Free Online Pixel Art Editor
Draw pixel art in your browser with a simple grid editor. Presets for common sizes, color palettes, undo/redo, and export at any scale. Free, no signup.
The problem
You need a quick piece of pixel art — a favicon for your website, a sprite for a game jam, an avatar for a profile, or just something fun to draw. Professional tools like Aseprite cost money and have a learning curve. Browser-based alternatives are either loaded with ads, require accounts, or try to be full illustration apps when you just want a grid to color in.
For small-scale pixel art (8x8 through 64x64), you need a grid, a color picker, a few basic tools, and a clean export. Nothing more.
How it works
- Choose your canvas size — presets for 8x8, 16x16, 32x32, and 64x64, or type custom dimensions.
- Pick a color — start with a preset retro palette, or use the color picker for any color. Your 8 most recent colors are saved for quick access.
- Draw — click or drag on the grid. Four tools:
- Pencil — draw one pixel at a time
- Eraser — set pixels to transparent
- Fill bucket — flood-fill a connected region with your selected color
- Eyedropper — pick a color from an existing pixel
- Undo/redo — up to 50 steps. Mistakes are free.
- Export — choose a scale (1x, 2x, 4x, 8x, 16x) and download as PNG. The export uses nearest-neighbor scaling so pixels stay crisp with no blurring.
Your work auto-saves to your browser. If you refresh or close the tab, your drawing is still there when you come back.
Common pixel art sizes
- 8x8 — minimal icons, tiny sprites, Atari-era characters
- 16x16 — favicons, small game sprites, emoji-scale art. The most popular size for beginners.
- 32x32 — detailed sprites, small game characters, app icons
- 48x48 — large icons, favicons at 3x resolution, detailed small sprites. A good middle ground when 32x32 feels cramped but 64x64 is more space than you need.
- 64x64 — detailed character sprites, avatar icons, Discord and Slack custom emoji. Enough room for shading, highlights, and expressive faces.
- 128x128 — splash art, detailed tile maps, app icons at high DPI. At this size you are closer to illustration than icon design, so plan your composition before you start placing pixels.
- Custom — any size you need. Larger canvases work better on desktop where you have more screen space.
These sizes are not arbitrary. Classic game hardware defined them. The NES rendered graphics in 8x8 pixel tiles, which is why so many retro sprites feel natural at that scale. The SNES doubled it to 16x16 tiles, giving artists room for more detail while keeping memory usage tight. The Game Boy Advance used a mix of 8x8 and 16x16, depending on the layer. When you pick a canvas size that matches one of these historical grids, your art tends to "feel right" because decades of pixel artists have refined techniques at those exact dimensions.
Color palette tips
Pixel art thrives on limited palettes. This sounds like a constraint, but it is actually a creative advantage. Fewer colors force you to think about value (light vs dark) and hue relationships instead of reaching for the color picker every time you need a new shade. The result is art that looks cohesive rather than noisy.
Historical hardware enforced this naturally. The original Game Boy had just 4 shades of green. The NES could display only about 25 colors on screen at once from a total palette of 54. Even the SNES, which supported 256 colors per background layer, rarely used all of them in a single scene. Artists worked within those limits and produced some of the most iconic visuals in gaming history.
For your own work, start with 8 to 16 colors and expand only when you genuinely need a new hue. A good starting palette includes a dark outline color, two or three skin or base tones, a highlight, a shadow, and a few accent colors. If you find yourself constantly adding new colors, step back and see if you can reuse an existing one at a different brightness.
Several community-made palettes have become standards in the pixel art world. PICO-8's 16-color palette is a favorite for game jams because its carefully chosen colors cover warm tones, cool tones, and neutrals without clashing. Endesga 32 extends that idea to 32 colors with smooth ramps between shades, making it great for more detailed work. DB32 (DawnBringer 32) is another popular choice, designed specifically for pixel art with natural color transitions. This editor includes preset palettes to get you started, and you can always switch to the full color picker when you need something specific.
Export scaling explained
Pixel art at its native size is tiny — a 16x16 image is literally 16 pixels wide. To use it on a website, in a game, or as a profile picture, you need to scale it up. The critical detail: use nearest-neighbor scaling, not bilinear or bicubic.
Standard image scaling smooths edges, which destroys the crisp pixel look. Nearest-neighbor scaling just makes each pixel into a larger square, preserving the hard edges that define pixel art.
This tool exports with nearest-neighbor by default:
- 1x — raw size (16x16 pixels for a 16x16 canvas). Use for game engines that handle their own scaling.
- 4x — 64x64 from a 16x16 canvas. Good for web display.
- 8x — 128x128. Good for social media avatars.
- 16x — 256x256. Good for print or high-res display.
Using with other tools
Your pixel art can flow into other ToolRack image tools:
- Export → GIF Creator — draw multiple frames, export each, then combine them into an animated GIF for sprites or simple animations
- Export → Image Resizer — scale to a specific dimension not covered by the presets
- Export → Image Converter — convert PNG to WebP for smaller file size on the web
Click "Use in other tools" to save your artwork and jump to any tool — the image carries over automatically.
Favicon workflow
To make a favicon for your website:
- Set canvas to 16x16 (or 32x32 for higher detail)
- Draw your icon — keep it simple, favicons are viewed at tiny sizes
- Export at 1x as PNG
- Rename to
favicon.pngor convert to.icoformat - Add
<link rel="icon" href="/favicon.png">to your HTML
For best browser coverage, also export at 32x32 and 180x180 (Apple touch icon). The 16x16 version handles the browser tab; the larger versions handle bookmarks and home screen shortcuts.
Built with vanilla HTML/JS. No frameworks, no backend, loads instantly.