Twitch emote size guide112, 56, 28 — and why 4096 exists.

Every Twitch size in one table

• Static emote — PNG, 112×112, 56×56 and 28×28 (or one large square image for auto-resize).
• Animated emote, manual — GIF, 112, 56 and 28 px, each up to 512 KB, up to 60 frames.
• Animated emote, auto-resize — one square GIF from 112 to 4096 px, up to 1 MB.
• Subscriber and Bits badges — PNG, 18, 36 and 72 px, up to 25 KB each.
• Channel points icon — PNG, 28, 56 and 112 px (25 KB is the commonly quoted limit).
• Profile picture — JPEG, PNG or GIF up to 10 MB; 800×800 is the usual choice.
• Profile banner — commonly 1200×480. Offline screen — commonly 1920×1080. Panels — 320 px wide.

Twitch publishes the emote, badge and profile picture rules in its Help articles. The banner, offline screen and panel sizes are not published as exact specs; the values above are what most streamers and templates use.

Why three sizes

Chat shows emotes at 28 px in a normal message, at larger sizes in the emote picker, and at 112 px on high-density screens or when zoomed. Twitch keeps three files so each size can be tuned rather than scaled on the fly. You can upload one large image and let Twitch scale it, but the 28 px version is where scaling hurts most: thin lines vanish and details merge.

Designing for 28 pixels

Twenty-eight pixels is about the size of a lowercase word in chat. Design for that first, then add detail for the larger sizes.

• Fill the square. Crop to a bust shot; empty margins waste pixels.
• Thick outlines. A 2–3 px outline at 112 px becomes about 1 px at 28 px — still visible.
• Big expression. Exaggerate eyes and mouth; subtle smiles disappear.
• Few colors with strong contrast. Avoid gradients and textures.
• No small text. Short words (GG, LOL) in bold can work at 112 px and often fail at 28 px.

Test by viewing your emote next to text at actual size. Our workbench shows a fake chat line with emotes at a real 28 px for this reason.

How to resize without losing detail

Resizing from 4096 to 28 in one step aliases badly: pixels are skipped, outlines break. Downscale in halves (4096 → 2048 → 1024 → 512 → 256 → 128) and do the final step to the target size with high-quality smoothing. For pixel art, use nearest-neighbor scaling at whole-number factors instead, and draw the 28 px version by hand if you can.

For animated GIFs, resize every frame with the same scale and then build one palette for the whole animation, so colors don’t shift between frames.

Staying under the byte limits

Static PNG emotes rarely approach a limit. Animated ones do: 512 KB per manual file and 1 MB for auto-resize. File size grows with frame count, canvas size and colors. In order of least visible damage: crop empty space, reduce colors (256 → 128 → 64), remove every other frame and double each frame’s delay, and only then shrink the canvas.

Badges are the strictest: 25 KB each. Flat colors and a palette PNG keep a 72 px badge well under that.

Badges and channel points

Badges sit before usernames at 18 px. That’s smaller than an emote, so badge art should be simpler than emote art: one face or symbol, one color per tier, a thick outline. Channel points icons sit next to the points balance at small sizes, with the same advice.

Upload all three sizes of each badge rather than one large image, so you control the 18 px version.

Channel page images

Your profile picture appears as a circle almost everywhere, so keep the face centered with margin. Banners are cropped differently on phones and desktops; keep important text toward the left-middle. Offline screens are 16:9 like your stream. Panels are 320 px wide; keep titles short so they stay large.

Why 112 when chat shows 28

Screens with high pixel density — phones, most laptops — draw 28 “CSS pixels” with two, three or four physical pixels each. Twitch serves the 56 or 112 px file to those screens so emotes stay sharp. That’s why the 112 px version matters even if you never see an emote that big: it is the one most phone viewers actually see, scaled down by their screen.

It also explains why a blurry 112 px emote looks worse on a phone than on a desktop monitor. Start with a clean, sharp 112 px file and the other two sizes follow.

Sizing mistakes we see most

• Non-square canvases: a 120×100 drawing gets rejected or squashed. Pad to a square with transparency.
• Big empty margins: a character occupying the middle half of the square is effectively a 14 px emote at 28 px.
• JPG exports: no transparency, plus compression noise around edges.
• One upscaled source: a 64 px drawing scaled up to 112 looks soft everywhere. Draw large, then scale down.
• Different crops per size: if the 28 px file is cropped tighter than the 112, the emote “jumps” between sizes. Keep the same composition.

Animated emotes: which upload mode to pick

Auto-resize asks for one square GIF between 112 and 4096 px under 1 MB and makes the three sizes for you. It’s the quickest route and fine for bold, simple emotes. Manual upload asks for three GIFs — 112, 56 and 28 px, each under 512 KB — and is worth it when fine details or text need hand-tuning at the smaller sizes, or when automatic scaling produces muddy 28 px results.

If you’re unsure, prepare both. Our exports always include the 512 px auto file and the three manual sizes, each checked, so you can try auto-resize first and switch if the small version disappoints.

Emote slots and tiers

Sizes are the same for every tier — follower, Tier 1, 2 and 3, and Bits emotes all use 112/56/28. What changes is who can use them and how many slots you have, which grows with your channel’s subscriptions. When planning a set, decide the tier before the design: follower emotes are seen by the most people and should be your clearest; Tier 3 emotes can be more elaborate because fewer people use them.

Animated emotes use the same slots as static ones. A common pattern is to keep the most-used emotes static (so everyone sees them the same way) and animate a few signature reactions.

Tools that help

Any editor that exports PNG and GIF works. For checking, the free emote checker tests a file against Twitch’s limits; the free Twitch emote resizer makes all sizes from one file; the free sub badge resizer does the same for badges. All three run in your browser and don’t upload anything.

A pre-upload checklist

1. 1
   Square?

   Emotes and badges must be square.

2. 2
   Right sizes?

   112/56/28 for emotes, 18/36/72 for badges, 28/56/112 for points.

3. 3
   Under the limits?

   512 KB per manual animated file, 1 MB auto, 25 KB per badge.

4. 4
   Transparent?

   No white boxes around emotes or badges.

5. 5
   Readable at 28 px?

   Look at it in a chat line, not in your editor.

6. 6
   First frame clear?

   For animated emotes, the first frame is the thumbnail.