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Best free image converters 12 tools, which ones upload your photos

Converting an image is a two-second job, so when you compare the best free image converters (or the best free file converters in general) the interesting question is not which tool is fastest: it's where your photo goes, and what the free tier actually caps. Most free converters upload it to a server, hold it for a while and count your conversions. A few never send it anywhere. Here are 12, named and checked 2 October 2026. ConvertNinja is ours, and it is one of the ones that never uploads.

Every converter here is free, full size, no account. Photos convert in your browser and never leave it, except camera RAW files and SVG tracing. Those, like video, audio and e-books, need our server, and we delete them right after.

By ShinobiTools Team · Last updated: 2 October 2026

Convert an image, free →

Where your photos actually go

Checked on each tool's own pricing, help or product page on 2 October 2026; each row links to the page we read. Where a page doesn't say, or blocked our reader, the cell says so. "Best for" and "uploads your file" are the two columns most comparisons leave out.

Each tool, and where it actually limits you

The table above is the summary. Here is the specific thing each free tier will not let you do.

• ConvertNinja, no upload, no daily counter, no account. The trade-off: it uses your own device's processor, so a huge batch on an old laptop is slower than handing it to a server, and it covers everyday image formats rather than the exotic ones a server-side tool supports.
• CloudConvert, genuinely broad format support, image or not, HEIC included. The free plan is 10 conversion credits a day with a 1 GB per-file ceiling and 5 minutes of processing per task, and every file passes through their servers, which say they delete it right after processing.
• FreeConvert: no account needed for occasional web use. The free tier is metered in time: 20 conversion minutes a day, with at most 5 minutes per file, which FreeConvert itself says works out to about 20 short files. Files can be up to 1 GB, are uploaded, and are deleted after 8 hours. Push past the daily cap and it asks you to upgrade or wait.
• Convertio, up to 1 GB per file and 10 conversion credits per 24 hours on the free tier, with broad format support. Its retention policy: input files are deleted right after conversion, output files after 24 hours unless you delete them sooner.
• Zamzar, one of the oldest online converters, and the tightest free limit here: files up to 50MB (several files together must stay under 50MB) and 2 files every 24 hours, no account needed. You download from the site, or optionally get an e-mail link; free files are kept up to 24 hours.
• iLoveIMG, the image sibling of iLovePDF, so it also resizes, crops and compresses. No account needed to start; the free tier allows 200 MB per file and 30 tasks for converting, compressing and resizing. Premium is €9 a month or €60 a year.
• Adobe Express, the conversion itself is free, but it asks you to sign in to Adobe first. It takes PNG, WebP and JPG up to 40MB and exports JPG, PNG, SVG, WebP or PDF; HEIC is not on its list.
• Canva, has an image converter inside its design editor. Its page blocked our reader on 2 October 2026, so we can't confirm its limits, account rules or HEIC support, and we list none.
• XnConvert, genuinely powerful: 500+ formats read, around 70 written, no watermark, no file-count limit, entirely offline once installed. Two real limits: it's a desktop download, not a browser tool, and its free licence covers private, educational and non-profit use, not commercial use.
• Online-Convert, free use now means creating a free account for trial credits, which renew every 24 hours; its help page puts the free upload limit at 75MB. Paid credits start at €13 for 480.
• Squoosh, Google's open-source tool; its own page says images never leave your device. No upload, no limit, with manual quality control and a before/after view, so it is built for compressing carefully; we found no batch mode in the web app.
• Windows Photos / macOS Preview, already installed, always free, never uploads anything. Preview on macOS batch-exports HEIC to JPG in a few clicks; the Windows Photos app is more limited and often needs Microsoft's HEIF and paid HEVC extensions first. Apple's guide confirms Preview exports to JPEG, PNG or HEIC, several files at once.

