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PNG to AVIF Without Losing the Transparency

Hand over a PNG, take back a compact AVIF whose transparent areas survive every step of the encode.

or drop the image here

Quick answer

Turn a PNG into an AVIF with transparency and all kept intact. You drop the file, the page reads your PNG and writes it back out as AVIF, the picture format derived from the AV1 codec. AVIF encoding is heavy, so Araluma runs it on our server to get the cleanest result, and if that route is down the job falls back to an encoder running inside the browser. Encoding is lossy at quality 85, roughly 42.6 dB PSNR on photographs, close enough to the original that the eye rarely catches the difference, and usually 30 to 50 percent lighter than the same shot saved as WebP. A JPG would throw the transparency away, yet AVIF keeps the full alpha channel as it is. Whenever a file reaches our server it is encoded and the result is cleared within about 2 hours. The pair suits designers and front-end developers chasing the lightest possible transparent assets for modern pages.

Converting a PNG to AVIF

Converting a PNG to AVIF

Drag a PNG into the drop zone, or tap it to browse for one. There is no convert button to hunt for, the work begins as soon as the file arrives. The opening conversion of a session spends about a second loading the encoder. From then on a tiny image is done in roughly 40 milliseconds, a 1-megapixel photo in around 250, and a 4K frame in about 2.8 seconds. Anything past 8 megapixels can stretch to 10 or 30 seconds on a handset. Once the AVIF appears, Download writes it out under the original name with a .avif extension, and the size readout shows old and new side by side.

Will transparency survive?

Will transparency survive?

It will, and that survival is the whole point of choosing AVIF over JPG here. The alpha channel is native to AVIF, so a transparent pixel going in stays transparent coming out. A badge floating on nothing, a feathered product cut-out, a rounded icon, each lands in the AVIF with its mask untouched, no white rectangle behind it and no halo around the edge. JPG simply cannot do this, it has no alpha and paints a solid color where the transparency used to be. WebP can hold alpha too, but it cannot match AVIF on size at the same quality. For transparent art bound for a current browser, nothing else is this compact.

Just how much lighter is the AVIF?

Just how much lighter is the AVIF?

Held at quality 85, an AVIF tends to weigh 30 to 50 percent less than the PNG on photographs and 20 to 30 percent less than a WebP of the same picture. One development measurement took a 4K shot from 116 KB as JPG down to 16 KB as AVIF. Small images scale the same way, a 17 KB PNG shrinking to around 6 KB. Already-squashed sources give back less, and flat-color graphics or hard-edged logos may barely move. Natural photographs deliver the largest cut, and those are exactly the files that bloat most product pages and hero sections, which is where the saving counts.

Picture quality and how long it takes

Picture quality and how long it takes

Being a lossy format, AVIF here works at a fixed quality 85. Photographs at that level sit near 42.6 dB PSNR, which reads as identical to the PNG for ordinary scenes. Crisp text and thin line art are the exception and can pick up faint artifacts at any lossy setting, so those belong in a PNG. Timing tracks image size and engine. Chrome desktop handles a megapixel in about a quarter second and eight megapixels in roughly 2.8 seconds. Firefox takes about four times as long, and a phone adds a further three to five times. The first run of a session also carries a brief warm-up as the encoder starts.

Where your file is handled

Where your file is handled

AVIF is demanding to produce, so Araluma runs this conversion on our server to reach the best quality and speed, and drops back to an in-browser encoder when the server cannot be reached. So your PNG may travel to us when you convert it. The handling is plain. The file is turned into AVIF, the result comes back to you, and both are wiped from our server within about 2 hours. We keep no copy of your image, we never ask you to sign in, and we put it to no use beyond the conversion you started. If the server route is unavailable, the encode instead runs in your browser. Either path hands you the same AVIF, with the same alpha channel and the same quality setting.

Where AVIF works in 2026

Where AVIF works in 2026

Coverage sits around 94.3 percent of browsers worldwide in 2026: Chrome from 85, Firefox from 93, Safari from 16.4 (iOS 16 onward), and Edge from 121. The holdouts are Internet Explorer, Opera Mini, and anything still on iOS 15 or earlier. If a slice of your visitors lives there, lead with AVIF and let the picture element drop them to WebP automatically. For most modern traffic that fallback rarely fires, because Chrome and Safari carry the majority of mobile visits and both have rendered AVIF natively since 2022.

How it works

  1. Add your PNG

    Drag a PNG into the drop zone or tap it to open the file browser and pick one from your device.

  2. Let it encode

    The opening conversion spends about a second loading the encoder. Each one after that in the same tab is quicker.

  3. Compare the sizes

    When the AVIF is ready the readout places the PNG size beside the new AVIF size so the drop is clear.

  4. Save the AVIF

    Press the Download button to write the finished file out to your device, carrying the original base name with a fresh .avif extension.

Keep converting

Need it the other way for compatibility, or want WebP for a faster encode and wider support? Both are a click away.

AVIF to PNG PNG to WebP

Frequently asked questions

Why turn a PNG into AVIF?

Because AVIF is the lightest format a current browser will render, and it keeps transparency while doing it. Front-end developers and designers reach for it on transparent interface pieces, product cut-outs, and icons that have to stay cheap to download. The size cut is concrete, often 30 to 50 percent below the PNG at much the same visual quality, and the alpha channel rides along untouched where a JPG would have erased it.

Is transparency kept?

