Tracepen Online: Free Image Vectorizer — SVG, DXF, PDF & CNC

Open Tracepen Online (free, no install) →

Tracepen is a free online image vectorizer that turns a raster image (PNG, JPG, WebP) into clean vectors in your browser – export SVG, PNG, PDF, or DXF (Lines, Hatch, Faces) for Figma, Cricut, Lightburn, CNC, AutoCAD, SketchUp, or Blender. A deterministic tracer (no AI). Free with every feature at full colour and in every format, a few exports a day with a free 3dshouse account – try it online. Tracepen Pro removes the daily limit: $80 one-time, and the same purchase covers the SketchUp plugin and the Blender add-on.

Tracepen Online Image Vectorizer — Video Demo

How to trace an image online, step by step

1. Open the app and sign in with a free 3dshouse account (the button opens a browser tab; come back when it is done). On your first visit a strip of sample images sits under the app, so you can try it without hunting for a file.
2. Drop in a PNG, JPG or WebP. An image whose longer side passes 1500 px is scaled down first, so every export – SVG, PDF, DXF – lives in that pixel space. The Crop button trims the picture before you convert.
3. Read the colour count it proposes. The app analyses the picture, decides whether it is flat artwork or a photo, and sets Color number to the colours it found. Slide it down for fewer layers.
4. Tune, then press Convert. Noise filter (0-5), Merge min area (1-64 px) and Corner smooth (sharp to round) are the three knobs. Converting is never counted, so re-run it as often as you like.
5. Clean up the layers. Each colour is a swatch with a colour picker and a checkbox. Untick the background swatch and it is left out of every format you export.
6. Download and pick SVG, PNG, PDF or one of the three DXF flavours. Each download counts as one export against the free plan’s daily allowance.

Free Online Vectorizer Features

• Six export formats – SVG (Figma, Illustrator, Inkscape, Affinity), PNG, PDF, DXF Lines (Cricut, Lightburn cut, CNC), DXF Hatch (Lightburn fill), DXF Faces (SketchUp).
• Two pipelines, chosen for you. Flat artwork (logos, icons) is quantized straight to your colour count, so the picture’s exact palette survives. A photo first has similar regions merged, then is quantized.
• Colour number 1 is a silhouette mode. Slide it to 1 and Tracepen thresholds brightness at half scale and traces the dark areas as one shape – the quickest route to a stencil or a cut-out.
• Specks are absorbed, not deleted. A region smaller than Merge min area joins the neighbouring colour it shares the longest border with, and a colour never disappears entirely, so a thin outline stays.
• Same input, same output – no AI and no randomness: Wu colour quantization in OKLab, small-region absorption, contour tracing, then Potrace-style Bezier fitting.

What stays on your machine

The tracing runs in a Web Worker as WebAssembly, so the image itself is never sent anywhere. The page still talks to 3dshouse.com for sign-in, the plan check and the daily export count, and it loads Google Analytics like any web page – none of those requests carries your picture. It needs an internet connection to open and to sign in.

Export formats — what is inside each one

DXF has no real-world size here: the coordinates are the pixels of the traced image (upright, Y pointing up), so a 1200 px wide trace arrives 1200 units wide – scale it to size after import. DXF curves are polylines: each Bezier is cut into up to 8 straight segments, so zoom in on a big circle in CAD and you will see the facets. The SVG and PDF keep true curves.

SVG and PDF carry a 1 px stroke in each region’s own fill colour, even with Line thickness at 0. It stops neighbouring colours from showing hairline seams in viewers that anti-alias each shape on its own. DXF has no stroke at all, so for cutters and engravers use DXF Lines or Hatch rather than SVG.

Import into your tool

• Figma – skip the SVG: the Tracepen plugin for Figma traces a file or the selected layer and adds the vectors to your canvas, one path per colour.
• Illustrator / Canva / Inkscape / Affinity – open or place the SVG.
• Cricut Design Space / Silhouette Studio – upload DXF Lines. Cricut’s help centre says Design Space does not support DXF in its iOS and Android apps, so upload from a computer, or use the SVG. Colour rides on each DXF layer’s true-colour attribute; how a cutter app treats layers depends on the app, so check the preview after upload and use SVG when the colours matter.
• Lightburn – DXF Lines for cutting (outlines → Cut), DXF Hatch for engraving (filled regions → Fill / Scan). Every Lines contour is written closed, and a shape has to be closed before Lightburn can fill it.
• AutoCAD / Fusion 360 / LibreCAD – DXF Lines for outlines, DXF Hatch for filled regions; every colour becomes its own CAD layer.
• Blender – skip the DXF: the Tracepen add-on creates mesh or Bezier curve objects, one per colour, directly in the scene.

Image to SketchUp: DXF Faces or the plugin

Two routes lead into SketchUp, and SketchUp receives different things.

DXF Faces (this page): download the .dxf and use File → Import. Each region arrives as triangles; tick Merge Coplanar Faces in the import options, which SketchUp’s help describes as removing triangulated lines from planes. DXF layers become tags, and the import options ask for a unit – pick millimetres and one image pixel becomes one millimetre, then scale the group to size.

The SketchUp plugin builds the faces itself, so there is no triangle mesh to merge: a region with holes becomes one face with inner loops, each colour lands as a group with its own material, and you type the width in the model’s own units. Tracing the same image again refills the same component instead of stacking a second copy, and one Ctrl+Z removes the whole insert. It shows this same interface inside SketchUp, so it also needs a connection. Get it from the SketchUp Extension Warehouse, or read the Tracepen SketchUp page first.

How Tracepen compares

Prices read from each vendor’s pricing page on 2026-09-30; they change, so check before you buy. Vectorizer.AI describes its engine as deep-learning AI; Tracepen is not. Inkscape’s Trace Bitmap is the free desktop option: its tracer descends from Potrace, and its Multiple scans mode creates one object per scan. For a photo run through Illustrator, CorelDRAW, Vector Magic and Tracepen side by side, see the image to vector tool comparison.

Install

🌐 Open Tracepen

Nothing to install – it runs in the browser. Tracepen Pro ($80 one-time) removes the daily export limit, and one purchase covers every surface – web app, SketchUp plugin, Blender add-on and Figma plugin.

Requirements

• A browser that runs WebAssembly and Web Workers, with JavaScript on.
• An internet connection: the page loads from tracepen.3dshouse.com, and sign-in and the daily count go through 3dshouse.com.

FAQ

How do I trace an image online for free?

Open Tracepen, sign in with a free 3dshouse account, drop in the image, press Convert and pick a format under Download. Converting and previewing are unlimited; only the downloads are metered on the free plan.

What does trace bitmap online actually do?

It turns a bitmap – a grid of coloured pixels – into vector paths that scale without blurring. Tracepen groups pixels into colour regions, follows their outlines and fits Bezier curves to them with a Potrace-style fit.