GIF vs WebP
GIF and WebP are both in wide use and are chosen for different reasons. This page sets them against each other on the things that decide between them, and links to the converters for both directions — every one of which runs in your browser, with the file never uploaded.
The short answer
For animation, WebP beats GIF on every axis that matters. It stores the same clip at a fraction of the size, with millions of colours instead of 256 and with a proper alpha channel instead of GIF's hard on-or-off transparency. A three-second clip that runs to several megabytes as a GIF is often a few hundred kilobytes as a WebP.
GIF's only remaining advantage is that it is accepted in places WebP is not — some email templates, some forums, some older chat clients — and that advantage is real enough to keep the format alive. It is a compatibility format now, not a technical choice.
The one thing to check before converting away from GIF is where the file is going. Email clients in particular are conservative, and an animated WebP in a newsletter may simply not animate for a large share of recipients. That is the case GIF still exists for, and it is worth confirming rather than assuming.
Side by side
| Property | GIF | WebP |
|---|---|---|
| Compression | Lossless | Lossless or lossy |
| Colour | A palette of 256 colours | 8 bits per channel |
| Transparency | One colour, on or off | Full alpha channel |
| Animation | Yes | Yes |
| Keeps EXIF | No | Yes |
| Browser support | Every browser since 1993 | Chrome 32, Firefox 65, Safari 14 |
| Size of a photograph | Not a format for photographs | 25 to 35 percent smaller than a JPG |
| Published | 1987 | 2010 |
Where they actually differ
- They compress differently, and that is the difference behind most of the others: one keeps every pixel exactly as it was given, the other discards detail to be smaller and cannot put it back.
- They do not agree about transparency. Converting an image with a transparent background from one to the other either preserves it or fills it with a solid colour, and which of those happens is decided by the format, not by the file.
- They store colour in fundamentally different ways, which is why one handles photographs well and the other handles flat artwork well, and why forcing either into the other's territory goes badly.
- Only WebP carries camera settings, dates, and copyright fields. Converting away from it drops them without saying so.
- Browser support is not equal. GIF is read everywhere and has been for years; the other is either newer or, in one case, not read by browsers at all.
- They are 23 years apart, and most of what separates them is what had been learned in between.
What people get wrong
- Converting into the format without transparency fills every transparent pixel with a solid colour, and the result looks fine on a white page and wrong on any other. Decide the background deliberately rather than letting a default decide it.
- Camera settings, dates, and copyright fields do not survive the trip into the format that has nowhere to put them. If attribution matters, check the output rather than assume, because the loss is silent.
Which to choose
- Choose GIF when
- Choose GIF only when the place the file is going will not accept anything else, which is the one thing it is still better at.
- Choose WebP when
- Choose WebP for animation everywhere you control what reads the file: far smaller, full colour, and real transparency.
Converting between them
Common questions
- Why is my GIF so much bigger than the video it came from?
- Because GIF stores each frame almost in full rather than describing what changed between them, which is what a video codec does. That is also why animated WebP is so much smaller: it compresses between frames the way video does, while keeping the simplicity of an image file.
- Which of GIF and WebP is better?
- Neither, in general — if one were simply better the other would have disappeared. They are good at different things, and the short answer above says which is which. The useful question is what the file has to do next: be edited, be published, be opened by somebody else, or fit inside a size limit.
- Does converting between them lose anything?
- It depends on the direction. Converting into a format that stores everything loses nothing but does not recover anything either; converting into one that discards detail loses a little each time. The table above says which of these two does which.
- Can I convert back afterwards?
- The file will convert back, but whether it comes back unchanged depends on the direction. Between two formats that store everything, a round trip is lossless. Where one of them discards detail, that detail is gone and the return journey cannot invent it.
- Can I use both?
- On a web page, often yes, and it is usually the right answer: serve the smaller modern format and list an older one as a fallback so each browser takes what it understands. For a file you are handing to a person, pick one — the one they can open.
- Which one does my software support?
- The side-by-side table above says which browsers read each, which is the part that varies most. Desktop support is harder to state in general and tends to lag browsers by years, so if the file is going to somebody else, the older and more widely read of the two is the safer choice.
- Is converting between them free?
- Yes, with no account and no limit on how many files you convert. Every converter linked from this page runs in your browser: the file is read from your device, converted by code running on it, and handed back as a download.
- Is my file uploaded?
- No. There is no conversion server here to upload it to, and no third-party service is involved. You can confirm it yourself: open your browser's developer tools, switch to the Network panel with no filter, and run a conversion — no request carries your file.