Convert SVG to PDF
Almost every conversion on this site loses something. This one mostly does not. SVG and PDF are both page description languages built on the same primitives — paths, fills, transforms — so the translation is between dialects rather than between kinds of thing.
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Add to Chrome — freeDrop your SVG file here, or click to browse
Up to 50 MB. Deleted automatically after 30 minutes.
What it does
- Curves stay curves — no resolution is chosen or baked in
- Prints sharply at business-card size and at billboard size
- Text stays selectable when the fonts are available
- No watermark and no sign-up
How to use SVG to PDF
- 1
Add the SVG
A logo, an icon set, a chart exported from a plotting library, or a drawing from design software. Files exported from browsers and from vector editors both work.
- 2
Convert
The drawing is opened as a vector document and exported to PDF, with the geometry carried across rather than rendered to pixels.
- 3
Check the page size and the fonts
The PDF takes its dimensions from the SVG's own canvas, which is often not a paper size. Open it once and confirm the text looks right before sending it to a printer.
How it works
The SVG is opened as a vector drawing and its contents are written out as PDF drawing operators. A path in the source becomes a path in the output; a fill becomes a fill.
Nothing is rendered to a grid at any point. That is the whole distinction between this conversion and turning an SVG into a PNG, where a resolution has to be chosen and the file is fixed at that size forever.
Why anyone needs this
Print suppliers ask for it. "Send us a vector file" in practice means PDF, EPS or AI. SVG is a vector format that print workflows frequently will not accept, despite being perfectly capable, because the tooling grew up around PostScript-derived formats.
Documents need figures. Word processors and typesetting systems place PDF figures natively and handle SVG unreliably or not at all.
PDF is the universal reader. An SVG opens in a browser and in design software. A PDF opens in essentially everything, including on phones, without anyone thinking about it.
What actually can go wrong
The conversion is faithful about geometry and less so about the parts of SVG that come from the web rather than from drawing.
Filters and effects. Blurs, drop shadows and color matrix filters are SVG features with no direct PDF equivalent. They are approximated, flattened into a bitmap, or dropped.
Anything scripted or animated. SVG can contain JavaScript and declarative animation. A PDF page is static, so only the first state survives.
External references. A file pointing at an image or font by URL loses it, as there is nothing to fetch during conversion. Embed assets before converting.
CSS from the page. An SVG styled by a stylesheet outside the file arrives unstyled, because the converter sees only the file. Inline the styles.
Checking the result properly
Open the PDF and zoom in hard — several hundred percent. Vector edges stay clean at any magnification; anything that turns blurry was rasterized somewhere along the way and is worth tracking down before the file goes to print.
Then select the text with the cursor. If it highlights, the fonts embedded correctly. If it does not, the text became outlines, which still prints perfectly but cannot be edited or searched later.
Examples
A logo for a print supplier
This is the file a printer actually asks for when they say they need vector artwork. Enlarged to a meter wide on a banner, the edges stay mathematically sharp, because there is no pixel grid anywhere in the file to enlarge.
A chart exported from a plotting library
Axis labels and legends remain real text rather than shapes, so the figure can be searched and the numbers copied. This is why journals and typesetting workflows ask for vector figures instead of high-resolution screenshots.
Frequently asked questions
Does the quality drop?
No, and unusually there is no quality setting to choose. Both formats describe shapes with coordinates and curves rather than with a grid of pixels, so there is no resolution being picked and nothing to lose. The file describes the same geometry before and after; only the notation changes.
What happens to my fonts?
Fonts available to the converter are embedded, so the text stays text and stays selectable. A font that is not available is substituted with the closest match, which shifts letter spacing and can change where lines break. Converting text to outlines in your editor before exporting removes the risk entirely, at the cost of the text no longer being selectable.
Why is the page a strange size?
Because an SVG has a canvas, not a paper size. A drawing 400 by 120 units becomes a PDF page 400 by 120 points, which is roughly 14 by 4 centimeters and not A4. That is usually correct for artwork being placed into another document, and wrong if you expected something to print standalone — set the page size in a layout tool afterwards.
Will embedded images stay sharp?
Only to the extent they were sharp already. An SVG that references or embeds a PNG carries that PNG through at its original pixel dimensions, so that part of the drawing enlarges exactly as badly as the bitmap would on its own. Vector-only files are the ones that scale without limit.