SVG to ICO Favicon Converter

A favicon has to look right at very different sizes: tiny in a browser tab, larger in a bookmark list or on a phone home screen, and up to 256 pixels in some desktop views. A PNG logo is fixed at one size, so every smaller icon is a scaled-down copy, which can turn thin lines into grey smudges.

An SVG avoids that. Its shapes are instructions, so the converter can draw the logo fresh at 16, 32, 64, 128 and 256 pixels, each with its own clean anti-aliasing. Microsoft's icon guidance explains why several sizes matter: Windows looks for an exact match first and otherwise scales the next larger size down.

The result is a single ICO file that holds all of those versions. Browsers and operating systems open it and pick the size they need, so you upload one file instead of five.

Converting several logo variants is easy too. Up to 20 SVG files fit in one batch, so you can make icons for a main site, a staging site and a sister brand in one pass and compare them side by side.

ICO is Microsoft's icon container. Each image inside it is stored losslessly with transparency, and the format has been read by Windows and by browsers for decades. SVG is the W3C's vector format, ideal for designing a logo but less consistent as a site icon outside the newest browsers.

Converting therefore keeps the logo's shapes and transparent background but fixes them at specific pixel sizes. If you change the logo later, convert the new SVG again; never edit the ICO itself.

Sixteen by sixteen pixels is 256 dots in total. A full logo with a wordmark, a tagline or fine strokes cannot survive at that size, however good the rendering is. Look at the 16 px version after converting: if it is a blur, simplify.

Most brands use a reduced mark for their favicon, such as the first letter, the symbol without text, or the logo on a solid square. Make that version as its own SVG, with thicker strokes and fewer details, and convert it here. The larger sizes inside the ICO will still look good, because they come from the same clean drawing.

If the icon also needs a separate PNG, for example a 180 px image for phone home screens, render it from the same SVG with the SVG to PNG tool and set the width under Resize output. For a quick look at other targets, the Image Converter takes the same file.

Upload the ICO to the root of your site as favicon.ico, and declare it in the page head with a link tag whose rel value is icon. The HTML standard's rel=icon section describes the sizes attribute, which tells browsers what resolutions a file holds. Many sites add the SVG as a second icon link for browsers that prefer it.

Google Search shows a favicon next to your results and publishes favicon guidelines: the icon must be square and at least 8 by 8 pixels, and larger than 48 by 48 is recommended. The 64 px and bigger sizes in this ICO meet that.