Every project has at least one multi-kilobyte SVG icon that could have been a few hundred bytes. Design tools write SVG for their convenience, not for the web — and the result is routinely 3–5× larger than it needs to be.

Here are the 7 things making your SVGs bigger than they should be.

1. Editor metadata

<metadata> blocks, rdf:RDF payloads, generator comments — Figma, Illustrator and Inkscape all pad files with data only they read. Browsers never render it.

2. Coordinate precision

74.98399992065430 renders identically to 74.984 . Dropping to 2–3 decimals is the single biggest win on path-heavy artwork — often half the file.

3. Empty and nested groups

<g> wrappers that mirror the editor's layer panel but apply no transform or style.

4. Unused defs

Gradients, filters, masks and symbols defined but never referenced by any shape.

5. Editor IDs and attributes

id="Layer_1" , data-name , xmlns:serif , style attributes with no visual effect.

6.…