Converting images to WebP is one of the most effective steps you can take to speed up a website. WebP files are 25–34% smaller than JPEG and 26% smaller than PNG at the same visual quality — according to Google's own compression study. Smaller files mean faster page loads, better Core Web Vitals scores, and more organic traffic.
The problem: most online converters upload your files to a server. That's slow, and it means your images — product photos, personal pictures, client assets — leave your device entirely.
Our Image Converter converts PNG, JPEG, HEIC, GIF, and other formats to WebP entirely in your browser. Zero uploads. Zero storage on our end.
This guide covers why WebP is worth switching to, how to convert every major format step by step, and exactly when you should (and shouldn't) make the switch.
Key Takeaways
- WebP cuts file sizes by 25–34% vs JPEG and 26% vs PNG with no visible quality loss (Google)
- Browser support reached 97%+ globally by 2026 — IE11 is the only major holdout
- 68% of the top 10,000 websites already serve WebP images (HTTP Archive 2025)
- You can convert any image to WebP for free in your browser at /image-converter-online — no upload required
- Images that shouldn't be converted to WebP: anything going into email, Microsoft Office, or specialist print workflows
Why Convert Images to WebP? The Real Numbers
According to Google's WebP Compression Study, lossy WebP images are 25–34% smaller than JPEG at equivalent quality. Lossless WebP images are 26% smaller than PNG on average. In practice, a 1.4 MB JPEG can drop to around 616 KB in WebP — that's more than half the original size without any visible degradation.
For websites, that difference adds up fast. Images typically account for 60–80% of total page weight on unoptimized sites, and 73% of LCP (Largest Contentful Paint) elements are images. LCP is the Core Web Vitals metric that Google uses most heavily to assess page experience for rankings.
The stakes are real: sites with a Google PageSpeed score of 90+ see an average 32% improvement in organic traffic. Only 62% of mobile pages worldwide achieve a good LCP score according to the 2025 Web Almanac — meaning most sites are leaving ranking potential on the table.
Why WebP specifically? WebP supports both lossy and lossless compression, full alpha transparency (like PNG), and even animation (like GIF). It is a single format that replaces three older ones.
WebP Browser Support in 2026: Is It Safe to Use?
As of March 2026, WebP has 97%+ global browser support according to w3techs.com. Every major browser — Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Edge, Opera, Samsung Internet — has supported WebP for years. Safari added support in version 14 (2020); Firefox in version 65 (2019).
The only browser that cannot display WebP is Internet Explorer 11, which Microsoft officially retired in June 2022. Unless you are building for specific legacy corporate kiosk environments, WebP is safe to use everywhere.
Here is a quick snapshot of support status:
| Browser | WebP Support | Since |
|---|---|---|
| Chrome | ✅ Full | Version 23 (2012) |
| Firefox | ✅ Full | Version 65 (2019) |
| Safari | ✅ Full | Version 14 (2020) |
| Edge | ✅ Full | Version 18 (2018) |
| Samsung Internet | ✅ Full | Version 4 |
| Internet Explorer 11 | ❌ None | Never |
68% of the top 10,000 websites already serve WebP (HTTP Archive 2025). If you are running a public-facing website and not yet using WebP, your competitors almost certainly are.
How to Convert PNG to WebP for Free (No Upload Required)
PNG files are the most common format that benefits from WebP conversion. If you have screenshots, graphics, logos with transparency, or design exports — PNG to WebP is a reliable size reduction.
Steps to convert PNG to WebP
- Open the Image Converter.
- Click Choose File or drag and drop your PNG onto the tool.
- Select WebP as the output format.
- Adjust quality (80–85% is the sweet spot for most images — visually identical to lossless but significantly smaller).
- Click Convert & Download.
The entire process runs in your browser using the Canvas API. Your PNG is never transmitted to a server.
How much smaller will the WebP be?
