Base64 Image Encoder

Turn any image into a data URL you can paste straight into HTML, CSS or JSON — processed privately in your browser.

Updated May 2026 · Free · Works entirely in your browser

Choose an image

When base64 helps, and when it hurts

Inlining a tiny icon removes one round trip to the server, which can shave milliseconds off first paint. Inlining a large photograph does the opposite: the text sits inside your HTML or stylesheet, so the browser cannot cache it separately, cannot load it lazily, and must download all of it before the page can render. A practical rule is to inline only assets under about 5 KB.

Shrink before you encode

Because base64 adds roughly a third to the size, it pays to convert the picture to WebP or a well-compressed JPG first. Our converter can do that in one step, and the file size estimator will tell you what to expect.

Gear we recommend for this workflow

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Frequently Asked Questions

Everything you need to know about image conversion.

It is a picture written out as a long line of plain text. Because it is text, it can be pasted directly into HTML, CSS, JSON or an email template instead of being loaded as a separate file.

For small assets — icons, logos under about 5 KB, tiny background patterns — where saving an extra network request matters more than the roughly 33% size increase base64 adds.

Here it is done entirely inside your browser, so the picture is never sent anywhere. The resulting text is not encrypted though — anyone with the string can rebuild the image.

Base64 represents every three bytes with four characters, so the text is always about a third larger than the original file. That is normal and unavoidable.

When base64 helps, and when it hurts

Shrink before you encode

Gear we recommend for this workflow

Frequently Asked Questions

What is a base64 image?

When should I use base64 instead of a file?

Is base64 encoding safe and private?

Why did my file get bigger?

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