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Best Image Format: JPG vs PNG vs HEIC vs AVIF vs WEBP
Five formats, five different tradeoffs between file size, quality, transparency and compatibility. This page compares them honestly so you pick the right one for the job instead of whatever your camera or app happened to default to.
On this page
Quick picks by use case
Sending a photo to anyone
Use JPG. It's the one format every device, app and website from the last 25 years opens without a second thought.
Screenshots, logos, sharp text
Use PNG. Lossless and universally supported — exactly what graphics with hard edges need.
Smallest file size for a website
Use AVIF where you can, falling back to WEBP — both are natively supported by every current browser and beat JPG/PNG significantly.
iPhone photo library
HEIC is Apple's default and works great within Apple's own ecosystem — just expect friction sharing it to non-Apple devices without conversion.
A short animated image, GIF-style
Use animated WEBP — far smaller than GIF, with full transparency and no 256-color limit.
Editing a photo repeatedly without quality loss
Keep a lossless master (PNG, or lossless WEBP/AVIF) and only export to JPG as the final step — JPG's lossy compression compounds with every re-save.
Full comparison table
| JPG | PNG | HEIC | AVIF | WEBP | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Compression | Lossy only | Lossless only | Lossy (usually) | Lossy or lossless | Lossy or lossless |
| Relative file size | Baseline | Largest (lossless) | ~30-50% smaller than JPG | Smallest overall, typically | Smaller than JPG, close to AVIF |
| Transparency (alpha) | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Animation | No | No | No (HEIF sequences exist but rarely used this way) | Yes (AVIS) | Yes, widely used |
| Native browser support | Universal | Universal | Poor outside Apple/Safari | Excellent (all current browsers) | Excellent (all current browsers) |
| Codec inside | JPEG (DCT-based) | DEFLATE (lossless) | HEVC (licensed) | AV1 (royalty-free) | VP8 (royalty-free) |
| Open & inspect it here | JPG tool | PNG tool | HEIC tool | AVIF tool | WEBP tool |
Lossy vs lossless, in plain terms
Lossy compression (JPG, and the default mode for HEIC/AVIF/WEBP) discards some image detail — usually detail the human eye barely notices at normal viewing sizes — in exchange for a much smaller file. The tradeoff compounds: repeatedly opening, editing and re-saving a lossy file degrades it a little more each time.
Lossless compression (PNG always; AVIF and WEBP optionally) shrinks the file without discarding anything — decompress it and you get back the exact original pixels, bit for bit. It's the right choice for screenshots, graphics with sharp edges or text, and any master copy you plan to edit more than once.
Why AVIF and WEBP exist at all
JPG's underlying codec dates to 1992 and PNG's to 1996 — both predate video-codec-era compression techniques by decades. WEBP (Google, 2010) and AVIF (Alliance for Open Media, 2019) both solve the same problem the same way: repurpose a modern, efficient video codec's intra-frame compression to store a single still image, inside a lightweight container. WEBP wraps Google's royalty-free VP8 codec; AVIF wraps the newer, generally more efficient royalty-free AV1 codec that the same alliance (including Google, Mozilla, Netflix, Apple and Amazon) developed afterward. Both replace JPG and PNG's aging compression with something meaningfully more efficient, and — critically for adoption — both decode natively in every current major browser with no plugin required.
The real compatibility picture
Codec efficiency is only half the story — the other half is whether the thing opening the file can actually decode it. HEIC is the clearest cautionary example: despite being efficient and Apple's default since iOS 11, its HEVC codec is patent-licensed, so most non-Apple browsers and many tools don't support it natively at all — which is exactly why HEIC-to-JPG conversion tools are so commonly searched for. AVIF and WEBP avoided that trap by building on royalty-free codecs, which is a big part of why browser vendors adopted native support for both so quickly and completely.
Inspect each format
Every format on this page has its own dedicated tool on this site that reads the file's real structure directly in your browser — nothing uploaded:
View the photo and check whether it's leaking GPS location in its EXIF data.
Preview it, check hidden metadata, and verify every chunk's checksum.
Preview it, read real metadata, and convert it to JPG.
Preview it and see a genuine, freshly computed size comparison against JPG.
Preview it (animation included), and see its real encoding and alpha channel.
Frequently asked questions
Is WEBP or AVIF better?
AVIF usually compresses somewhat smaller than WEBP at equivalent visual quality, thanks to its more modern AV1 codec. WEBP's advantage is maturity: broader tooling and editor support, and it's been the default export in more places for longer. For most everyday use both are excellent choices over JPG or PNG — the difference between them is smaller than the gap either has over older formats.
Why does my photo look different after converting to JPG?
JPG is always lossy — every time it's re-encoded, it discards some image detail to shrink the file, and that loss compounds if a file is repeatedly opened, edited and re-saved as JPG. If you need pixel-perfect quality preserved through edits, keep a lossless master copy (PNG, or WEBP/AVIF in lossless mode) and only export to JPG as a final, one-time step.
Should I still use PNG in 2026?
For specific cases, yes: PNG remains the safest universal choice for screenshots, logos, and graphics with sharp edges or text, where every image-handling tool anywhere is guaranteed to support it perfectly. For photos, WEBP or AVIF's lossless modes usually achieve the same pixel-perfect quality at a meaningfully smaller file size.
Is HEIC the same as AVIF?
No, though they're built the same way: both wrap a single frame from a video codec inside an ISO-BMFF/HEIF container. HEIC uses Apple's licensed HEVC codec, which many non-Apple browsers and tools don't support natively. AVIF uses the royalty-free AV1 codec, which every current major browser decodes without any extra software — a key practical difference.
Last updated September 23, 2026.