WebP

WebP is an image format developed by Google in 2010 and standardised in 2018. Supports lossy and lossless compression in the same format, full alpha (transparency), and animation. Compresses 25-35% smaller than JPG at equivalent visual quality.

Browser support as of 2026: ~97% globally. Safari was the last major holdout, adding WebP in version 14 (September 2020). The remaining 3% are old Android versions, IE11 stragglers, and embedded browsers.

WebP’s lossy mode is based on VP8 (Google’s open video codec, used by WebM video). It uses block-prediction-and-transform similar to H.264, applied to a single frame. The result: meaningfully better compression than JPG’s 1992-era DCT.

Practical use:

• For new web content: WebP first, JPG fallback via <picture>.
• For replacing existing JPGs: easy 25-35% size reduction, no quality regression.
• For replacing PNGs with alpha: WebP lossless + alpha is dramatically smaller than PNG (often 30-50% the size).
• vs AVIF: AVIF is even smaller (~20% smaller than WebP at equivalent quality) but encodes 10-100× slower and has narrower browser support (~93% in 2026). WebP is the safer default.

Convert any image to WebP in your browser via our image converters.