WebP vs AVIF vs JPEG vs PNG — which format, and when
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यह गाइड केवल अंग्रेज़ी में उपलब्ध है।
Format arguments usually get framed as “which is best”, which has no answer. The useful question is narrower: given what this image contains and where it is going, which format costs me the least?
The short version
| Compression | Support | Transparency | Best for | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| JPEG | Baseline | Everywhere, including 20-year-old software | No | Photos that must open anywhere |
| PNG | Lossless, bulky | Everywhere | Yes | Screenshots, logos, anything with text |
| WebP | ~25–35% smaller than JPEG | Every current browser; most modern apps | Yes | The safe default for the web |
| AVIF | ~20–30% smaller than WebP | Current browsers; patchy outside them | Yes | Web images where size really matters |
Read that table as “each row is smaller than the one above, and less universally understood”.
JPEG: the format that always opens
JPEG is thirty years old, lossy, has no transparency, and remains the correct answer more often than format enthusiasts like to admit. If an image is going into an email attachment, a government upload form, a print shop’s dropbox, a PowerPoint deck that someone will open on a machine you know nothing about — send JPEG. The compression is worse than the alternatives by a quarter or so, and the compatibility is perfect.
Its real weakness is not photographs but hard edges. Text, screenshots, line art and flat colour blocks pick up visible ringing artefacts, because the algorithm is built around the assumption that nearby pixels are similar.
PNG: lossless, and often misused
PNG stores every pixel exactly, supports transparency, and is the right choice for screenshots, UI mockups, diagrams and logos. It is also frequently used for photographs, where it produces files five to ten times larger than a visually identical JPEG for no benefit at all.
A quick rule: if the image came from a camera, PNG is the wrong choice. If it came from a screen, PNG is probably right — though lossless WebP will usually store the same thing 20–30% smaller.
WebP: the sensible default for the web
WebP does both lossy and lossless, supports transparency and animation, and is supported by every browser in current use. In practice that makes it the default choice for anything displayed on a web page: roughly a quarter to a third smaller than JPEG at the same perceived quality, with no compatibility anxiety left in 2026.
Where it still trips people up is outside the browser. Some desktop editors, older office suites and a few upload forms still refuse .webp. If a file is going to a person rather than to a web page, JPEG remains the safer send.
AVIF: the best compression, with caveats
AVIF, derived from the AV1 video codec, is the current compression champion — typically another 20–30% below WebP, and dramatically better at low bitrates. Where JPEG smears a sunset into visible bands, AVIF holds gradients together at file sizes that seem implausible.
Three caveats that matter in practice:
- Encoding is slow. AVIF takes noticeably longer to write than WebP or JPEG, especially for large images. For a batch of hundreds, you will feel it.
- Browser support is not the same as app support. Every current browser decodes AVIF, but the operating system’s preview, your colleague’s image viewer and many CMS uploaders may not.
- In-browser tools can only write what the browser supports. A tool that runs entirely on your device — including this one — depends on the browser’s own encoder. That is why the AVIF button is greyed out on some browsers instead of quietly producing a broken file: the capability is tested at start-up rather than assumed.
Its quality scale also differs from JPEG’s. AVIF at 50 is roughly JPEG at 80, so reusing your familiar numbers produces unexpectedly large files.
The decision list
Work down it and stop at the first match:
- Does it need transparency? → WebP, or PNG if it must open anywhere.
- Is it a screenshot, diagram, or does it contain text? → lossless WebP, or PNG for compatibility.
- Is it going to a person, a form, or a print shop? → JPEG, quality 85.
- Is it going on a web page and you control the markup? → AVIF with a WebP fallback, or just WebP if you want one file and no complexity.
- Anything else? → WebP at 80.
Things worth knowing before you convert
Converting does not recover quality. Turning a heavily compressed JPEG into an AVIF preserves the artefacts it already has and adds encoding time. Always convert from the best original you have.
Lossy → lossy loses a little every time. JPEG to WebP to AVIF to JPEG will be visibly worse than going straight from the original. Keep originals; treat exports as disposable.
Canvas-based conversion strips metadata. Anything that exports through a browser canvas — again, including this site — drops EXIF: orientation, camera settings, timestamps and GPS. That is a privacy win and an annoyance if you rely on EXIF for cataloguing. Orientation is read and applied before export, so photos do not come out sideways, but the tag itself is gone from the output.
Animated GIF is not on this list on purpose. If you have an animated GIF, the right destination is a video codec, not another image format — a short MP4 or WebM is typically an order of magnitude smaller than the equivalent GIF.
Checking rather than guessing
All of the percentages above are averages across typical photographs, and your specific image may behave differently — foliage, film grain and noise all compress badly regardless of format. The reliable move is to convert the same image at two settings, compare the estimated sizes, and look at the result at 100% zoom. Doing that once for a representative image from your set is worth more than any comparison table, including this one.