Convert ICO to WebP

Output is typically roughly 21× larger.

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 ICO file
Drag a ICO 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

Should a modern favicon be WebP?

No. Browsers look for ICO, PNG and SVG for favicons, and WebP is not part of that convention. The current best practice is an SVG icon for the tab, a 180 × 180 PNG for Apple touch, and a small favicon.ico for older browsers that still request it by default.

Will converting ICO to WebP make the file smaller?

Usually, yes. A 12-megapixel photo is around 100 KB as ICO and around 2.1 MB as WebP — roughly 21× larger. Because WebP is lossless the result depends entirely on the image content — flat colour and text compress far better than photographic detail.

Does converting ICO to WebP lose quality?

A little, by design. ICO 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 ICO to WebP?

Yes. Both ICO 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.

Is WebP safe to use on a live website?

Yes. Every browser in current use supports it — Chrome since 2014, Firefox since 2019, and Safari since version 14 in 2020. Coverage is above 97% of global traffic. The remaining gap is older desktop software and some print workflows, so keep a JPEG or PNG original if the image also has to leave the web.

About ico to webp

Why people convert ICO to WebP

Rare. Usually part of a bulk conversion of mixed assets rather than a deliberate choice for the icon itself.

PNG is the more practical target for icon work — it is what editors, favicon generators and app manifests all expect. WebP saves a trivial number of bytes on a file this small.

Worth knowing: Same multi-resolution caveat as any ICO conversion: one image comes out, and it is whatever the file's largest entry was.

ICO and WebP side by side

	ICO	WebP
Full name	Windows Icon	WebP
Compression	Lossless	Lossy or lossless
Transparency	Yes — alpha channel	Yes — alpha channel
Animation	No	Yes, in the format
Browser support	Universal for favicons	All modern browsers — Chrome 32+, Firefox 65+, Safari 14+ (2020), Edge 18+
Typical 12 MP photo	~100 KB	~2.1 MB
Usually used for	Website favicons and Windows application icons	Web images where page weight matters and modern browsers are the audience

On a typical 12-megapixel phone photo, the WebP output comes out roughly 21× larger than the ICO 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

About the two formats

ICO is a container rather than a codec: it bundles the same icon at several sizes — typically 16, 32, 48 and 256 pixels — so the operating system or browser can pick the right one. Its remaining job is the favicon at the root of a website, and Windows application icons.

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 ICO.