Quick answer
WhatsApp stickers must be exactly 512 × 512 pixels in WebP format. A static sticker must be 100 KB or smaller; an animated sticker must be 500 KB or smaller and run for 10 seconds or less. Every pack needs a 96 × 96 pixel tray icon under 50 KB and must contain between 3 and 30 stickers.
The complete specification
These values come from WhatsApp's own documentation for third-party sticker apps. They are hard limits: a pack that breaks any one of them is rejected at import time rather than degraded.
| Requirement | Static stickers | Animated stickers |
|---|---|---|
| Dimensions | 512 × 512 px | 512 × 512 px |
| File format | WebP | Animated WebP |
| Max file size per sticker | 100 KB | 500 KB |
| Animation length | — | 10 seconds or less |
| Minimum frame duration | — | 8 ms |
| Tray icon | 96 × 96 px, max 50 KB | 96 × 96 px, max 50 KB (static) |
| Stickers per pack | 3 minimum, 30 maximum | 3 minimum, 30 maximum |
| Mixing types | A pack is all static or all animated — never both | Same |
Why 512 × 512 and why WebP
512 × 512 is a single fixed size, not a maximum. A sticker that is 500 × 500 or 1024 × 1024 is not accepted, so any export pipeline has to pad or resize to exactly 512 square. Stickers display at roughly 64–128 px in a chat bubble, so the extra resolution exists to survive high-density screens rather than to be seen at full size.
WebP is required because it supports an alpha channel and animation in one format at a fraction of PNG's size. That alpha channel matters more than it sounds: stickers are composited over both light and dark chat backgrounds, so a sticker exported without transparency shows a visible white or black box around it.
The size limits in practice
100 KB is generous for flat illustration and tight for photography. Line art, cartoons and lettering compress well below the limit. Photographic stickers — a cut-out face, a detailed scene — routinely land above it and need either heavier compression or simplification.
For animated stickers, 500 KB is the binding constraint far more often than the 10-second duration. Frame count and canvas complexity drive the file size, so the usual fix for an oversized animation is to cut frames or reduce colours rather than to shorten the loop.
- Reduce the palette — most sticker art needs far fewer colours than a photo.
- Drop the frame rate. 12–15 fps reads as smooth for illustrated motion.
- Trim leading and trailing frames where nothing moves.
- Keep large areas fully transparent rather than nearly transparent; partial alpha is expensive.
The tray icon is a separate asset
Every pack carries one tray icon: 96 × 96 pixels, static even for an animated pack, and 50 KB or less. This is the thumbnail shown in the sticker tray when someone swipes between packs, and it is the only part of a pack most people see before deciding whether to open it.
A tray icon is not automatically generated from the first sticker. Shrinking a 512 px sticker to 96 px usually produces something illegible — a dedicated, simplified icon is worth the effort.
Pack composition rules
A pack must contain at least 3 and at most 30 stickers, and it must be entirely static or entirely animated. Mixing the two in one pack is not allowed, which is why catalogues list animated packs separately rather than marking individual stickers.
The lower bound catches people more often than the upper one. Three is a real minimum, so a pair of stickers cannot ship as a pack on its own.
