Reduce your CSS file size and boost website performance with our free online CSS minifier. This tool removes unnecessary whitespace, comments, and formatting to create a lightweight stylesheet optimized for production environments.
Tip
Always name your minified files with a .min.css extension to distinguish them from development files.
Did You Know?
CSS minification can often reduce file size by 15-25% without changing any styling logic.
CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) is the standard language used to describe the presentation and layout of web pages written in HTML. While human-readable CSS includes spacing and comments for easier development, browsers do not require these characters to render the page correctly. Minification bridges this gap by providing a machine-optimized version of your styles that functions identically but downloads much faster.
Best Practice
Use source maps in production to debug layout issues while still serving minified files to users.
For professional projects, CSS minification is typically automated within a build pipeline. You can use tools like PostCSS with the cssnano plugin, or standalone libraries like clean-css. Modern bundlers such as Vite, Webpack, and esbuild handle CSS minification automatically during the production build step. We recommend using source maps to map minified production code back to your original source files for easier debugging.
Q: Does minification change how my website looks? A: No, minification only removes unnecessary characters like spaces and comments. The visual output and logic of your CSS remain exactly the same.
Q: Should I keep my original CSS files? A: Yes! Always keep your original, un-minified CSS for editing. Only use the minified version for production deployment.
Q: What is the difference between compression and minification? A: Minification removes characters from the source code itself, while compression (like Gzip) happens at the server level to shrink the data during transfer.