SVG icon sets: sizes, formats and license terms

An icon set looks simple from the outside: a grid of small pictures. The questions that decide whether it is useful are not visible in the preview. Will the icons stay sharp at 16 pixels? Can you change their colour in code? Are they allowed in a client project, or in an app you sell? This piece answers those questions first, for buyers and for sellers, and then shows what icon listings on Getly actually say about them.

We measured every active listing on the Icons & Icon Sets and 3D Icons shelves, plus any active listing with "icon" or "icons" in its name, on 26 September 2026. That is 39 active listings. It is a small shelf, which makes it easy to see where listings leave buyers guessing.

Sizes: the grid matters more than the pixel count

An SVG has no fixed resolution, so "size" for an icon set means the grid it was drawn on. Most interface icons are designed on a 24x24 grid, and many sets also offer 16, 20 or 32. The grid decides how the icon looks when it is displayed at exactly that size: lines that land on whole pixels stay crisp, lines that fall between pixels blur.

What to look for, or to state if you sell:

• The design grid, for example "drawn on a 24 px grid with 2 px padding".
• The stroke width for outline icons, for example 1.5 or 2 px, and whether it is the same across the set.
• The smallest size the set is tested at. An icon that works at 48 px can turn into a smudge at 16 px.

On Getly, 12.8% of icon listings state a pixel size anywhere in the description. For the rest, a buyer who needs 16 px icons has to buy and find out.

Formats: what should be in the download

A useful icon set usually ships more than one format, because it is used in more than one place:

Format	Where it is used	What to check
SVG	Websites, apps, design tools	Clean viewBox, no embedded images, colour set to currentColor or easy to change
PNG	Slides, documents, quick mockups	At least two sizes (for example 1x and 2x), transparent background
Figma or Sketch file	Design teams	Icons as components, named consistently
AI or EPS	Print and illustration	Editable paths, not flattened images
Icon font	Older web projects	Included CSS, a list of names

Here is what the Getly shelf delivers at the top level of the download (inside an archive we cannot see in this measurement):

• 56.4% of icon listings ship only raster files (PNG, JPG or GIF), with no vector file and no archive that might contain one.
• 38.5% ship a vector file (SVG, AI, EPS, PDF, CDR, DXF) or an archive.
• Only one listing ships a loose .svg file at the top level.
• 17.9% mention SVG anywhere in the title or description.

For comparison, on the SVG cut files shelf, where the format is the whole point, 72.7% of listings ship a .svg file directly. Icon sellers can do the same: put the SVG folder in the archive and say so in the first line of the description.

Stroke or fill, and why it matters in code

Two icons can look alike in a preview and behave differently in a project. Outline icons drawn with strokes can change line weight with one setting, but they scale their stroke with the icon unless the stroke is set not to. Icons converted to filled shapes ("outlined strokes") scale predictably but cannot be made thinner later. Neither is wrong. A buyer needs to know which one they are getting, and a line in the description ("strokes kept live" or "all strokes outlined") answers it.

The other code-level detail is colour. An SVG whose fill or stroke is set to currentColor takes the colour of the surrounding text, so it follows a dark mode or a hover state without editing the file. Hard-coded colours work too, but they mean editing every file for every theme.

License terms: the part most listings leave out

Icons are almost always used inside something else: a website, an app, a client's brand, a product that is itself sold. That is why the license matters more for icons than for many other downloads. The terms that actually decide whether a buyer can use a set:

1. Personal or commercial use. Can the icons appear in a product or site that makes money?
2. Client work. Can a freelancer use them in a project delivered to a client? On Getly this is what the "extended" licence type covers.
3. Redistribution. Almost every icon license forbids reselling the icons as icons, for example inside another icon pack or a template marketplace listing where they can be extracted. Say so plainly.
4. Attribution. Is a credit required? If not, say "no attribution required".
5. Apps and templates for sale. Can the icons be built into an app or a theme that the buyer sells? Many sets allow it when the icons are not the main value of the product.

Every Getly listing has a licence field with five options: personal use only, commercial use allowed, extended (commercial plus client work), public domain (CC0), or custom terms described in the listing. It is shown next to the buy button. On the icon shelf, 84.6% of listings leave that field empty, against 47.3% across all active listings. Only 17.9% of icon listings mention licence terms in the description instead. So on most icon listings, the question a professional buyer asks first has no answer on the page.

Price: what the shelf charges

The median paid price on the icon shelf is $8.00. The middle half of listings sits between about $3.00 and $8.00, with the full range running from $0.80 to $29.00. None of the active icon listings is free.

That narrow band suggests buyers are not being given much reason to pay more. A set that clearly states its grid, ships SVG and PNG, and grants commercial use in writing is a different product from a sheet of PNGs with no terms, even if the previews look similar. It can justify a price above the band because it answers questions the cheaper listings leave open.

A checklist before you publish or buy

• The design grid and stroke width are stated.
• SVG is included, with clean viewBoxes and currentColor where colour should follow text.
• PNG exports come in at least two sizes with transparent backgrounds.
• The number of icons is stated, and a preview shows all of them, not a selection.
• The licence field is set, and the description says whether client work, apps for sale and redistribution are allowed.
• File names are readable: "arrow-left.svg", not "Group 41.svg".

Sellers can find a longer guide to this shelf in how to sell icon sets, and the current listings on the Icons & Icon Sets shelf. Listing is free, and you keep 80% of each sale by default; the tiers are on the pricing page.