The smallest transparent GIF is 43 bytes.

What every byte does

A GIF is a sequence of blocks. This one has seven, and every colour on this page belongs to one of them. Select a byte or a block to read it. Numbers are stored little-endian: the low byte comes first, so 01 00 means 1.

Can it be smaller?

Yes, if you drop parts that decoders tolerate losing. We fed each variant to three browser engines and to Pillow and recorded what they drew.

Use 43 bytes when it must work everywhere. 37 bytes is still valid GIF and was transparent in every engine we tested. Below that you depend on decoder leniency, and the 29-byte file shows how engines disagree.

Checked on September 23, 2026 with Chromium 153.0.8010.12, Firefox 155.0, WebKit 26.6, Pillow 12.2.0.

The same pixel in other formats

The smallest transparent 1×1 file we could build in each format, fed to the same four engines. Open a row to see its bytes, coloured like the GIF blocks that do the same job.

• Signature
• Size
• Palette
• Transparency
• Container
• Pixels
• End
• Metadata
• Padding

WebP, at 30 bytes, is the smallest file that came out transparent in all four engines: 13 bytes less than the GIF.

Data URI length in characters: SVG as URL-encoded text, the rest in base64. Checked on September 24, 2026 with Chromium 153.0.8010.12, Firefox 155.0, WebKit 26.6, Pillow 12.2.0. AVIF written by libavif 1.4.1.

Make one any size

Transparent or a solid colour, from 1×1 up to 65535×65535. It is generated in your browser; nothing is uploaded.

Width × Height

Fill

Transparent Solid colour

Format

GIF PNG WebP SVG

Common sizes1×116×1688×31320×50300×250728×90160×600300×600970×2501200×6301920×1080

1×1 · 43 bytes

Download GIF Copy data URI Copy hotlink URL Inspect these bytes Use in code snippets

Hotlink it

Link straight to these files from any site, email or app. They are served from Cloudflare's edge with long cache lifetimes, and CORS is open to everyone.

• The 43-byte filehttps://emptygif.com/1x1.gif
• Any size, transparenthttps://emptygif.com/px/300x250.gif
• Any size, solid colourhttps://emptygif.com/px/300x250/ff5a1f.gif
• The same as PNG, WebP or SVGhttps://emptygif.com/px/300x250.webp
• JSON API: size, base64 and data URIhttps://emptygif.com/api/gif?w=300&h=250
• Every snippet as JSONhttps://emptygif.com/snippets.json
• Summary for AI agentshttps://emptygif.com/llms.txt

HTTP/2 200
content-type: image/gif
content-length: 43
cache-control: public, max-age=31536000, immutable
access-control-allow-origin: *
cross-origin-resource-policy: cross-origin
timing-allow-origin: *

<img src="https://emptygif.com/1x1.gif" width="1" height="1" alt="">

Serve it from your stack

191 ready-to-run snippets. Pick yours: each one answers at the path you choose with an image/gif response. If you changed the size or colour above, the snippets use that GIF.

import express from 'express';

const GIF = Buffer.from('R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAP///wAAACH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAICRAEAOw==', 'base64');

const app = express();

app.get('/pixel.gif', (req, res) => {
  res.set('Cache-Control', 'no-store');
  res.type('gif').send(GIF);
});

app.listen(8080);

Questions

Why is it called empty when it has a pixel?

A GIF must have at least one pixel. This one is 1×1 and its only colour is marked transparent, so nothing shows.

Is the 43-byte file valid?

Yes. It follows the GIF89a specification exactly, and every engine in the table above draws it as transparent.

Why a GIF and not a PNG or WebP?

It is smaller than a minimal transparent PNG, and every browser, email client and image library from the last 35 years can read it.

Should I use a data URI or a file?

A data URI saves a request and suits placeholders and CSS. A file or endpoint is needed when the request itself is the point, as with tracking pixels.

Which Content-Type should I send?

image/gif. Add Cache-Control: no-store if every request must reach your server.