Convert GIF to WebP

Output is typically about 62% smaller.

Files stay on your device
No upload, no waiting
No sign-up, no watermark

or drag files here · processed on your device

Quality: 82

80 is visually lossless for most photos. Below 70, artefacts show in gradients.

How it works

Add your GIF file
Drag a GIF file onto the drop zone, or click to browse. You can select several at once.
Choose your settings
Adjust the quality slider if you want a smaller file or a sharper result. 80 suits most photographs.
Download the WebP
Conversion runs on your device as soon as each file is added — no upload, no queue. Download each result when it is ready.

All image tools

Questions

Does this keep my GIF animated?

No. Every conversion here runs through the browser's canvas, which holds a single frame, so the WebP you get is a still image. Animated WebP needs a multi-frame encoder that we do not ship yet. For shrinking an animation today, the honest options are a video file — MP4 or WebM, usually around a tenth of the GIF's size — or a dedicated animated-WebP encoder.

Will converting GIF to WebP make the file smaller?

Usually, yes. A 12-megapixel photo is around 5.5 MB as GIF and around 2.1 MB as WebP — about 62% smaller. Because WebP is lossless the result depends entirely on the image content — flat colour and text compress far better than photographic detail.

Does converting GIF to WebP lose quality?

A little, by design. GIF is lossless and WebP is lossy, so some detail is discarded in exchange for a much smaller file. At quality 80–90 the result is visually indistinguishable from the original for photographs. For screenshots, logos or anything with sharp text, stay with a lossless format instead — lossy compression creates visible halos around hard edges.

Is transparency preserved when converting GIF to WebP?

Yes. Both GIF and WebP support an alpha channel, so transparent and semi-transparent pixels carry across unchanged — a logo with a cut-out background stays cut out, and soft drop shadows keep their gradient rather than picking up a white halo. Because WebP can compress lossily, a very hard edge against transparency may pick up slight softness at high compression; keep quality at 85 or above for cut-out graphics.

What happens to an animated GIF?

Only the first frame is converted. Every conversion here decodes one frame onto a canvas and re-encodes it, so the result is always a still image — that applies to WebP as much as to any other target. To shrink an animation while keeping the motion, a video file (MP4 or WebM) is usually around a tenth of the size of the equivalent GIF, and needs an encoder we do not ship yet.

Why does GIF look posterised?

GIF allows a maximum of 256 colours per frame. A photograph contains far more, so the encoder has to pick a palette and approximate everything else, producing visible banding in skies and skin tones. For still images use PNG or WebP; for animation use WebP or MP4, both of which are dramatically smaller and full-colour.

About gif to webp

Why people convert GIF to WebP

Most people arriving here want to shrink an animated GIF, because animated WebP genuinely is a fraction of the size. Worth saying up front: this tool does not do that. It converts one frame into a still WebP.

As a still, WebP is the best of the three targets — it keeps transparency and lifts GIF's 256-colour ceiling, so a frame grabbed from a screen recording stops looking banded. If what you need is the animation at a smaller size, this is the wrong tool, and we would rather tell you than waste your time.

Worth knowing: Only the first frame is converted, and the result plays as a static image.

GIF and WebP side by side

	GIF	WebP
Full name	Graphics Interchange Format	WebP
Compression	Lossless	Lossy or lossless
Transparency	Yes — alpha channel	Yes — alpha channel
Animation	Yes	Yes, in the format
Browser support	Universal — every browser since 1987	All modern browsers — Chrome 32+, Firefox 65+, Safari 14+ (2020), Edge 18+
Typical 12 MP photo	~5.5 MB	~2.1 MB
Usually used for	Short looping animations, reaction clips and email-safe motion	Web images where page weight matters and modern browsers are the audience

On a typical 12-megapixel phone photo, the WebP output comes out about 62% smaller than the GIF original. These are order-of-magnitude figures for one kind of image — your own results will vary a great deal, because flat colour, text and line art behave nothing like photographic detail, and the quality slider moves the figure substantially.

What to watch out for

Not accepted by some older desktop software and print workflows
Slightly slower to encode than JPEG
Larger than AVIF at the same quality
Animation is lost. Only the first frame is converted — every conversion here decodes a single frame onto a canvas and re-encodes it, so the result is a still image whatever the target format. To shrink an animation and keep the motion, a video file is typically around a tenth of the size of the equivalent GIF.

About the two formats

GIF survives entirely on momentum. It is capped at 256 colours per frame, has only on/off transparency, and produces files several times larger than a modern video or WebP animation of the same clip. It remains useful only because it autoplays and loops in places that block video, such as some email clients and chat apps.

WebP is the pragmatic modern choice for the web: roughly 25–35% smaller than JPEG at comparable quality, with transparency and animation that JPEG lacks, and — since Safari 14 in 2020 — support in every browser that matters. It is the format to reach for when you want smaller pages without worrying about fallbacks.

Other conversions

Everything runs on your device — nothing is uploaded, so there is no size limit, no queue and no copy left on a server afterwards. There is more on how browser-based conversion works if you want the detail. Otherwise, browse every image tool, or convert WebP back to GIF.