Does it upload your file, and does that matter

Two tools on this list never leave your device at all: ConvertNinja and Squoosh both run the conversion with code already loaded in your browser, and the built-in Preview/Photos apps never touch the internet either. Every other tool here: CloudConvert, FreeConvert, Convertio, Zamzar, iLoveIMG, Adobe Express, Canva and Online-Convert. Is a server-side converter: your file gets uploaded, processed on their infrastructure, and then deleted per their own policy. The ones that publish it: CloudConvert right after processing, FreeConvert after 8 hours, Convertio and Zamzar within 24 hours. ConvertNinja has two exceptions to its no-upload rule: camera RAW files and SVG tracing go to our server and are deleted right after.

For a holiday photo that does not matter much. For a scanned ID, a screenshot with account details in it, or anything you would not want sitting on someone else's server even briefly, that difference is the whole decision. Pick a tool from the "never uploads" list.

Batch size: how many files at once

Converting one photo is never the interesting case: it's the folder of 200 you actually care about. ConvertNinja has no batch limit; drop the whole camera roll in and it works through them locally, limited only by your computer. XnConvert is the same story on desktop. Zamzar is the tightest: 2 files per 24 hours. FreeConvert's 20 minutes a day works out to roughly 20 short files, CloudConvert's 10 daily credits and Convertio's 10 credits per 24 hours to about ten. iLoveIMG allows 30 tasks. Others don't publish a hard per-batch number, but their daily or size caps mean a genuinely large batch runs into the same wall a handful of big files would. Whichever tool you pick, batch convert is the word to search for once you're past a handful of files: the table above shows which ones cap how many you can do in one go.

HEIC specifically: which of these actually take it

Not every "image converter" opens an iPhone's native format. ConvertNinja, CloudConvert, FreeConvert, Convertio, Zamzar and iLoveIMG all have HEIC-to-JPG on their own pages, checked 2 October 2026: that part is solved on all six. Adobe Express doesn't list HEIC, and Canva's page we couldn't read. XnConvert reads HEIC/HEIF as one of its 500+ formats, so the desktop route works too.

Squoosh is the exception worth knowing about: it decodes images with the browser's own codecs, and most desktop browsers other than Safari cannot open a HEIC file at all, so it is not a reliable HEIC converter even though it is an excellent JPG/PNG/WebP compressor. On Windows, the built-in Photos app often cannot even preview a HEIC file until Microsoft's HEVC Video Extensions are installed from the Store: macOS Preview has no such problem.

If you outgrow the free tier

Every one of the server-side tools above turns into a subscription once you cross its daily or per-file cap. Roughly what that costs, so there are no surprises:

• CloudConvert, one-time credit packages, or a subscription it calls up to 50% cheaper, once 10 credits a day and 1GB stop being enough (prices load in a calculator).
• FreeConvert, Basic is $12.99 a month for 1,500 conversion minutes and 1.5GB files.
• Convertio, Lite is $6.99 a month billed annually ($11.99 monthly) for 1,000 credits a month and 1GB files.
• Zamzar, over 50MB you need a paid account to download the result; its pricing page didn't load for us, so no price here.
• Online-Convert, pay as you go starts at €13 for 480 credits, with files up to 64GB on paid plans.
• iLoveIMG, Premium is €9 a month or €60 a year.

Squoosh and the built-in Preview app never ask for money; XnConvert only does for commercial use. ConvertNinja's own browser conversion (HEIC, PNG, WEBP, JPG, BMP, GIF) is free and uncapped too; camera RAW is the exception, since it needs server-side decoding: free up to 200 MB per file, with a pass for larger ones. SVG tracing is 3 free a day.

Where the others are better than ConvertNinja

• Formats: CloudConvert, FreeConvert (it says 1,500+ conversions), Convertio and Zamzar handle documents and far more file types than we do.
• Cloud imports: FreeConvert takes files straight from Dropbox, Google Drive, OneDrive or a URL; ConvertNinja only takes files from your device.
• Manual compression: Squoosh gives a quality slider with a live before/after; we don't.
• Desktop batches: XnConvert reads 500+ formats and writes about 70, offline.
• Design work: Adobe Express exports to SVG and PDF as part of a design tool.
• Speed on old hardware: our conversion uses your own device, so a big batch on an old laptop is slower than handing it to a server.

