AVIF vs WebP

Where each one wins

Both are well ahead of JPG on size. Choosing between them is rarely about which is technically stronger and usually about what has to open the file next.

The size difference is real and it is not uniform

On a photograph at a middling quality setting, AVIF lands meaningfully below WebP for a picture most people cannot tell apart. The gap widens as the quality comes down, and the way they fail differs: AVIF degrades into softness while WebP and JPG break into blocks and ringing. At aggressive settings AVIF is not slightly better, it is the only one still usable.

On flat graphics, screenshots and anything with hard edges and few colours, the gap narrows and can reverse. WebP has a genuinely strong lossless mode, and that is the fair comparison for that kind of image rather than its lossy one.

Encoding time is the cost nobody mentions

AVIF is descended from a video codec and does a great deal more work per image. Encoding one takes noticeably longer than encoding a WebP, and on a large picture the difference is measured in seconds rather than milliseconds.

For one image at the top of a page, that does not matter. For a batch of two hundred it is the difference between a coffee and an afternoon, and it is the practical reason plenty of sites that could serve AVIF still serve WebP.

What has to open it next

Browser support for AVIF is broad now. Support outside browsers is thinner than WebP, which is itself thinner than JPG, and that ordering starts to matter the moment a file leaves your control. An image going into a colleague’s presentation, or attached to an email, or handed to a print shop, wants to be a JPG or a PNG.

Neither of these is a format for storing originals. Both are delivery formats and both are usually lossy. Keep whatever came off the camera.

Trying both on your own image

For one specific picture the only honest answer is to encode it both ways and read the two numbers. The converter here writes AVIF and WebP, runs on your own machine, and has no batch limit, so the comparison costs nothing but the seconds it takes.

More guides

• What Is a WebP FileThe format you did not choose, saved from a web page, and now something will not open it.
• JPEG vs PNGOne rule decides almost every case. The exceptions are the part worth reading.

FAQ

Is AVIF better than WebP?

It is smaller at the same visible quality, especially on photographs and especially at low quality settings. WebP encodes far faster and more software reads it. Which of those matters depends on whether the file stays on a site you control or goes to somebody else.

Which is better for photos?

AVIF, on size, and the gap is largest exactly where it counts: at the settings you would choose to make a page load quickly.

Which is better for logos and screenshots?

WebP in its lossless mode, or PNG. Both keep hard edges exactly. A lossy encode of flat graphics puts halos around text that are hard to unsee once you have noticed them.

Does AVIF support transparency?

Yes, and so does WebP. Both support animation as well, so neither of them sends you back to GIF.

Should I convert my photo library to AVIF?

No. These are formats for delivering images to a browser. Originals should stay as they came off the camera, because every conversion into a lossy format throws away something you cannot get back.