Quick answer
WebP images are 25–35% smaller than JPEG at the same visual quality. Every major browser has supported WebP since 2020. If your images live on a website, converting them to WebP is worth it. Two situations where you should keep the JPEG: Open Graph images used in social sharing previews (WhatsApp, iMessage, some email clients still don't handle WebP), and files going to print or older desktop software. For everything that lives on a web page, WebP is the better format. The ImageTools Image Converter handles the conversion free, in under 2 seconds.
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If you've opened Google PageSpeed Insights and seen the suggestion “Serve images in next-gen formats,” that's a WebP recommendation. If you've wondered whether it's actually worth converting your existing images, or if WebP is one of those things that sounds good in theory and causes problems in practice — this post covers both questions honestly.
The short version: WebP is worth converting to for web images. The longer version is about the cases where it isn't, which nobody else seems to want to mention.
What is WebP, and why does it exist?
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Google created WebP in 2010 with one goal: smaller files at the same visual quality so web pages load faster. The format supports lossy compression (like JPEG), lossless compression (like PNG), transparency (like PNG), and animation (like GIF). One format, covering what previously required two or three.
There was one problem: Internet Explorer. WebP wasn't supported in IE, and IE commanded enough market share that serving WebP without JPEG fallbacks meant broken images for a significant chunk of visitors. This kept WebP in “interesting but not yet practical” territory for years.
That problem is solved. WebP support was IE's hill to die on. IE is gone now. WebP won. Chrome, Safari, Firefox, and Edge all support WebP — you can verify current browser support on caniuse.com. You no longer need JPEG fallbacks for images on web pages.
WebP vs JPEG vs PNG — what the size difference actually looks like
The compression advantage is real and measurable. At the same visual quality:
25–35%
smaller than JPEG
(lossy comparison)
~26%
smaller than PNG
(lossless comparison)
~45%
smaller than PNG
(with transparency)
In practical terms: a typical e-commerce product photo at 2MB as a JPEG becomes around 1.3–1.5MB as WebP at the same quality. Across a catalog of 200 products, that's 100–140MB of bandwidth saved. Not per session — per page load of the full catalog.
The quality is not lower. The algorithm is simply more efficient at discarding information the human eye doesn't register at normal viewing sizes. A WebP at equivalent settings looks visually identical to a JPEG in side-by-side comparison on any current monitor.
The 25–35% figure is from Google's own WebP benchmarks. Real-world results vary by image content — photos with fine detail compress particularly well; flat graphics compress more modestly.
Why converting to WebP helps your website's performance
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Smaller images load faster. For mobile users on slower connections, the difference between a 2MB JPEG gallery and its WebP equivalent is measurable in seconds. On desktop it's less dramatic — but it's still there, and it adds up.
The more concrete reason: Core Web Vitals. Google's ranking signals now include Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), which measures how fast the main content becomes visible. Images are frequently the LCP element — the hero image, the first product photo, the featured article image. Serving that image as WebP instead of JPEG directly reduces LCP time.
Google PageSpeed Insights flags this explicitly under “Serve images in next-gen formats.” It's not a vague suggestion — it's pointing at specific images on your page and telling you they'd be smaller as WebP.
WebP is objectively better than JPEG for web use and everyone should be using it by now. Internet Explorer held it back for a decade. IE is gone. The excuse is gone with it. If your website is still serving 4MB JPEGs, this is a gentle nudge.
A small online seller had 200 product photos at 4–6MB each. Their Shopify store was loading slowly. They converted the images to WebP and compressed them. Average file went from 5MB to 680KB. Their PageSpeed score improved by around 20 points. They didn't need a developer or a plugin — just a lunch break and a decent image converter. The Image Compressor can handle the compression step after you've converted to WebP.
When NOT to convert to WebP — the part nobody mentions
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A developer switched their website to serve all images as WebP. Traffic and conversions looked normal. Then they noticed that link previews — the image that appears when you share a URL on WhatsApp, iMessage, LinkedIn, and some email clients — were broken. The preview showed a grey box instead of the image.
