What is WebP? Why You Should Convert Your Images to WebP

WebP is an image format developed by Google and released in 2010. It supports both lossy and lossless compression, as well as transparency and animation. In lossy mode, WebP images are typically 25–35% smaller than equivalent JPGs at the same visual quality. In lossless mode, WebP files are typically 26% smaller than PNGs. All major browsers, Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Edge, support WebP as of 2024.

WebP was designed from the beginning to support all the use cases covered by JPG, PNG, and GIF in a single unified format. The practical result is that a development team can adopt WebP as a single format for all web images, photos, graphics, animations, reducing the complexity of deciding which format to use for each content type.

For sites that use a content delivery network, enabling WebP delivery at the CDN level, where the CDN converts and caches images automatically, gives the bandwidth benefits without changing any existing image files or build processes. Most major CDNs support on-the-fly WebP conversion as a configuration option rather than a code change.

Older browser versions and some operating-system image viewers do not support WebP. Before converting an entire image library to WebP, confirm that your target audience's browsers cover the format. Analytics tools that report browser versions can show you the percentage of visitors using WebP-capable clients, which informs whether serving WebP without a fallback is safe for your specific audience.

For photographs, WebP lossy achieves better quality at smaller file sizes than JPG. A WebP encoded at similar visual quality to a JPG will be roughly 30% smaller. This means faster page loads, lower bandwidth costs, and better Core Web Vitals scores, all of which influence Google search rankings. If you are serving images on a website today, WebP is almost always the better choice over JPG.

The file size advantage of WebP translates directly into faster page loads. Google's Core Web Vitals algorithm weighs Largest Contentful Paint, the time until the largest image or text block on a page becomes visible. Using WebP instead of JPG for a page's hero image is one of the most impactful single changes you can make to improve LCP scores without touching any other code.

WebP images also benefit from the same caching strategies as JPG and PNG. Setting long cache lifetimes on image assets, combined with cache-busting filenames for updated versions, means visitors load images only once and see them instantly on repeat visits. The initial WebP download is already smaller, making this combination particularly effective.

For graphics with transparency, WebP lossless beats PNG on file size while maintaining the same pixel-perfect quality. WebP also supports animation as a modern alternative to GIF, with far better compression and color depth. The main disadvantage of WebP over PNG is that some older software, Photoshop versions before 2020, certain email clients, and some print services, does not support WebP.

For icons, logos, and interface graphics that need transparency, WebP lossless with alpha channel provides the same crisp edges as PNG at a smaller file size. However, if the same icon needs to be used in email signatures, printed materials, or PDF documents, keep a PNG version on hand, WebP is not yet universally supported outside of web browsers.

Upload any JPG or PNG image to the Image to WebP tool. The conversion runs in your browser using the Canvas API and produces a WebP file you can download immediately. Use the WebP version for your website's img tags or as a fallback alongside JPG using the HTML picture element for maximum browser compatibility.

When using the HTML picture element to serve WebP with a JPG fallback, the browser downloads only the format it will display, not both files. This means the WebP savings are fully realized without any additional data transfer overhead from maintaining both versions. The cost is a slightly more complex img tag in HTML, which is negligible compared to the bandwidth savings at scale.

Use WebP for web delivery. Stick with JPG or PNG when: uploading to platforms that reject WebP (many social networks and stock photo sites still do not accept WebP uploads), delivering images via email where client support is unpredictable, or producing files for print workflows that require TIFF, JPG, or PNG specifically. For everything else, website images, web apps, progressive web apps, WebP is the right default.

WebP format adoption in mobile apps has lagged behind web browsers. Many Android and iOS apps can decode WebP natively, but platform APIs for image sharing, clipboard, and document export may not handle WebP reliably. For images intended to be shared through system share sheets or pasted into documents, JPG or PNG is a safer choice until WebP support in operating system APIs improves.

For developers building web apps with user-uploaded images, converting uploads to WebP server-side before storage reduces storage costs and speeds up every subsequent delivery of those images. Storing the original alongside the WebP version provides a fallback if the source is ever needed for re-processing or download by the original uploader.