Twitch Emote Size — Free, Fast & Private
Twitch emotes are unusual among platform image specs in that one emote is not one file — it is three. The platform serves the same artwork at 28×28, 56×56, and 112×112 pixels, matching different interface densities: the smallest for standard chat lines, the middle for higher-density displays, the largest for the emote picker, previews, and screens that render emotes big. All three are square PNGs with transparency, and for static emotes each file must stay under 25 KB — a cap that sounds tight and almost never is, at these dimensions. Animated emotes get a separate, far larger budget of up to 1 MB.
One file or three? The auto-resize route
You do not necessarily have to export three files by hand. Twitch's emote uploader includes an auto-resize path that community guides consistently document as accepting a single square PNG anywhere from 112 to 4096 pixels on a side, under 1 MB, from which the platform generates the three required sizes itself. (We cite community documentation deliberately: Twitch's own help page loads behind scripting that prevents independent checking, so treat the bounds as well-attested and let the uploader be the final judge.) The manual route survives because automatic downscales are indifferent to your art — shrinking 112 pixels to 28 blends away thin lines, and exporting each size separately lets you thicken outlines and simplify shapes at the small end, which is why serious emote artists still deliver three tuned files.
Transparency is the spec's quiet hard requirement
An emote lives directly on the chat surface — dark theme for most viewers, light for some — with no frame around it. Artwork on an opaque background arrives as a visible box on every theme it was not designed for, and nothing marks an emote as amateur faster. This is why the format is PNG and the background must be genuinely transparent, not white. If your emote starts as a drawing on a plain background or a photograph, run it through the AI background remover to cut the subject out, or use the transparent PNG converter when the job is turning an existing image's backdrop transparent. Check the result against both a dark and a light surface before uploading — semi-transparent halo pixels left over from a rough cutout glow visibly on whichever theme they were not made on.
The workflow here: square once, then step down
The preparation this site handles is geometry and weight, and the order of operations makes the sizes exact. Start in the cropper above with the 1:1 chip and frame the subject to fill the square completely — emote canvases are too small to spend on margins. Then resize that crop with a max width of 112: a square in, a square out, so the result is exactly 112×112. Need the smaller pair as separate files? Run the same crop through the resizer again at 56 and at 28 — the ratio lock guarantees each lands square. This tool chain deliberately does not claim a single button that emits all three sizes — it is three quick passes in your browser, with the artwork never leaving your machine.
Staying under 25 KB (and 1 MB for animated)
A 112-pixel PNG compresses into a handful of kilobytes even when lavishly detailed, and the 28 and 56 variants are smaller still. If a static emote somehow exceeds 25 KB, something upstream is wrong: the canvas was never resized down, or the export carried a full photographic image rather than emote artwork. Fix the dimensions and the size fixes itself. Animated emotes are the genuine budgeting exercise — frames multiply bytes, and 1 MB accommodates a short, well-palettes loop rather than a video clip. Keep loops to a second or two, limit the colour count, and preview the result small, because an animation that reads at 112 pixels can be pure flicker at 28.
Designing for 28 pixels
Every emote ultimately answers to its smallest rendering, and 28 pixels is a brutal editor. Expressions survive; nuance does not. The emotes that stay legible in fast chat share a formula — one clear subject, thick outlines, few colours, exaggerated emotion — which is why so much emote art trends toward bold cartoon faces rather than detailed illustration. A free test: squint at the exported 28-pixel file at arm's length — if you cannot name the emotion in half a second, chat scrolling at speed never will. Discord's equivalent spec next door is looser about dimensions but tighter in philosophy — the same design rules apply, and the Discord emoji size guide covers where the two platforms differ.