Will the WebP loop exactly like my GIF?

Yes. The frames, frame timing, and infinite loop carry straight over, so the WebP plays exactly as the GIF did — it's the same animation in a modern container. You can also change the loop count on purpose before converting if you want it to play once and stop.

How much smaller will my GIF get as WebP?

Google's numbers say lossy animated WebP averages about 64% smaller than a comparable GIF, and lossless WebP still beats GIF by roughly 19%. In practice, noisy dithered GIFs often shrink by 80–90% because the dithering itself was inflating the file. Your exact saving shows on the result screen next to a before/after size comparison.

Do browsers and apps support animated WebP?

Every current major browser — Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and Edge — plays animated WebP in a plain image tag, covering 97%+ of web traffic. Some messaging apps and older software still prefer GIF, which is why LightBox also offers an Optimized GIF output when compatibility matters more than size.

Can I resize or crop the GIF while converting?

Yes. You can scale it down to the width you actually display, crop to a standard aspect ratio, lower the frame rate, and adjust quality — each of those multiplies the size saving. A 480px-wide WebP at 15 fps is usually all a web page needs.

Is this free, and is there a watermark?

Free, no watermark, no signup, no ads. Files up to 100 MB convert on the free tier and are auto-deleted from the server about an hour later. A one-time Pro upgrade adds batch conversion for whole GIF folders, a permanent library, and 1 GB uploads.

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GIF to WebP — Shrink Your GIF Without Losing the Loop

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To convert a GIF to animated WebP, drop the GIF on LightBox, keep the pre-filled settings, and download — the loop, timing, and frames are preserved in a file that's typically a fraction of the size. Google's own measurements put lossy animated WebP around 64% smaller than the equivalent GIF, and real-world memes and screen recordings often shrink far more.

The size difference isn't magic — it's age. GIF is a format from 1989: a 256-color palette, heavy dithering to fake the colors it can't show, and no modern compression. Animated WebP keeps everything people actually like about GIFs (drop it in an image tag, it autoplays and loops, no player) while fixing the rest: full 24-bit color, real alpha transparency, and compression designed this century. Every current browser displays it.

That makes GIF-to-WebP the single highest-leverage swap on a slow page. If your site, docs, README, or store listing ships GIFs, converting them is usually worth seconds of work for a multi-megabyte saving per file — better Core Web Vitals, less bandwidth, same visual.

Same loop, a fraction of the bytes

The conversion keeps every frame and its timing, so the WebP behaves exactly like your GIF — it just weighs dramatically less. A multi-megabyte reaction GIF routinely lands under a megabyte, which is the difference between a page that drags and one that snaps in.

Full color, no more banding

GIF fakes gradients with 256 colors and dithering noise. WebP carries millions of colors, so skies, skin tones, and UI gradients come out clean. Counterintuitively, the better-looking file is also the smaller one — you upgrade quality and size in the same move.

Optimize the GIF instead, if you must

Need to stay a GIF for an app that demands one? Switch the output to Optimized GIF and LightBox rebuilds it with a tuned per-clip palette — smaller than the original while staying universally compatible. But when the target is a website, WebP wins on every axis.

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