How to Make Stickers and Emotes That Read at Chat Size
WhatsApp wants 512×512 WebP under 100 KB with an 8 px white border, and our test sticker was 10,412 bytes as WebP against 23,111 as PNG. The catch is emotes: that 8 px border is 0.44 px at 28 px.
WhatsApp’s Rules, From the Source
WhatsApp publishes its sticker rules in the README of its official sticker repository on GitHub. Stickers must be exactly 512×512 pixels, in WebP format, with a transparent background; each static sticker can be at most 100 KB (animated ones 500 KB); a pack holds 3 to 30 stickers; and the pack’s tray icon is a static 96×96 image of at most 50 KB. Because stickers appear on white, dark, colored and patterned chat backgrounds, it recommends an 8-pixel white stroke around each sticker, and it notes that many of WhatsApp’s own stickers are around 15 KB.
WebP Makes the 100 KB Limit Easy
The format matters more than people expect. We exported the same 512×512 cut-out cartoon sticker from our Sticker & Emote Maker in Chromium three ways:
| Format | File size |
|---|---|
| PNG | 23,111 bytes |
| WebP, quality 90 | 10,412 bytes |
| WebP, quality 70 | 7,890 bytes |
Flat cartoon art is far under the limit either way. Photos are where size bites: a detailed photo cropped to a circle came to 41.7 KB as WebP at quality 90, still comfortably under, and only a square of pure random noise, built to be the worst case, needed the quality stepped down to 60 to get under 100,000 bytes. Our tool does that step-down automatically and reports the final size.
Why the Border Matters, and Why Emotes Need a Thicker One
The white border is what makes a cut-out read as a sticker on any background: without it, a dark character disappears into dark mode and a white one into light mode. But a border drawn at 512 pixels shrinks with everything else. At the emote sizes Twitch and chat apps use, the same border is a fraction of a pixel:
| Border at 512 px | At 112 px | At 56 px | At 28 px |
|---|---|---|---|
| 8 px | 1.75 px | 0.88 px | 0.44 px |
| 16 px | 3.5 px | 1.75 px | 0.88 px |
| 24 px | 5.25 px | 2.62 px | 1.31 px |
Anything under one pixel turns into a faint blur rather than an edge. So keep WhatsApp’s 8 px for 512 px stickers, but for an emote set use a border of about 24 px at 512, which still gives more than a pixel at 28 px. The same logic applies to detail: at 28 px, a 512 px drawing is shown at 5.5% of its size, so thin lines and small text vanish. Check the 28-pixel preview before you export.
Emote Sizes
Twitch emotes, and most chat emoji, are square transparent PNGs. Every guide we checked agrees on Twitch’s three sizes, 112, 56 and 28 pixels, but they disagree on the file-size limit (25 KB and 1 MB both appear), so check your own upload screen. Simple emotes are tiny either way: our test set came to 112 px 4.9 KB, 56 px 2.3 KB, 28 px 1.1 KB. Render each size from the full-size art rather than from the next size up, and halve in steps rather than in one jump; our tool renders at 512 and halves down, which keeps edges crisp.
Make a sticker or emote
Die-cut border, caption, chat previews; WhatsApp WebP under 100 KB, emote set, PNG.
Frequently Asked Questions
What size and format are WhatsApp stickers?
Should I use PNG or WebP for WhatsApp stickers?
How thick should a sticker border be?
What sizes do Twitch emotes need?
Why does my sticker look blurry at small sizes?
Published Oct 14, 2026 by Derek Giordano