SVG Optimization: Reducing File Size After Vectorization

Vectorization tools produce correct SVGs, but “correct” doesn’t always mean “optimized.” The raw output from any tracer — whether Covecto, Potrace, or vtracer — often contains redundancy that inflates file size without improving visual quality. For production use, especially on the web, reducing SVG file size matters for page load times, bandwidth costs, and rendering performance.

Why Vectorized SVGs Are Often Bloated

The vectorization process creates path data that accurately represents the source image’s shapes. However, this representation isn’t always the most compact encoding. Common sources of bloat include:

• Redundant path points where multiple nodes describe a nearly straight line
• Unnecessary precision in coordinate values (ten decimal places when two suffice)
• Duplicate path segments where overlapping shapes share edges
• Embedded metadata (creator information, timestamps, tool identifiers)
• Default attributes that could be inherited from a parent group

A vectorized SVG from a photograph can easily reach several hundred kilobytes, which negates many of the advantages of using SVG over a well-compressed raster format like WebP.

SVGO: The Standard SVG Optimizer

SVGO is the de facto standard tool for SVG optimization. It applies a configurable pipeline of plugins that each address a specific optimization target. The default plugin set covers the most common bloat sources: