Lossless compression is a class of data compression algorithms that allows the original data to be perfectly reconstructed from the compressed data. Lossless compression methods are reversible. Examples of lossless compression includegzip,brotli,Zstandard,WebP, andPNG.

Lossy compression, on the other hand, uses inexact approximations by discarding some data from the original file, making it an irreversible compression method.Compression methods such asWebP are capable ofboth lossy and lossless compression depending on the compression level or the options you want to use during encoding.

See also

• Related glossary terms:
  • Lossy compression