# Simple Icons: 3,400+ Brand SVGs, Their CDN, and the npm Package

> Simple Icons is a CC0-licensed collection of over 3,400 brand SVG icons, distributed as raw files, a CDN service, and an npm package. It solves the problem of finding a consistent, correctly coloured logo for a third-party brand without drawing it yourself, and it hands the trademark question to the user.

**simple-icons/simple-icons** — SVG icons for popular brands

- Repository: https://github.com/simple-icons/simple-icons
- Website: https://simpleicons.org
- Stars: 25,922 · Forks: 3,173
- Language: JavaScript
- License: CC0-1.0
- Published: 2026-09-21 · Updated: 2026-09-21 · Language: en
- Canonical page: https://hysenlabs.com/projects/simple-icons-simple-icons

## What Simple Icons actually solves for a front-end or docs team

Every product page that lists integrations ends up with the same chore: twenty vendor logos at twenty different aspect ratios, weights, and colours. Simple Icons reduces that to a slug and a hex value. The library holds over 3,400 SVG icons for popular brands, each normalised to a 24x24 viewBox, which is why a row of them looks like one set rather than a collage.

The package is aimed at people who build interfaces and documentation, not at brand designers. The README says contributions, corrections and requests go through GitHub, and the project keeps a legal disclaimer that it asks all users to read before using the icons. That disclaimer is the honest part of the pitch: CC0-1.0 covers the SVG files, while the logos themselves remain the property of their owners.

## How the icons are stored, generated and served

The repository separates source data from build output. A data/ directory holds the icon metadata, icons/ holds the SVG files, and scripts/ contains the build steps, with package.json exposing build, clean, format, and add-icon-data scripts. The npm entry point is index.js with an ESM twin at index.mjs, plus a separate ./icons export, a ./sdk export, and a ./icons.json export that maps to data/simple-icons.json. A consumer who only wants metadata can pull the JSON without pulling any SVG code.

Each icon is an object, not just a string. The README shows the shape returned by an import: title, slug, hex, source, svg, path, guidelines, and license. The svg field carries the full markup, and path carries the geometry alone, which is what you want if you are composing your own sprite or setting fill yourself. Two fields are explicitly optional. The README states that guidelines is undefined when the project has no guidelines for the icon, and license is undefined when there is no license data. That conditional data is the reason the library can stay CC0 while still pointing users at each brand's own rules.

Delivery has three shapes. You can download a single SVG from simpleicons.org, import the npm package, or hit the CDN at cdn.simpleicons.org. The CDN accepts a slug, an optional colour, and an optional dark-mode colour, and switches on the CSS prefers-color-scheme media query when the dark-mode value is present. A viewbox=auto parameter makes every icon render at a consistent size regardless of its intrinsic proportions.

## Installing simple-icons from npm and rendering the first icon

The README gives one install command. Run it in the project that will render the icons.

```bash
npm install simple-icons
```

After install, import a single icon by its slug. Slugs are capitalised into the identifier, so the slug simpleicons becomes siSimpleicons. The README recommends a tree-shaking bundler such as webpack so unused icons are dropped from the output.

```javascript
// use import/esm to allow tree shaking
import {siSimpleicons} from 'simple-icons';
// or with require/cjs
const {siSimpleicons} = require('simple-icons');
```

Logging that value prints an object with title, slug, hex, source, svg, path, and the optional guidelines and license fields. To render it, drop the svg string into your markup or build an SVG element from path and fill it with hex.

If you would rather not install anything, the CDN path needs no build step. The README's example uses jsDelivr with a pinned major version, and notes that @latest keeps receiving updates but returns a 404 if an icon is removed.

```html
<img height="32" width="32" src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/simple-icons@v16/icons/simpleicons.svg" />
```

The colour-aware CDN is a different host. The first form uses the icon's default hex, the second overrides the colour, and the third supplies a dark-mode colour that activates under prefers-color-scheme.

```html
<img height="32" width="32" src="https://cdn.simpleicons.org/simpleicons" />
<img height="32" width="32" src="https://cdn.simpleicons.org/simpleicons/hotpink" />
<img height="32" width="32" src="https://cdn.simpleicons.org/simpleicons/orange/pink" />
```

For an icon row that needs uniform sizing, the README documents a query parameter rather than a CSS fix.

```html
<img height="20" src="https://cdn.simpleicons.org/github?viewbox=auto" />
```

## The monochrome constraint and the removal problem

Simple Icons is monochrome by design. Each icon carries one hex value, and the colour parameters on the CDN replace that single fill. If your design calls for a two-tone or gradient logo, this library cannot produce it, and no amount of configuration will get you there. That is the trade-off behind the uniform look.

The second constraint is churn. Brands get acquired, renamed, or ask to be removed, and the README's own CDN note spells out the consequence: using @latest means a removed icon starts returning 404. A pinned major version protects you from that, at the cost of never receiving new icons. Neither option is free. The library also does not guarantee that every brand you need is present, and the README points requests at GitHub rather than promising a timeline.

