What size are Twitch emotes?
A Twitch emote is a square PNG in three sizes: 112, 56 and 28 pixels, each under 1 MB, on a fully transparent background. That is from Twitch’s Emote Formatting and Instant Emote Upload Requirements page, checked on 16 October 2026.
Twitch also offers auto-resize: you upload one square PNG between 112 and 4096 pixels and Twitch makes the three sizes. Uploading the three sizes yourself lets you see and fix how the 28 px version looks before your viewers do.
| Twitch image | Sizes (px, square) | Format | File limit |
|---|---|---|---|
| Emote, three sizes | 112, 56, 28 | PNG, transparent background | 1 MB |
| Emote, auto-resize | one image, 112 to 4096 | PNG, transparent background | 1 MB |
| Animated emote, three sizes | 112, 56, 28 | GIF, up to 60 frames | 512 KB each |
| Subscriber badge | 72, 36, 18 | PNG, transparent background | 25 KB |
| Badge flair (Tier 2 and 3) | 72, 36, 18 | PNG, transparent background | 25 KB |
Sources: Twitch’s emote requirements and Subscriber Badge Guide, both checked on 16 October 2026. This tool makes the PNG rows; it does not make animated emotes.
What size is a Twitch sub badge?
Subscriber badges are square PNGs at 72, 36 and 18 pixels, under 25 KB each, with a transparent background, per the Subscriber Badge Guide. Pick Twitch badge in the tool to get those three sizes.
Badges show next to a name in chat, which is the smallest place art appears on Twitch. Twitch’s API describes the 18 px file as the small version of a badge and the 28 px file as the small version of an emote (Twitch API reference). The larger files are for sharper screens, where a browser can draw a bigger file in the same small space. The tool’s preview hands your browser all three files the same way, so on a high-density screen you see the sharper version, and on a standard screen the small one.
Will a resized emote go over the file size limit?
For a static PNG, almost never. An image’s raw pixels take 4 bytes each, so a 112 px emote holds 112 × 112 × 4 = 50,176 bytes before compression, far under 1 MB. A 72 px badge holds 20,736 bytes, under the 25 KB badge limit even uncompressed. The tool still measures every file it writes and marks any that go over, reading KB as 1,000 bytes, the stricter reading.
Files over the limit usually come from elsewhere: a PNG saved with a large embedded colour profile or editing metadata, or a badge exported at the wrong size. The PNGs this tool writes carry only the pixels.
How does the tool resize emotes?
It treats each file as one emote, then:
- Trims fully transparent rows and columns from the edges, so the art fills the square. Turn Trim off to keep your own padding.
- Pads to a square, centring the art on transparent pixels. Twitch requires square images.
- Resizes to each size with a Mitchell filter, which averages every source pixel under each output pixel. Thin lines fade evenly instead of breaking into dots.
- Keeps soft edges clean. Colour is weighted by transparency while resizing, so anti-aliased edges don’t pick up a dark or white fringe from the transparent area around them.
Each size is made from your original image, not from the next size up, and the work runs in a background thread so the page stays responsive while it works. Very large files (over 2048 px on a side) are first shrunk to 2048 px while the browser decodes them, which is still more than 18 times the width of the 112 px emote.
How to make an emote that reads at 28 pixels
Twitch’s requirements ask you to view the emote at 100% to check that lines are clear and any letters are readable, and to keep lines sharp. Some ways to get there:
- Draw large, simplify early. Work at 500 px or more, but plan for 28: one face, one expression, one or two props at most.
- Use thick outlines. A 4 px line on a 1000 px canvas shrinks to about a tenth of a pixel at 28 px and fades out. A line 36 px thick on the same canvas comes out about 1 px wide.
- Avoid small text. A word that fills half the width of a 1000 px canvas is about 14 px wide at 28 px. Short, bold words survive; sentences don’t.
- Check both chat themes. Dark outlines can vanish on dark chat and pale ones on light chat. A thin light or dark rim around the art helps it read on both.
What this tool does not do
- It does not make animated emotes. A GIF is read as its first frame.
- It does not remove a background. Twitch asks for a fully transparent background; if your PNG has a solid one, the tool warns you, but you need to erase it in your drawing app first.
- It does not draw or edit the art, check it against Twitch’s Emote Guidelines, or upload it to Twitch.
If your emote is still a .procreate file, export it as a PNG first, or turn it into a PNG with the Procreate to PNG converter without an iPad. Emotes for Discord need different sizes; the Discord emoji resizer is the same tool set up for Discord.