Why people pick ConvertNinja

• HEIC, HEIF, PNG, WebP, JPG, BMP and GIF convert to JPG, PNG or WebP inside your browser: nothing uploaded, no account, no daily limit, no watermark.
• Camera RAW (free up to 200 MB) and SVG tracing (3 free a day) go to our server and are deleted right after; nothing is kept.
• The same site does video, audio and e-books with no daily limit, only a size limit per file (video up to 1200 MB and 20 minutes free).
• If you need more, a pass is €3 for 24 hours or €5 for 30 days, one-off, no subscription, and works on all 11 of our tools. It changes limits, never quality.

Which to use

• A pile of iPhone HEIC photos to send to someone on Windows, ConvertNinja. No upload, no daily counter, and the whole batch at once. This is the job it was built for.
• Squeezing images for a website, Squoosh. Its quality slider with a live before-and-after gives you manual control that ConvertNinja doesn't offer.
• An unusual format: RAW, TIFF, PSD, or video, CloudConvert. It converts almost anything, and that breadth is worth the upload and the daily cap.
• A huge personal batch and you don't mind installing something, XnConvert. Hundreds of files, 500+ formats read, and it never leaves your machine, just remember its free licence is for personal use, not business.
• Converting is one step inside a bigger design or document, Canva or Adobe Express, since you likely already have the file open there.
• You are on a Mac, Preview already does HEIC to JPG in bulk, free, offline. Select the files, Export, done. No tool needed.
• On Windows and HEIC will not open at all: install Microsoft's HEVC Video Extensions from the Store (a small paid add-on), or convert them first with ConvertNinja.

Why 'runs in your browser' is worth something

It is not a marketing distinction. A converter that uploads has to receive your photo, store it somewhere while it works, and then delete it, and you are trusting a privacy policy that it does. A converter that runs in the browser does the work with code that is already on your machine: there is no upload to intercept, no server copy to leak, and no retention policy to read.

It also means it keeps working with the network off, and a batch of two hundred photos does not queue behind other people's jobs.

The trade-off is honest: browser conversion uses your own processor, so a very large batch on an old laptop is slower than a server would be, and the exotic formats a server-side tool supports are out of reach. For everyday image formats, that trade is worth making.

How we checked

We opened each tool's own pricing, help or product page on 2 October 2026 and noted the free limits, the account requirement, watermark policy, price, retention and whether the file is uploaded; each row of the table links to that page. We did not run a fair quality test (at least 10 files through every tool), so this page ranks nothing on quality.

One honest data point: in a small spot check on 26 September 2026 (5 phone HEIC photos), our in-browser HEIC decoder at the time gave visibly harsher contrast than heictojpg.com and FreeConvert. We replaced that decoder the same day and have not re-run the comparison, so we claim nothing either way. HEIC decoding is not automatically identical between tools.

Free-tier caps on services we do not control (CloudConvert, FreeConvert, Convertio, Zamzar, iLoveIMG, Adobe Express, Canva, Online-Convert) can change without notice; Convertio's help page, for one, was updated the morning we checked it. If one of these numbers is stale, mail hello@shinobitools.com and we will fix it.

ConvertNinja does its work with the browser's own image APIs plus a HEIC decoder that loads with the page, which is why it needs no server and why we can say plainly that nothing is uploaded: there is nowhere for it to go.

Looking for a specific conversion? HEIC to JPG, PNG to JPG and WebP to JPG each have their own page here, with the same no-upload conversion described above. Need the background gone rather than a new format? BGNinja is our free background remover.

Scanning paper documents rather than converting existing image files? Our sister roundup, best free document scanner tools, compares 11 free options the same honest way.

Common questions