Use SVG as your logo's master file and anywhere it's supported — your website, print, design tools — because it stays sharp at any size. Use PNG where SVG isn't accepted, exported from the SVG at the sizes you need. If your logo only exists as a PNG, you can trace it back to an SVG.
SVG stores a logo as shapes — paths and fills written as text — so it can be drawn at any size. PNG stores it as a fixed grid of pixels, with lossless compression and transparency.
| SVG | PNG | |
|---|---|---|
| Type | Vector: shapes and curves | Raster: a grid of pixels |
| Enlarged | Stays sharp at any size | Blurs beyond its pixel size |
| Transparency | Yes | Yes |
| Editing | Recolour and reshape paths in a vector editor | Pixel editing only |
| Where it works | All modern browsers and design tools | Almost everywhere, including places that refuse SVG uploads |
It depends on how clean the artwork is. We measured one 600 × 600 test logo:
| File | Size |
|---|---|
| The logo as a PNG | 53.8 KB |
| Traced to SVG in Color mode | 27.8 KB |
| Same, with Path Precision 3 | 18.3 KB |
| Traced in Black & White | 10.1 KB |
| Traced from a small, compressed JPEG of the same logo | 574.3 KB |
KB = 1,000 bytes. Test files and method: how to fix a traced SVG.
A clean, flat logo makes a smaller SVG than PNG. A noisy source makes a far bigger one: every compression artifact becomes a shape.
Wherever SVG isn't accepted. Many upload forms, email clients and social platforms don't take SVG files, but nearly everything takes PNG — with transparency, which JPG lacks. Export PNGs from your SVG at the sizes each place needs.
Rarely. JPG has no transparency, and its compression smears the edges of letters and shapes. It's also the worst starting point for getting a vector back: in our test, the JPEG copy of the logo traced to 821 paths against 11 from the PNG.
Yes, all modern browsers display SVG. Compatibility problems show up in upload forms, email and older software, which is why it's worth keeping PNG exports too.
You gain scalability, but the SVG is a rebuild of the pixels, not the original design file. A clean, flat logo traces closely; zoom in on the result before you use it.
WebP is still pixels at a fixed size, so it has the same enlarging limit as PNG. Keep the SVG as the master either way.
No. Our clean test logo was 27.8 KB as SVG and 53.8 KB as PNG, but tracing a compressed JPEG of it produced a 574.3 KB SVG. See how to fix a traced SVG.