What Is WebP Image Format? A Plain-English Guide
WebP is a modern image format from Google that supports compression, transparency and animation. Learn how it works, when to use it and when to stay with JPG or PNG.
By FreeToolsHub Editorial TeamPublished3 min read
If you have ever saved a picture from a website and found it ended in .webp, you have met WebP. It is an image format created by Google and first announced in 2010, designed to make pictures on the web smaller without making them look worse. This guide explains what it is, what it can do and when it is the right choice.
What WebP is
WebP is a single format that covers several jobs that used to need separate ones:
- Lossy compression, similar in purpose to JPG, for photographs.
- Lossless compression, similar in purpose to PNG, for graphics where every pixel must be exact.
- Transparency, including partly see-through pixels, which JPG cannot do.
- Animation, as an alternative to GIF.
Because one format handles all of these, a website can use WebP for nearly every image.
Why it produces smaller files
Like JPG, lossy WebP discards detail that is hard to notice, but it uses a more modern method to predict and encode the picture, so it can usually describe the same image in fewer bytes. Google's own documentation reports meaningful size savings over JPG and PNG, but exact results depend on the image, the quality setting and the encoder. The honest way to know is to test your own pictures, which is what our JPG to WebP converter lets you do in seconds.
Smaller images mean pages load sooner, use less mobile data and cost less to store and deliver. You can read more about the effect on real visitors in why image compression matters.
Browser support
WebP is supported by all current major browsers, including Chrome, Edge, Firefox and Safari, on both desktop and mobile. For website images that is usually enough to use it with confidence. The places where support is weaker are older software and some services:
- older desktop programs and photo viewers;
- some email clients;
- certain social media, marketplace or government upload forms that only accept JPG or PNG;
- print services and some design tools.
If you are unsure whether a destination accepts WebP, test with a single file before converting many.
How to use WebP on a website
The safest approach is to offer WebP with a fallback, using the HTML picture element. A browser that understands WebP uses it; anything else shows the JPG.
<picture>
<source srcset="photo.webp" type="image/webp">
<img src="photo.jpg" alt="A description of the photo" width="800" height="600">
</picture>
Many website platforms and content management systems, including recent versions of WordPress, also accept WebP uploads directly, so you may not need any special markup.
WebP compared with other formats
| Feature | JPG | PNG | WebP |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lossy compression | Yes | No | Yes |
| Lossless compression | No | Yes | Yes |
| Transparency | No | Yes | Yes |
| Animation | No | No | Yes |
| Best for | Photos | Graphics, screenshots | Almost anything on the web |
For a fuller decision guide, see JPG vs PNG vs WebP: which should you use?
When to stay with JPG or PNG
- You are sending images to someone who may open them in older software.
- A form or platform says it accepts only JPG or PNG.
- You are preparing files for professional printing.
- You need to keep camera metadata, because converting in a browser does not carry it over.
Try it yourself
Open the JPG to WebP converter, drop in a photo and compare the file sizes. If you want to keep your original format but still reduce its size, use the Image Compressor. Both run entirely in your browser, so your images are never uploaded.