The third constraint is legal, not technical. The package is CC0-1.0, but the README asks users to read DISCLAIMER.md before using any icon, and the per-icon guidelines and license fields can both be undefined. A missing guidelines field does not mean a brand has no rules; it means the maintainers have not recorded any. Teams that treat a CC0 file licence as blanket permission to use a logo in advertising are reading the licence more broadly than the project does.

## Simple Icons versus iconify and hand-maintained logo folders

The closest alternative in practice is Iconify, which aggregates many icon sets behind one API and one component model. The difference is scope and consistency. Iconify gives you tens of thousands of icons across dozens of styles, including multicolour sets, and lets you mix them. Simple Icons gives you one style and one colour per icon, deliberately. If you want a product page where every vendor mark sits in the same visual register, that restriction is the feature. If you want a multicolour AWS or Google mark, Iconify's other sets will serve you and Simple Icons will not.

The other alternative is the one most teams already have: a logos/ folder with a handful of SVGs pulled from each vendor's press kit. That works until you need a thirtieth logo, at which point you are chasing brand pages and normalising viewBoxes by hand. Simple Icons trades that work for a build step and a slug lookup. It also gives you metadata you would otherwise collect manually, including the brand's hex value and, when recorded, its guidelines URL.

A third option worth naming is the project's own Dockerfile, which is not an icon server. It builds a node:24-alpine image, installs git, copies the repository, runs npm ci, and sets the entrypoint to npx svgo /image.svg. That is a one-shot SVG optimiser for a file you mount, not a way to serve the library.

## Licence, versioning and what upgrades cost

The package is licensed CC0-1.0, and package.json confirms that identifier. CC0 is a public-domain dedication for the files in the repository, which is unusually permissive for an icon set. It does not extend to the trademarks depicted. The README's request to read DISCLAIMER.md is the project telling you where that boundary sits, and the per-icon license field exists so you can see what a brand asks for when the maintainers know it.

On cadence, the release history shows a steady minor-version rhythm: 16.30.0 on 2026-09-06, 16.31.0 on 2026-09-13, and 16.32.0 on 2026-09-20, with the last push to the develop branch on 2026-09-20. New icons and corrections arrive in those minor releases, so an upgrade is mostly additive. The real cost is not the version bump; it is the audit. A slug you depend on can disappear between releases, and the CDN's @latest form will start returning 404 rather than failing loudly at build time. Pinning @v16 in CDN URLs and the package version in package.json keeps that failure inside your own upgrade cycle, where you can grep for the slug before you ship.

## Conclusion

Adopt Simple Icons if you need neutral, uniform brand marks for a site, README, or icon row and you accept that the licence covers the files, not the trademarks. Do not adopt it if you need multicolour or full-colour logos, or if you need an icon for a brand the maintainers have removed or never added. Before shipping, verify three things: the slug still exists in the current release, the icon's guidelines and license fields in the returned object are defined, and your attribution practice matches what the brand asks for. The npm package and the CDN are separate surfaces, so pin the major version in both.

## FAQ

### What is Simple Icons?

It is a collection of over 3,400 SVG icons for popular brands, published under CC0-1.0 and browsable at simpleicons.org. The same icons are available as an npm package and through a CDN that supports colour parameters.

### How do I use simple icons in React?

Install the package with npm install simple-icons, then import the icon by its capitalised slug, for example import {siSimpleicons} from 'simple-icons'. The import returns an object containing the svg markup and the path geometry, which you render into an SVG element. The README recommends a tree-shaking bundler such as webpack so unused icons are removed.

### How do I use simple icons in Next.js?

The README does not give Next.js-specific instructions. The documented approach is the npm package with an ESM import and a tree-shaking bundler, which is the same path a Next.js project would take.

### How do I use simple icons without installing the package?

Use the CDN. The README shows jsDelivr and unpkg URLs of the form https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/simple-icons@v16/icons/[ICON SLUG].svg, and a colour-aware service at cdn.simpleicons.org that accepts an optional colour and dark-mode colour.

### What is an alternative to Simple Icons?

Iconify aggregates many icon sets behind one API and includes multicolour icons, which Simple Icons deliberately does not. The trade-off is consistency: Simple Icons keeps every mark monochrome and normalised to a 24x24 viewBox.

## Sources

- [License: CC0-1.0](https://github.com/simple-icons/simple-icons/blob/develop/LICENSE)
- [Project website](https://simpleicons.org)
- [README](https://github.com/simple-icons/simple-icons/blob/develop/README.md)
- [Releases](https://github.com/simple-icons/simple-icons/releases)
- [simple-icons/simple-icons on GitHub](https://github.com/simple-icons/simple-icons)

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Hysen Labs editorial analysis, written from the project's own repository and release notes. Cite the canonical page: https://hysenlabs.com/projects/simple-icons-simple-icons