Should You Use SVG or Icon Fonts in WordPress? A Practical Guide for Developers

In modern web development, icons are a crucial part of the user interface. WordPress websites often rely on icon fonts (such as Font Awesome) to display various icons. However, with the rise of SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics), more developers are transitioning to SVG-based icon solutions.

Even WordPress’s own Dashicons project has stopped accepting new icon requests, and the Block Editor (Gutenberg) uses inline SVGs exclusively. Page builders like Elementor have added options to load icons as inline SVG. Likewise, many custom themes and plugins are now gradually replacing icon fonts with SVGs.

This article provides an in-depth comparison of icon fonts and SVG icons, evaluating their pros and cons, and offering actionable optimization tips.

How Icon Fonts Work

Icon fonts are essentially special font files that store icons as glyphs. When using an icon font, you’re actually displaying characters from that font. For example:

<i class="fas fa-heart"></i>

To make this work, a @font-face rule is used to load the font file:

@font-face {
    font-family: 'FontAwesome';
    src: url('fontawesome-webfont.woff2') format('woff2');
    font-weight: normal;
    font-style: normal;
}

How SVG Icons Work

SVG is an XML-based vector image format that can be embedded directly in HTML as inline code:

<svg viewBox="0 0 24 24" width="24" height="24">    <path d="M12 21.35l-1.45-1.32C5.4 15.36 2 12.28 2 8.5 2 5.42 4.42 3 7.5 3c1.74 0 3.41.81 4.5 2.09C13.09 3.81 14.76 3 16.5 3 19.58 3 22 5.42 22 8.5c0 3.78-3.4 6.86-8.55 11.54L12 21.35z"/></svg>

Performance Comparison

1. Load Performance

Icon Fonts

• Pros:
  • Load once, use anywhere
  • Efficient browser caching
• Cons:
  • Additional HTTP requests
  • FOIT/FOUT (Flash of Invisible/Unstyled Text) issues
  • Entire font file loads even if only a few icons are used

SVG Icons

• Pros:
  • Inline support (no HTTP requests)
  • Instant rendering
  • Load icons on demand
• Cons:
  • Too many inline SVGs can bloat HTML
  • Each icon is a separate code block

2. File Size Comparison

Here’s a concrete example:

3. Rendering Performance

SVGs often outperform icon fonts due to:

• Better GPU acceleration
• No need to parse font files
• Less work for the browser’s text rendering engine

So… SVG or Icon Fonts?

The choice depends on your use case. Here’s a quick rule of thumb based on icon quantity per page:

• Small websites (<10 icons)
  Prefer inline SVGs for better performance and no external requests
• Medium websites (10–50 icons)
  Consider using SVG Sprite Sheets (one file with all icons, loaded once)
• Large websites (>50 icons)
  Use a hybrid strategy — combine sprite sheets with selective inline SVGs or fallback icon fonts where needed