WebP is quietly the most important image format on the modern web: it's 25–35% smaller than JPEG at the same visual quality, supports transparency, and has 96%+ browser support across Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and Edge. If you're still serving JPEGs or PNGs on a production site, converting to WebP is one of the cheapest page-speed wins available.
Here's the format-conversion map and how to do each conversion in your browser.
The WebP conversion cheat sheet
| From | Why convert | Browser tool |
|---|---|---|
| PNG | Transparency + much smaller files | PNG to WebP |
| JPEG | Photos: same quality, ~30% smaller | JPG to WebP |
| GIF | Animated content that's smaller than GIF | GIF to WebP |
| AVIF | Fallback for older browsers | AVIF to WebP |
There's also a general Convert to WebP page if you want to drop in mixed formats and convert everything at once.
What quality setting should you use?
For photos, 75–80% WebP quality is the sweet spot — visually indistinguishable from the source at normal viewing distance, but meaningfully smaller. For logos and line art with hard edges, prefer lossless WebP (or keep PNG) so you don't get the soft halo that lossy compression introduces around high-contrast edges.
When to reach for AVIF instead
WebP isn't the end of the line. AVIF is 30–50% smaller than JPEG — beating WebP — but it's slower to encode and, as of now, slightly less universally supported. A good rule of thumb:
- WebP — the safe default for production today.
-
AVIF — when you have a large image library and you're willing to serve
<picture>fallbacks.
If you need to go the other direction — say a client requires JPEG — the WebP to JPG converter handles that too.
One conversion detail that trips people up
WebP supports both lossy and lossless modes, but a lot of "convert to WebP" tools quietly pick one for you. If you're converting a screenshot or UI element and the text looks slightly soft afterward, you're in lossy mode — switch to lossless (or use PNG) and it'll be crisp.
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