It depends on the image, but typical results for PNG to WebP:
- Photos saved as PNG (common with screenshots): 50–70% size reduction
- Graphics with transparency (logos, icons): 20–40% reduction
- Simple flat-color graphics: sometimes only 10–15% reduction (PNG already compresses these well)
If you want to preserve full lossless quality (no compression artifacts at all), WebP lossless is still about 26% smaller than equivalent PNG, so you win either way.
Pro tip: If your PNG is a photograph (not a graphic), compress it with our Image Compressor before or after converting. Running both steps often yields 60–80% total size reduction.
How to Convert JPEG to WebP Online
JPEG was designed for photographs with lossy compression — and WebP does the same job better. According to Google, lossy WebP images are 25–34% smaller than JPEG at equivalent perceived quality.
When JPEG to WebP is worth it
Converting JPEG to WebP makes the most sense when:
- You are serving images on a website — page speed gains are immediate
- The image is a product photo, blog header, or hero image — files that are loaded on every page view
- You want to improve Core Web Vitals LCP scores — large images are almost always the bottleneck
Steps to convert JPEG to WebP
- Go to Image Converter Online.
- Upload your JPEG (drag & drop or click to browse).
- Choose WebP as output.
- Set quality to 82–85% for photos — this is typically indistinguishable from the JPEG original in side-by-side comparison.
- Download your file.
One thing to watch
When you convert JPEG to WebP, you are going from one lossy format to another. Each re-encoding introduces a small amount of additional quality loss. For images displayed on screen, this loss is imperceptible at quality 80 or higher. But if you plan to further edit and re-export the file many times, keep a lossless master (PNG or original JPEG) and only export to WebP for the final web-ready version.
Convert HEIC, GIF, and Other Formats to WebP
HEIC to WebP (iPhone photos)
If you shoot on an iPhone with default settings, your photos are saved as HEIC — Apple's proprietary high-efficiency format. HEIC is not supported by most web browsers or image tools.
Converting HEIC to WebP gives you the best of both worlds: excellent compression and near-universal browser support.
Use our HEIC to JPG/WebP Converter to convert HEIC photos in your browser without any upload. It handles HEIC and HEIF files from iPhone, iPad, and newer Mac cameras.
GIF to WebP (animated images)
Animated GIFs are notoriously large. A 5-second animation at 480p can easily be 2–10 MB as a GIF.
Animated WebP supports the same kind of frame-by-frame animation but with dramatically better compression. An animated WebP is typically 64% smaller than the equivalent GIF according to Google's data for lossy animated WebP.
To convert a video clip to a WebP animation, first use our Video to GIF tool to extract the animation, then convert the result. Alternatively, modern video-to-WebP workflows use FFmpeg directly (see the developer section below).
BMP, TIFF, and other legacy formats
BMP and TIFF files are uncompressed or minimally compressed — converting them to WebP almost always produces dramatic file size reductions, often 90% or more. These formats appear frequently when exporting from design software, scanners, or medical imaging tools.
The Image Converter handles BMP and common TIFF files directly.
WebP vs JPEG vs PNG vs AVIF: Which Should You Use?
WebP is excellent, but it is not always the right choice. Here is a practical comparison:
| Format | Best For | Transparency | Animation | Browser Support |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| JPEG | Photos for email, print | ❌ No | ❌ No | ✅ 100% |
| PNG | Graphics, logos, screenshots | ✅ Yes | ❌ No | ✅ 100% |
| WebP | Web images (photos + graphics) | ✅ Yes | ✅ Yes | ✅ 97%+ |
| AVIF | Highest compression web images | ✅ Yes | ✅ Yes | ✅ 93%+ |
| GIF | Simple animations (legacy) | ✅ Partial | ✅ Yes | ✅ 100% |
| SVG | Icons, logos, illustrations | ✅ Yes | ✅ Yes | ✅ 97%+ |
AVIF vs WebP in 2026: AVIF offers even better compression than WebP — roughly 20–50% smaller for photos — but encoding is slower and browser support sits at around 93%. For most websites, WebP is the practical choice today: fast to encode, excellent browser support, and a significant improvement over JPEG and PNG. You can always migrate to AVIF when tooling matures further.