Those platforms read the Open Graph image (og:image) from the page metadata. Many of them fetch the image through their own servers, which don't support WebP. The developer converted the OG images back to JPEG, kept WebP for on-page display, and everything worked. The rule that came out of it: WebP for web pages, JPEG for anything shared outside a browser.
Specific situations where you should keep JPEG or PNG:
- →Open Graph images (og:image). WhatsApp, iMessage, LinkedIn, Discord, and many email clients render the preview image using their own fetchers. Test yours — but if in doubt, use JPEG for the OG image even if the on-page version is WebP.
- →HTML email. Most email clients (Outlook on Windows, Apple Mail, Gmail app on some devices) do not support WebP. Inline images in HTML emails should be JPEG or PNG.
- →Files sent to print or professional production. WebP is a screen format. Print shops, pre-press workflows, and professional photo editors work with TIFF or high-quality JPEG. Send them what they can open.
- →Sharing files with people using older software. Not all image viewers support WebP. Windows Photo Viewer on older Windows versions, some versions of Preview on older macOS — if the recipient might struggle to open it, send JPEG.
You can use the Image Converter to convert WebP back to JPEG whenever you need to — same tool, same process, takes under 2 seconds.
How to convert JPG to WebP — step by step
The process takes under a minute for a single file. Batch conversion takes a few minutes more.
Open the Image Converter
Go to imagetools.app/tools/convert. No account needed. Free for images up to 10MB per file.
Upload your JPEG or PNG
Drag and drop the file onto the upload area, or click to browse. Multiple files for batch conversion — download as a ZIP when done.
Select WebP as the output format
Choose WebP from the format selector. The default quality setting works for most web images. Adjust if you need lossless output (select “lossless” for pixel-identical results).
Click Convert
Processing takes under 2 seconds for most images. The tool uses Sharp under the hood — the same C++ library that powers image processing at scale across the industry.
Download and deploy
Download the WebP file. Replace the original on your server or CMS. If you're on WordPress, most caching plugins and CDNs can serve WebP automatically once the files are in place.
For websites: use the HTML <picture>element to serve WebP with a JPEG fallback for platforms that don't support it. Two extra lines of HTML cover all your bases. The browser picks the best format it supports automatically.
Is WebP the best image format — or is something better coming?
WebP is the practical answer for 2025 and 2026. It's well-supported, broadly compatible, and delivers a meaningful size reduction over JPEG without any visible quality trade-off at equivalent settings.
The more technically capable format is AVIF. AVIF is WebP if WebP went to grad school — better compression than WebP at the same visual quality, better handling of fine gradients and colour banding. Browser support is strong and improving. But not all image processing pipelines, CDNs, or CMS plugins handle AVIF reliably yet, and some platforms still don't serve it correctly.
The honest answer: use WebP now. Keep an eye on AVIF. Don't build a production workflow around AVIF unless you're doing image-heavy work and are comfortable managing the edge cases.
Does converting JPEG to WebP reduce quality? No — not if you match the quality level appropriately. WebP supports lossless encoding: a losslessly compressed WebP is pixel-identical to the PNG source. For lossy conversion at the same perceptual quality setting, the WebP output is visually indistinguishable from the JPEG original. The file is smaller. The image is not lower quality.
One thing to keep in mind: converting a JPEG to WebP and back to JPEG will compound the lossy compression and introduce visible degradation. If you need to go back to JPEG later, it's better to start from the original JPEG rather than converting from the WebP. Keep your originals.
Frequently asked questions
Is WebP better than JPEG?+
Do all browsers support WebP?+
Should I convert all my images to WebP?+
Can I convert WebP back to JPEG?+
Does converting JPEG to WebP reduce quality?+
Convert your images to WebP — free, no account needed
Batch conversion supported. Files deleted within 1 hour. Under 2 seconds per image.
Try Image Converter freeThe format is better. The browser support is there. The only remaining reason not to use WebP on your web pages is that you haven't converted yet. Upload the files, download the WebP versions, replace them on your server. That's the whole thing.