What Is WebP and Should You Use It?

WebP is an image format developed by Google and introduced in 2010. Its goal is simple: deliver smaller image files than JPG or PNG while maintaining equivalent visual quality. On a file-size-conscious website, switching from JPG to WebP can shave 25–35% off your image payloads with no visible quality change.

How WebP Compression Works

WebP uses a compression technique derived from the VP8 video codec. For lossy images (analogous to JPG), it divides the image into blocks and predicts each block from its neighbors, encoding only the prediction error. This inter-block prediction is far more efficient than JPG's discrete cosine transform at higher compression ratios.

For lossless images (analogous to PNG), WebP uses a combination of spatial prediction, color space transformation, and entropy coding that typically produces files 26% smaller than equivalent PNGs.

WebP Supports Both Lossy and Lossless — Plus Transparency

• Lossy WebP: better compression than JPG, similar quality
• Lossless WebP: smaller files than PNG, with full alpha channel support
• Animated WebP: replaces animated GIFs with a fraction of the file size
• WebP with transparency in lossy mode: something JPG cannot do at all

Browser Support in 2026

WebP is now supported by all major browsers: Chrome, Firefox, Safari (since version 14), Edge, and Opera. Mobile browsers on both Android and iOS also support it. As of 2026, global browser support sits above 97%, making cross-browser compatibility concerns largely historical.

The main exception is older versions of Safari (pre-14, released before 2020) and Internet Explorer, which has no WebP support. If your analytics show a significant fraction of these users, you may want to serve fallback JPGs — but for most sites this is no longer necessary.

File Size Comparison: WebP vs JPG vs PNG

For a typical 1920×1080 photograph, you can expect roughly these file sizes at comparable visual quality: JPG at 80% quality ≈ 300 KB; WebP at equivalent quality ≈ 200 KB; PNG ≈ 1.5–3 MB. These numbers vary by image content, but the pattern holds broadly: WebP is consistently smaller than JPG, and dramatically smaller than PNG for photographic content.

When WebP Is a Great Fit

• Website images where page load speed and Core Web Vitals matter
• Images on mobile-first applications where bandwidth is limited
• Lossy images that also need transparency (product photos with cutouts)
• Animated images replacing GIFs
• Thumbnails and gallery images where small file size is critical

When to Stick with JPG or PNG

• Email attachments — many email clients do not render WebP
• Images that will be opened and edited in desktop software that lacks WebP support
• Print production workflows where JPG or TIFF are expected
• Sharing with users who may open files on older systems
• Raw image archives — always archive originals in a well-supported format

How to Serve WebP with a JPG Fallback

The HTML `<picture>` element lets you offer WebP to supporting browsers and fall back to JPG automatically. The browser picks the first source it can handle:

• Use <picture> with a <source type="image/webp"> pointing to your .webp file
• Add a standard <img> tag pointing to the .jpg fallback as the last child
• Browsers without WebP support ignore the <source> and load the <img>
• Next.js and many other frameworks handle this automatically with their Image components

Convert Your Images to WebP