For a deeper look, see our guide to Best Image Formats in 2026: WebP vs AVIF vs JPEG vs PNG.
When NOT to Convert to WebP
WebP is a great default for web delivery, but there are cases where you should keep your original format:
1. Email attachments and email templates
Most email clients — including Outlook and some versions of Gmail on Android — do not render WebP. Use JPEG or PNG for any image you plan to send as an email attachment or embed in a newsletter. See our guide on reducing image size for email for email-specific optimization tips.
2. Microsoft Office documents
Older Office versions do not support WebP. If you are inserting images into a Word document or PowerPoint presentation, stay with JPEG or PNG.
3. Printing and print-ready workflows
WebP is designed for screen display, not print. For printing, use TIFF or high-quality JPEG at 300 DPI.
4. When you need broad image editing software support
Most modern tools now support WebP, but many older or specialist tools do not. Keep a JPEG or PNG master file for any image you expect to edit repeatedly.
5. If the image is already small
Converting a 15 KB icon from PNG to WebP might save 3–4 KB. The overhead of maintaining separate format variants is not worth it for small files. Focus conversion efforts on images over 100 KB.
Serving WebP on Your Website (Developer Quick Guide)
Once you have converted your images, you need to serve them correctly. The <picture> element lets you serve WebP to supported browsers and fall back to JPEG or PNG for those that cannot display it (mainly IE11):
<picture>
<source srcset="image.webp" type="image/webp">
<img src="image.jpg" alt="Description of image" width="800" height="600" loading="lazy">
</picture>
This pattern:
- Serves WebP to 97%+ of users (Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Edge)
- Falls back to JPEG for IE11 and any other browser that cannot parse the
<source>element - Keeps the
alt,width,height, andloadingattributes on the<img>tag where they belong for SEO and accessibility
For large hero images that affect LCP, add fetchpriority="high" and remove loading="lazy":
<picture>
<source srcset="hero.webp" type="image/webp">
<img src="hero.jpg" alt="Hero image" width="1200" height="630" fetchpriority="high">
</picture>
For a complete guide to image optimization beyond format conversion, see How to Optimize Images for Website Speed and Image SEO: How to Optimize Images for Google Search.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does converting to WebP reduce image quality? With lossy WebP at quality 80–85, the visual difference compared to JPEG at similar settings is imperceptible to most viewers. At quality 90+, WebP is effectively indistinguishable from the original. If you need zero quality loss, use lossless WebP — it preserves every pixel while still being about 26% smaller than equivalent PNG. (Source: Google WebP FAQ)
Can I convert multiple images to WebP at once? Yes. The Image Converter supports batch file selection — drop multiple files onto the tool and convert them all in one session. For large-scale batch conversion (hundreds or thousands of files), use a command-line tool like Sharp for Node.js or ImageMagick.
Will WebP images help my Google rankings? Not directly — Google does not treat WebP as a ranking signal in isolation. But WebP images reduce page weight, which improves Core Web Vitals scores (especially LCP). Only 62% of mobile pages achieve a good LCP score according to the 2025 Web Almanac. Improving LCP with smaller WebP images directly improves your page experience score, which is a confirmed Google ranking factor. Sites that achieve a PageSpeed score of 90+ see an average 32% increase in organic traffic.
Is it safe to delete my original JPEG or PNG after converting? No — keep your originals. Always treat WebP as a delivery format for the web, not your master file. Future edits should start from the highest-quality source. Store originals separately and only use WebP for your published, deployed versions.
What is the difference between lossy and lossless WebP? Lossy WebP removes some image data to achieve maximum file size reduction — similar to how JPEG works. Lossless WebP retains every pixel but still compresses efficiently — similar to PNG but about 26% smaller. Use lossy for photos (blog images, product photos, hero images) and lossless for graphics where pixel accuracy matters (logos, icons, UI screenshots).