hardware.
See /formats/#avif for the full
support matrix.
Frequently asked questions
Does PNG to AVIF preserve transparency?
Yes. AVIF supports full alpha (the same channel PNG uses) and PicBrewery carries transparent pixels through unchanged. AVIF's alpha is stored separately from the color plane, so transparent areas compress very efficiently — one of the reasons AVIF can beat PNG so dramatically on icons and UI graphics with large flat transparent regions.
How much smaller is AVIF than PNG?
It depends heavily on the content. Photo-like PNGs (screenshots of photos, illustrations with gradients) typically shrink by 70–90% when converted to lossy AVIF at quality 60. UI graphics with flat colors shrink more modestly, around 40–60%, because PNG with palette compression and oxipng is already quite efficient on those. Line art and pixel art sometimes come out larger as AVIF — AV1 is not optimized for sharp single-pixel edges.
Should I use lossless or lossy AVIF for a PNG?
For web delivery — lossy AVIF at quality 55–65. Lossless AVIF exists but tends to be comparable in size to lossless WebP, which encodes much faster. If pixel-perfect preservation matters (archival, generative pipelines), keep the source PNG or use lossless WebP; if bandwidth matters, lossy AVIF wins.
Will AVIF work in all browsers?
In evergreen browsers: Chrome 85+ (2020), Firefox 93+ (2021),
Edge 121+, Safari 16+ (2022). For IE 11 and older Safari, use
a <picture> element with AVIF on top and
PNG as the fallback — a broken image is not the user's
problem if the fallback PNG is only fetched by browsers that
need it.
Is PNG to AVIF a good idea for pixel art and sharp line graphics?
Usually no. AVIF is tuned for photographs and smooth gradients; it introduces subtle ringing on single-pixel edges that pixel art makes obvious. For pixel art keep PNG (or use lossless WebP for a 20–30% size win). PicBrewery shows PNG, WebP and AVIF byte counts in the same row so you can pick whichever is smallest without guessing.
Convert PNG to AVIF now
Drop your PNGs into PicBrewery and watch 70–90% evaporate from your photo-like assets — with transparency intact. Everything happens in your browser; no upload.