All formats
AVIF vs WebP
AVIF compresses better than WebP, usually 20 to 30 percent smaller at matched quality, and handles HDR and wide colour that WebP cannot. WebP has broader support in older browsers and much faster encoding. For new sites, AVIF with a WebP fallback is the standard answer.
Side by side
| Spec | AVIF | WebP |
|---|---|---|
| Type | Image | Image |
| Extensions | .avif | .webp |
| Introduced | 2019 | 2010 |
| Compression | Both | Both |
| MIME type | image/avif | image/webp |
| Use it when | You control the delivery pipeline and want the smallest possible web images. | Serving images on the web and you want the smallest files with broad browser support. |
| Avoid it when | Files must open in arbitrary desktop applications, or encode time matters more than size. | Handing files to a client, a printer, or older desktop software that may not support it. |
Where the usual answer breaks
AVIF encoding is slow. For a large batch job on a low-powered machine, WebP finishes in a fraction of the time.
AVIF
- Best compression of the mainstream web image formats
- Supports transparency, wide colour gamut and HDR
- Royalty-free
- Encoding is slower and more CPU-hungry than JPG or WebP
- Support outside browsers is still patchy
WebP
- Smaller than JPG at similar visual quality, and smaller than PNG when lossless
- Supports transparency and animation, which JPG cannot
- Supported in all current major browsers
- Older desktop software and some print workflows still will not open it
- Lossy WebP, like JPG, degrades on every re-encode
Convert between AVIF and WebP
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Last updated 2026-08-03