SVG vs PNG for Logos: Which to Use (and How to Convert)
The short answer: ship both. SVG is your primary format because it scales infinitely and styles via CSS; PNG is your fallback because it works everywhere with no edge cases. If you only export one, you'll hit a wall the first time you need to print a business card or upload to a platform that rejects vectors.
The longer answer depends on where the logo will appear. The trade-offs aren't symmetric — SVG isn't strictly better than PNG, and PNG isn't strictly safer than SVG. Each has failure modes the other doesn't.
What SVG and PNG actually are
**SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics)** is XML that describes shapes mathematically. A circle is a circle, not a grid of pixels. Browsers render it at whatever resolution the display requires. Open an SVG in a text editor and you'll see something like `<circle cx="50" cy="50" r="40" fill="#0a0a0a" />` — it's code, not an image.
**PNG (Portable Network Graphics)** is a lossless raster format. The image is a fixed grid of pixels with transparency support. Render it at the size it was exported, and it looks crisp; render it 4× larger and the pixels stretch.
The implications cascade from this difference. SVG can be edited in any text editor, animated with CSS, recolored via `currentColor`, and rendered at any resolution. PNG can't do any of those things — but PNG also can't break in the way an SVG can when you load it on a browser that doesn't support a specific filter, mask, or font.
File size — it depends
People assume SVG is always smaller. It usually is for logos because logos are simple shapes. But SVG file size scales with complexity, not display size:
For typical brand logos (geometric shapes, 1–3 colors, simple typography), SVG wins file-size handily. For dense illustrations or photorealistic mascots, PNG often wins.
Where SVG quietly fails
Three places where SVG breaks down and PNG doesn't:
There's also a fourth subtle failure: SVG with custom fonts depends on those fonts being installed on the rendering device. If your SVG says `font-family: "MyBrandFont"` and the viewer's machine doesn't have that font, the browser substitutes — silently breaking your logo. Always convert text to paths (outline the text) before shipping SVG to third parties.
Where PNG quietly fails
Browser support today (2026)
SVG is supported by 99.7% of browsers globally per [Can I Use](https://caniuse.com/svg) data through May 2026. The remaining 0.3% are mostly ancient Android stock browsers in low-bandwidth markets — relevant if your customers are in those markets, irrelevant otherwise.
The one historical SVG gotcha (IE) is gone — Microsoft ended IE support in 2022.
When to use each — by use case
| Use case | Primary | Fallback | Why |
|---|---|---|---|
| Website header logo | SVG | PNG @2x | SVG renders crisp on every screen density |
| Favicon (modern browsers) | SVG | ICO/PNG | SVG favicons adapt to light/dark mode automatically |
| Social media profile | PNG @1024px | — | Platforms reject SVG |
| Email signature | PNG @400px wide | — | Email clients strip SVG |
| Business card / flyer | SVG | 300 DPI PNG | Print shops accept both; SVG scales better |
| Billboard / vehicle wrap | SVG | — | Anything raster will pixelate at this size |
| App icon (iOS/Android) | PNG @1024px | — | Stores require PNG submission |
| Merchandise (T-shirts, mugs) | SVG | 300 DPI PNG | Print-on-demand services prefer SVG for plate making |
| Animated logos | SVG | MP4/WebM fallback | CSS animation of SVG paths |
How to convert PNG to SVG
Two categories of tool, with different output quality:
**Automatic raster tracers** like Vectorizer.AI, Adobe Illustrator's Image Trace, Inkscape's bitmap trace. These look at your PNG and approximate it with paths. Output quality depends heavily on input simplicity. A clean two-color logo traces well; a photorealistic mascot becomes a mess of overlapping shapes.
**AI vectorization** like Recraft Vectorize (which LogoQuill uses for its "Convert to SVG" tool). Trained on millions of logo-shaped images, it produces cleaner output than naive tracing for typical brand logos. The trade-off is it's not free — most tools charge per image.
For most users with a PNG logo and no SVG source: try AI vectorization first. If the output looks clean, ship it. If not, fall back to manually redrawing in Figma or Illustrator — 30–60 minutes for a typical logo.
How to convert SVG to PNG
This direction is easy and lossless (in terms of source). Open the SVG in any modern browser, take a screenshot at the target size. Or use the export-to-PNG feature in Figma, Illustrator, Inkscape, or browser-based tools. For automation, [`sharp`](https://sharp.pixelplumbing.com/) (Node.js) and ImageMagick handle SVG→PNG with one command.
Be careful about the source size. SVG itself has no size — it has a `viewBox`. The exported PNG dimensions depend on how the converter interprets the viewBox or the explicit `width`/`height` attributes. Always specify the target output dimensions explicitly to avoid surprises.
The answer
If you're picking one for your logo, pick SVG and generate a PNG fallback for the platforms that reject it. LogoQuill ships both: Recraft V4 Vector outputs native SVG, and every generation produces a PNG alongside automatically. You can also convert any PNG result to SVG in the editor with one click using the "Convert to SVG" tool — useful when you generated with a non-vector model but want vector output for print.