Yes. AVIF carries a native alpha channel, and this pair passes it straight through. A transparent area in the PNG is still transparent in the AVIF. JPG cannot manage that, it has no alpha and drops a solid color into the gap, whereas AVIF treats cut-outs, logos, and stacked layers the way PNG does, only far smaller. You never have to redraw a mask by hand.

Which browsers can show AVIF?

Every current engine can. Chrome handles it from version 85, Firefox from 93, Safari from 16.4 with iOS 16 alongside it, and Edge from 121. What cannot are Internet Explorer, Opera Mini, and devices left back on iOS 15. To reach that tail, wrap the picture in an HTML picture element offering AVIF first and dropping to WebP or PNG when the browser says no.

Is the AVIF lossy or lossless?

AVIF supports both, but the output here is lossy at quality 85. Photographs at that level read around 42.6 dB PSNR, which most people cannot tell apart from the source. Images with hard edges, fine type, or large flat fields of color may reveal slight artifacts at any quality. When every pixel has to match exactly, keep the PNG rather than converting it.

AVIF or WebP, what is the difference?

On photographs at similar quality, AVIF runs about 20 to 30 percent smaller than WebP. WebP answers with wider reach, older Safari included, while AVIF covers roughly 94.3 percent of browsers in 2026. When bandwidth is the priority and the audience is modern, AVIF wins. When you need to reach everyone, keep WebP on hand. The common 2026 setup serves AVIF first with WebP behind it in a picture element.

How long will the conversion run?

Size and engine decide it. The opening run of a session spends roughly a second readying the encoder. Once warm, a small image is done in about 40 milliseconds, a megapixel photo near 250, and a 4K frame around 2.8 seconds in Chrome. Beyond 8 megapixels a phone may sit for 10 to 30 seconds. Firefox crawls at about a quarter of Chrome's pace, so big jobs finish sooner there in Chrome.

The details

Notes from the team on craft, formats, and the small decisions behind a good round crop.

What lets AVIF crush PNG on size
AVIF rides on the AV1 codec, tuned for what the eye accepts rather than for byte-perfect fidelity. PNG leans on DEFLATE over raw pixels, lossless but blind to the redundancy that fills photographic content. AVIF swaps that redundancy for the block-prediction tricks of video coding, dropping detail the visual system never registers. The payoff is steep. That 116 KB photo becomes about 16 KB at quality 85, and a transparent PNG generally falls 30 to 50 percent against a matching WebP. High-resolution photos widen the gap while plain graphics shrink it. Any site shipping transparent imagery to a modern crowd turns that into quicker pages and a lighter bandwidth bill.
Following the alpha channel through the encode
PNG and AVIF both keep transparency on a separate alpha plane next to the color. As this pair reads your PNG, the decoder pulls the color pixels and the mask apart. The AVIF encoder then lays down a fresh alpha track of its own, leaning on AV1 intra-frame coding to squeeze color and mask alike at quality 85. The transparency never melts into the color and never gets a fill behind it. Drop shadows, feathered rims, and half-transparent gradients all come across faithfully. The single cost is that AVIF compresses the alpha plane lossily too, which can leave faint fringing on very sharp edges when you zoom hard. At ordinary sizes and quality 85 it stays invisible. For tiny pixel-exact icons, stick with the PNG.
Realistic timings on each engine
The encoder loads once per session, roughly 800 milliseconds to fetch and another 300 to spin up, so the opening conversion wears about a second of warm-up. Every warm run skips it. Chrome desktop clears 0.12 megapixels in about 40 milliseconds, a megapixel in around 250, and eight megapixels in roughly 2.8 seconds. Firefox lags, taking about four times as long, which can push a 4K frame past 30 seconds. Safari on WebKit lands between the two and nearer to Chrome. Mid-range phones run three to five times slower than desktop Chrome across the board. If big files are routine, a desktop Chrome session is the fastest seat in the house.
Times when the PNG should stay a PNG
A few jobs still call for PNG even where weight matters. Sharp text at small sizes, the kind on labels, badges, or favicon-scale marks, can collect AVIF artifacts that read poorly up close. Master files you mean to edit further belong in PNG too, since each trip through a lossy format stacks up loss. Some destinations refuse AVIF outright, certain document editors, older design suites, and a number of email clients among them, and those want PNG. Animation past the first frame also falls away here, as the pair handles one frame. Everywhere else, for transparent photos and graphics headed to a modern site, PNG to AVIF is the move.
The Core Web Vitals case in numbers
Largest Contentful Paint, the headline loading metric, answers directly to the size of the biggest image on the page. Taking that image from 116 KB to 16 KB, the figure measured on a 4K photo in testing, trims its transfer on a 10 Mbps line from about 93 milliseconds to about 13 for that element. Spread the same cut across a product grid, a rotating hero, or an interface dense with transparent icons and the total comfortably drags LCP below the 2.5-second mark Google reads as good. The case for AVIF firmed up because it can be argued in plain figures. With coverage near 94.3 percent, the fallback is rare enough that the bandwidth gain outweighs the extra picture markup.
How this stands apart from a typical online converter
Nearly every online AVIF converter ships your PNG off to remote hardware and then holds the result under whatever retention rules the operator keeps, often left vague. Araluma is plain about how it works. Because AVIF is heavy, the conversion runs on our server for the cleanest result, and an in-browser encoder steps in on its own when the server is out of reach. When your file reaches us, it is encoded and then cleared within about 2 hours, without asking you to sign in and no use past the conversion you started. Nothing is stored for the long term and nothing is shared. For anyone handling client work, unreleased product shots, or user content, the honest shape of the trade is this: the file may pass through our server, it is touched only to build your AVIF, and it does not linger.