A WhatsApp sticker must be a 512×512 WebP image, no larger than 100KB if static or 500KB if animated. Each pack needs a separate 96×96 tray icon under 50KB, and must contain at least 3 and at most 30 stickers, each tagged with at least one emoji.
Those are the constraints from WhatsApp's third-party sticker spec, and they are the ones StickerBridge's export pipeline enforces — the figures below are the values the app actually validates against, not approximations. If you are building a pack by hand, these are the numbers to hit; if you are importing one and it failed, these are usually why.
The numbers
| Requirement | Value |
|---|---|
| Sticker image format | WebP |
| Sticker dimensions | Exactly 512 × 512 pixels |
| Max file size, static sticker | 100 KB |
| Max file size, animated sticker | 500 KB |
| Tray icon dimensions | 96 × 96 pixels |
| Max file size, tray icon | 50 KB |
| Minimum stickers per pack | 3 |
| Maximum stickers per pack | 30 |
| Emoji per sticker | At least one |
What each one means in practice
512 × 512, exactly
Not "up to" and not "roughly square" — exactly. This catches people importing from Telegram, because Telegram stickers are trimmed tightly to the artwork rather than padded out to a fixed canvas, so almost none of them are already 512×512. Every sticker has to be resized onto that exact canvas before packaging, which is one of the things a converter is doing that a manual copy would not.
WebP, not PNG
The sticker images themselves are WebP. A folder of PNGs is not a sticker pack, however well-named the files are.
100 KB static, 500 KB animated
The ceiling is per sticker, not per pack, and it is the constraint most likely to bite a genuinely good pack. Highly detailed artwork — lots of texture, lots of colours, long animations — can land over the limit after conversion. When that happens the oversized stickers are dropped from the pack rather than sent, because WhatsApp would reject the whole pack otherwise.
A separate 96 × 96 tray icon, under 50 KB
The tray icon is the small image representing the pack in WhatsApp's sticker tray. It is a distinct file with its own, much tighter, size budget — it is not just one of the stickers reused at full size. StickerBridge generates it from the pack's first sticker.
3 to 30 stickers
The minimum of 3 is real and it is the reason a single-image sticker cannot be a pack on its own — a one-off sticker has to be padded out to clear that floor. The maximum of 30 is why a large Telegram pack has to become several WhatsApp packs. Neither number is something any third-party tool can change.
An emoji per sticker
Every sticker carries at least one associated emoji. That is how WhatsApp relates stickers to what you are typing.
What happens when a pack misses these
The failure modes are specific, which helps when you are diagnosing one.
- A few stickers are over the size ceiling: those stickers are dropped and the rest of the pack goes through.
- Too many are over it — fewer than 3 valid stickers remain: the export fails outright, because a pack below the minimum is not a valid pack. This is deterministic; retrying will not shrink the images. A different pack is the only fix.
- The source pack has more than 30 stickers: it has to be divided. In StickerBridge, dividing a pack into multiple WhatsApp packs is a Pro behaviour; a free export produces one truncated pack instead.
- The tray icon cannot be squeezed under 50 KB: the export fails with a tray icon error. Also deterministic for a given source image.
How this relates to importing from Telegram
Nearly all of the work a Telegram-to-WhatsApp converter does is satisfying the list above. A Telegram sticker is the wrong dimensions, frequently the wrong format, and in the animated cases an entirely different kind of file — Telegram's .tgs is a vector animation and its video stickers are .webm, neither of which WhatsApp can read. Each one has to be decoded, rendered, resized to 512×512, encoded as WebP, and checked against the size ceiling, with a tray icon built separately. That is covered in transferring animated and video Telegram stickers, and the end-to-end walkthrough is in how to add Telegram stickers to WhatsApp on iPhone.
Deliberately not listed here
Some numbers get repeated widely online that we are not going to state, because we cannot confirm them: maximum animation duration, frame rate and frame count ceilings for animated stickers, and character limits on pack and author names. They may well exist. We have only listed values our own export pipeline validates against, and padding a reference page with half-remembered figures would defeat its purpose.
StickerBridge
Handles all of the above automatically — resizing, re-encoding, tray icon generation and the size checks — for Telegram packs on iPhone. No account, no sign-up, no analytics of our own.
Frequently asked questions
What size are WhatsApp stickers?
Exactly 512 × 512 pixels, in WebP format. The pack's tray icon is a separate image at 96 × 96.
What is the maximum file size for a WhatsApp sticker?
100 KB for a static sticker and 500 KB for an animated one, per sticker. The tray icon has a tighter limit of 50 KB.
How many stickers can a WhatsApp pack hold?
Between 3 and 30. The minimum of 3 means a single image cannot be a pack on its own, and the maximum of 30 is why a larger Telegram pack has to be divided into several WhatsApp packs.
Why did some stickers get dropped from my pack?
They were over the per-sticker file size ceiling after conversion. Highly detailed artwork and long animations are the usual culprits. If so many are dropped that fewer than 3 remain, the whole export fails, since a pack below the minimum is not valid.
Can PNG images be used as WhatsApp stickers?
The stickers themselves need to be WebP. A folder of PNGs is not a sticker pack — the images have to be converted and packaged with a tray icon and per-sticker emoji before WhatsApp will accept them.