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PNG to GIF Converter — Free, Local, No Upload

The short answer: Converting a PNG to GIF produces a universally playable still that opens even in old tools, chat apps, and embedded screens that never learned WebP. The encoder quantizes the image to GIF's 256-color palette and writes a single static frame — there is no quality slider because the format itself caps the color count. Simple graphics with few flat colors survive this well; photos and gradients do not.

How to convert PNG to GIF

Convert PNG to GIF now

The button opens the Image Format Converter with PNG → GIF preselected — it runs entirely in your browser and nothing is uploaded.

Open Image Format Converter

Local in your browser — nothing is uploaded

  1. Open the converter

    The button above opens the Image Format Converter with the GIF output already selected.

  2. Drop your PNG file

    Add the file (up to 12.0 MiB); the format is verified from its signature, not its name.

  3. Download the result

    Save the converted file and compare the exact before-and-after byte sizes.

Conversion facts

Input format
PNG
Output format
GIF
Max file size
12.0 MiB
Verified max input
A headless-browser test on 2026-09-20 converted a 12.0 MiB file end to end; the first byte over the limit fails with a clear error. Benchmark methodology
Max dimensions
Up to 8192 px per side · 24 MP
Quality
256-color palette — quantized, no quality tier
Processing
Local in your browser — nothing is uploaded

PNG

PNG → GIF

What to watch

GIF stores at most 256 colors per frame, so a full-color PNG is posterized: smooth gradients band and subtle shades snap to the nearest palette entry. Transparency degrades to 1-bit — a pixel is either fully transparent or fully opaque — so soft drop shadows and anti-aliased edges become jagged. The file usually shrinks, but a photographic PNG converted to GIF can also grow, because GIF's palette compression is inefficient on rich color.

When to choose it

Reach for this only when the destination demands GIF by name: some older CMSs, forum software, chat stickers, and e-paper-style displays still whitelist it and reject WebP. If the image is a logo, icon, or diagram with a handful of flat colors, the 256-color palette may cost nothing visible. For anything photographic or gradient-heavy, converting to WebP keeps full color at a smaller size, and converting to JPEG does the same when transparency is not needed — GIF is a compatibility move, not a quality or size win. If you need animation from a PNG sequence, that is the video-to-GIF converter's job instead.

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Frequently asked questions

Why does the GIF look posterized or color-banded?
GIF stores at most 256 colors per frame, and this converter quantizes the image to that palette — smooth gradients and photos can show banding that was invisible in the PNG file. Transparency is also reduced to 1-bit: a pixel is fully transparent or fully opaque, so soft edges become jagged. If you need full color, convert to PNG or WebP instead; choose GIF only when the destination requires GIF.
Does GIF keep transparency?
Yes. The alpha channel survives this conversion, so logos, icons, and cut-out images stay transparent in the GIF file.