JPG to WEBP Converter

Converting JPG to WebP

WebP compresses photographs more efficiently than JPG at equivalent visual quality, typically producing files 25-35% smaller. For a site serving many photographs, that is usually the single largest available reduction in page weight, and it requires no change to how the images look.

The efficiency comes from better prediction and entropy coding than JPG's 1992-era design allows. WebP predicts each block from its neighbours before encoding the difference, which leaves less information to store.

Realistic savings

Savings are largest on images with smooth gradients and areas of similar colour, and smallest on very noisy or highly detailed photographs where there is less redundancy to exploit.

You are recompressing already-compressed data

This is worth understanding before converting a whole library. Your JPG has already lost detail permanently. Converting it to WebP compresses the result again, so a second, smaller amount of loss is added on top. At sensible quality settings this is invisible, but two points follow:

• Do not use a low WebP quality on an already low-quality JPG. The artefacts compound and become visible quickly.
• Convert from the original if you have it. Going from a RAW or PNG master straight to WebP gives a better result at the same file size than going through JPG first.

A WebP quality of 80-85 against a good-quality source JPG is the safe default and will not show visible degradation.

Browser support and fallbacks

Every current browser supports WebP, including Safari since version 14 in 2020, covering over 97% of traffic. For the remainder, the picture element serves the original JPG:

Many content management systems and CDNs now do this automatically, generating WebP variants and serving them based on the request's Accept header. If yours does, there is no need to convert manually.

Effect on Core Web Vitals

Largest Contentful Paint is usually determined by the biggest image on the page, so reducing image bytes by a third directly improves it. LCP is a Google ranking signal, which makes this one of the few optimisations that improves both user experience and search visibility at once.

Format is only part of the picture, though. Serving a 3000-pixel-wide image into a 600-pixel container wastes most of the file regardless of encoding, so resize to actual display dimensions first — that usually saves more than the format change does. Adding loading="lazy" to below-the-fold images and setting explicit width and height attributes to prevent layout shift are the other two easy wins.

Metadata is dropped

EXIF data — camera model, settings, timestamps and any GPS coordinates — is generally not carried through the conversion. For web publishing this is a benefit, since it strips location data that you probably did not intend to publish and reduces file size slightly. If you need EXIF preserved for archival or copyright purposes, keep the original JPG as your master.

One consequence worth noting: JPGs sometimes rely on an EXIF orientation flag rather than storing pixels in the display orientation. Conversion applies the rotation and writes the pixels correctly, so images should not come out sideways.

Converted in your browser

Encoding runs locally through the Canvas API's native WebP support. Your photographs are never uploaded, so there is no server queue, no size limit and no copy retained anywhere.

Frequently asked questions