An image format for the Web

  • WebP is a modern image format that offers superior lossless and lossy compression for images on the web, resulting in smaller and richer images.

  • WebP lossless images are 26% smaller than PNGs and lossy images are 25-34% smaller than comparable JPEGs at equivalent quality.

  • WebP supports transparency in both lossless and lossy modes, providing significant size reductions compared to PNGs.

  • Animated WebP images offer reduced file sizes compared to GIFs and APNGs while supporting lossy, lossless, and transparency.

  • WebP is natively supported in major web browsers like Chrome, Safari, Firefox, Edge, and Opera, as well as many other tools and software libraries.

WebP is a modernimage format that provides superiorlossless andlossy compression for images on the web. Using WebP, webmasters and webdevelopers can create smaller, richer images that make the web faster.

WebP lossless images are26% smaller in size compared to PNGs. WebPlossy images are25-34% smaller than comparable JPEG images at equivalentSSIM quality index.

Lossless WebPsupports transparency (also known as alpha channel) at acost of just22% additional bytes. For cases when lossy RGB compressionis acceptable,lossy WebP also supports transparency, typically providing3× smaller file sizes compared to PNG.

Lossy, lossless and transparency are all supported inanimated WebP images,which can provide reduced sizes compared to GIF and APNG.

How WebP Works

Lossy WebP compression uses predictive coding to encode an image, the samemethod used by the VP8 video codec to compress keyframes in videos. Predictivecoding uses the values in neighboring blocks of pixels to predict the valuesin a block, and then encodes only the difference.

Lossless WebP compression uses already seen image fragments in order toexactly reconstruct new pixels. It can also use a local palette if nointeresting match is found.

A WebP file consists ofVP8 orVP8L image data, and a containerbased onRIFF. The standalonelibwebp library serves as a referenceimplementation for the WebP specification, and is available fromour git repository or as atarball.

WebP Support

WebP is natively supported in Google Chrome, Safari, Firefox, Edge, the Operabrowser, and bymany other tools and software libraries. Developers havealso added support to a variety of image editing tools.

WebP includes the lightweight encoding and decoding librarylibwebpand the command line toolscwebp anddwebp for convertingimages to and from the WebP format, as well as tools for viewing, muxing andanimating WebP images. The full source code is available on thedownload page.

WebP Converter Download

Convert your favorite collection from PNG and JPEG to WebP by downloading theprecompiledcwebp conversion tool forLinux, Windows or macOS.

Tell us your experience on the project'smailing list.

Except as otherwise noted, the content of this page is licensed under theCreative Commons Attribution 4.0 License, and code samples are licensed under theApache 2.0 License. For details, see theGoogle Developers Site Policies. Java is a registered trademark of Oracle and/or its affiliates.

Last updated 2025-08-07 UTC.