WebP Images: What They Are and Why Websites Use Them
If you have inspected the source code of a fast-loading website recently, you have almost certainly seen images with a .webp extension. WebP has gone from a niche Google experiment to the dominant image format for web use in just a few years. It loads faster than JPG, supports transparency like PNG, and handles animation like GIF — all in one format. This guide explains what WebP is, why so many websites use it, how it compares to older formats, and how you can convert your own images to WebP for free right in your browser.
What Is WebP and Where Did It Come From?
WebP is an image format developed by Google and first released publicly in 2010. It was born out of a specific problem: the web was getting slower as image-heavy designs became standard, and the existing formats — JPG and PNG — were not efficient enough for the demands of modern web pages. WebP is based on the VP8 video codec, the same technology Google used for WebM video compression. The idea was to apply the predictive encoding techniques used in video compression — where each frame is predicted from neighboring frames — to individual still images. Nearby blocks of pixels are predicted from adjacent blocks, and only the differences are encoded, resulting in dramatically better compression than the block-based DCT algorithm used by JPG. Google released WebP as an open format with a royalty-free license, which encouraged broad adoption. Chrome added support first. Firefox resisted for several years due to concerns about web standardization, but eventually added support in 2019. Apple was the last major holdout, adding WebP support to Safari in version 14, released in 2020. By 2022, WebP support was effectively universal across all modern browsers. Today WebP is actively maintained by Google and the open web community. It remains the recommended format for web images from both Google's Web.dev documentation and the Core Web Vitals guidelines.
How WebP Compares to JPG and PNG
The performance advantages of WebP over older formats are well-documented. In Google's own studies and independent benchmarks, WebP consistently achieves 25 to 35 percent smaller file sizes than JPG at equivalent perceptual quality. Compared to lossless PNG, lossless WebP is typically 25 to 26 percent smaller. These numbers translate directly to faster page loads. A website that previously served 2 MB of JPG images per page might serve 1.3 MB of equivalent WebP images — a savings of 700 KB per page view. Multiply that by thousands of daily visitors and the bandwidth savings are enormous. For users on mobile connections or slow networks, smaller images mean pages that actually load instead of timing out. WebP also has a unique advantage over its predecessors in that it covers all their use cases in one format. JPG handles lossy compression well but lacks transparency and animation. PNG handles lossless compression and transparency but produces large files for photos. GIF handles animation but is limited to 256 colors and is extremely inefficient for large images. WebP handles lossy compression, lossless compression, transparency in both modes, and animation — all within a single format specification. The one area where JPG still has an edge is raw encoder speed. JPG encoding is extremely fast because the algorithm has been optimized for decades. WebP encoding can be slower, particularly at higher compression settings. For batch processing thousands of images server-side, this can matter. For individual conversion in a browser, it is imperceptible.
WebP and SEO: The Performance Connection
Google explicitly recommends using WebP images in its Page Experience guidelines. Serving images in next-generation formats like WebP is one of the recommendations in Google Lighthouse, the performance auditing tool built into Chrome DevTools. Sites that serve JPG and PNG images instead of WebP will typically see Lighthouse warnings and lower Performance scores. This matters for SEO because Google uses Core Web Vitals as a ranking signal. Core Web Vitals includes Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), which measures how fast the largest visible element on the page loads. For most pages, that largest element is an image. If that image is a large JPG instead of a smaller WebP, LCP will be slower, which can negatively affect your position in search results. Converting your site images to WebP is one of the highest-impact, lowest-effort SEO improvements available to most websites. It does not require changing your content, earning backlinks, or restructuring your pages. It is a pure technical improvement that has direct measurable effects on loading speed and, by extension, both user experience and search rankings. For WordPress sites, plugins like ShortPixel, Smush, and Imagify can automatically convert and serve WebP versions. For static sites and custom builds, converting images to WebP before deployment — using a tool like the Image Format Converter — is the simplest approach.
How to Convert Your Images to WebP for Free
Converting images to WebP does not require any installed software. Modern browsers include a Canvas API that can encode images in WebP format entirely client-side, with no file upload needed. To convert images to WebP using a browser-based converter: open the Image Format Converter tool, drag and drop your PNG or JPG images into the upload area, select WebP as the output format, adjust the quality slider if desired (80 percent is a good starting point), and click convert. Your files will be encoded and made available for download immediately. For batch conversion, you can add up to ten images at once. All will be converted to WebP with your chosen quality setting. This is ideal for converting a directory of product images, blog post illustrations, or portfolio photos in one session. If you need to convert images for a website, the recommended workflow is to keep your originals in PNG or JPG format as masters, then convert to WebP for web delivery. This way you always have a high-quality source to reconvert if needed, and your web-ready files are optimized for speed. For developers automating image conversion in a build pipeline, tools like the cwebp command-line encoder from Google, or the Sharp library for Node.js, provide programmatic conversion. But for one-off conversions or small batches, the browser-based approach is faster and requires no setup.
Frequently Asked Questions
- Does every browser support WebP in 2026?
- Yes, all major modern browsers support WebP in 2026 without any fallback needed. Chrome, Firefox, Edge, Opera, Safari (since version 14, released 2020), and iOS Safari all render WebP images natively. The only scenarios where you might need JPG or PNG fallbacks are very old browser versions still in use on certain corporate networks, or specific email clients that have not updated their rendering engines. For general web use, WebP is safe to use without a fallback.
- Can WebP images be animated like GIF?
- Yes. WebP supports animation through the Animated WebP format. Animated WebP files are significantly smaller than equivalent animated GIFs — typically 64 percent smaller according to Google benchmarks. Browser support for animated WebP is the same as for static WebP. If you are creating looping animations for the web, animated WebP is technically superior to GIF in almost every way. You can convert animated GIF files to animated WebP using various online and command-line tools.
- Should I delete my original PNG and JPG files after converting to WebP?
- No. Keep your original PNG and JPG master files. WebP is your delivery format, not your archival format. WebP editing support in design applications like Photoshop, Figma, and Illustrator is improving but not as universal as PNG and JPG. If you need to re-edit an image, you will want the original high-quality source. Store originals in PNG or TIFF for lossless preservation and generate WebP versions for web delivery. Think of WebP as the export format, not the source format.