Guide · Updated July 2026
WebP vs GIF: which format should you use?
Animated WebP beats GIF for almost every modern use. Google's own measurements put lossy animated WebP about 64% smaller than an equivalent GIF, with 24-bit color and smooth alpha transparency instead of GIF's 256 colors. Every current browser supports it. Choose GIF only for legacy platforms that reject or re-encode anything else.
How much smaller is animated WebP than GIF?
Google, which developed the WebP format, compared the two directly on a corpus of roughly 7,000 animated GIFs collected from the web. Converted to lossy animated WebP, the files came out about 64% smaller on average; converted to lossless animated WebP, about 19% smaller. The figures are published in Google's official WebP FAQ at developers.google.com/speed/webp/faq.
The gap comes from the age of the formats. GIF dates to 1987: every frame is limited to a 256-color palette, transparency is a hard on/off bit, and its LZW compression predates modern video coding. Animated WebP borrows its compression from the VP8 video codec, so it handles gradients, camera footage and screen recordings the way a modern encoder does — and it can choose lossy or lossless per file.
| GIF | Animated WebP | |
|---|---|---|
| File size (Google's measurement) | Baseline | ~64% smaller (lossy) · ~19% smaller (lossless) |
| Colors | 256 per frame | 16.7 million (24-bit) |
| Transparency | 1-bit — fully on or off | 8-bit alpha — smooth edges |
| Compression | Lossless LZW (1987) | Lossy or lossless, VP8-based |
| Autoplay and loop | Yes | Yes |
Which browsers support animated WebP?
Animated WebP plays natively in every current browser. Chrome has supported it since version 32 (January 2014), Firefox since 65 (January 2019), Edge since its Chromium builds (2020), and Safari completed the set in version 16 (September 2022). Unless you must serve a years-old browser, compatibility is no longer a reason to stay on GIF.
If a legacy audience matters to you, serve the WebP inside a picture element with a GIF fallback: modern browsers pick the WebP source and older ones fall back to the GIF automatically — no JavaScript needed.
| Browser | Animated WebP | GIF |
|---|---|---|
| Chrome | Yes — since 32 (2014) | Yes |
| Firefox | Yes — since 65 (2019) | Yes |
| Safari | Yes — since 16 (2022) | Yes |
| Edge | Yes — all Chromium versions (2020) | Yes |
| Opera | Yes — since 19 (2014) | Yes |
| Android / iOS browsers | Yes — all current versions | Yes |
When should you use WebP, and when GIF?
Use animated WebP anywhere you control the markup: websites, web apps, documentation, README pages, and chat platforms that accept it. You get the same set-and-forget looping at a fraction of the weight, which directly improves page load times and Core Web Vitals.
GIF earns its place only where the platform demands it — an upload form that accepts nothing but .gif, an email client or CMS that re-encodes unknown formats, or an audience pinned to a pre-2022 Safari. In those cases compatibility beats the savings; everywhere else, WebP is the better default.
| Situation | Better choice |
|---|---|
| Website, web app, or documentation | Animated WebP |
| Product demo or hero loop on a landing page | Animated WebP |
| GitHub README or docs site | Animated WebP |
| Platform that only accepts .gif uploads | GIF |
| Audience on very old browsers (pre-2022 Safari) | GIF, or WebP with a GIF fallback |
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