TL;DR — which should you use?
If you can afford slightly slower encoding and you serve modern users, AVIF is the better technical choice — it is consistently 20–30% smaller than WebP at matched perceptual quality. If your build pipeline is already producing WebP and you need the broadest decoder support including Safari 14 and very old Edge, WebP is a perfectly good answer that is now universally supported. The right answer for most websites in 2026 is to serve AVIF as the primary format with a WebP fallback for the long tail of clients that still don't support it.
Compression efficiency
Independent benchmarks consistently show AVIF beating WebP by 20–30% at matched VMAF or SSIM scores. The gap is largest at lower bitrates — for a thumbnail or hero image at 30 KB target size, AVIF will look measurably cleaner. At very high quality (above ~95 VMAF), the difference shrinks. WebP itself is still 25–34% smaller than JPG at matched quality, so even a WebP-only pipeline is a meaningful upgrade.
Browser support in 2026
AVIF is supported in Chrome 85+, Firefox 93+, Safari 16+, and Edge 121+. That covers more than 92% of global web traffic as of early 2026. WebP is supported in every major browser including Safari 14+ and now reaches roughly 97% of users. The remaining 3% who can't see WebP either are using extremely old hardware or have JavaScript disabled — a JPG fallback is still wise for either format.
Encode speed and tooling
AVIF is significantly slower to encode than WebP — typically 5–20× slower depending on the encoder and quality preset. For static site builds this is a one-time cost; for on-the-fly transformation in an image CDN it can matter. WebP encodes are fast enough to run synchronously in serverless functions; AVIF often requires a worker queue or precomputed cache. Both formats have first-class tooling in modern image pipelines (Sharp, libvips, ImageMagick, the Squoosh CLI).
Which format wins for screenshots, logos, and graphics?
AVIF and WebP both support lossless modes. For sharp graphics with text — UI screenshots, logos, technical diagrams — WebP lossless typically beats AVIF lossless slightly on file size and is much faster to encode. For photos, AVIF lossy wins decisively. For animations, WebP and AVIF both work but WebP has the longer track record.
How to convert your existing JPG/PNG library
Converter.Plus runs both encoders entirely in your browser. Drop a folder of JPGs into our JPG to AVIF or JPG to WebP tool and you'll get back a ZIP of optimised images. There's no upload, no account, and no per-file limit beyond your device's RAM. For the truly serious — full website migrations — pair Converter.Plus with a Sharp- or libvips-based pipeline at build time so every image generates both AVIF and WebP variants.
Frequently asked questions
Is AVIF supported in Safari?
Yes, since Safari 16 (released September 2022). All current macOS, iOS, and iPadOS versions support AVIF natively.
Does AVIF look better than WebP?
At matched file size, yes — AVIF preserves more detail and has fewer compression artifacts than WebP. At matched quality, AVIF produces smaller files. WebP only wins on lossless graphics and on encode speed.
Should I use both AVIF and WebP on my site?
If you can spare the build time, yes. Use the <picture> element with AVIF first, WebP second, and a JPG fallback. Modern browsers will pick the best format they support automatically.