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What Is WebP Format?

WebP is an image format developed by Google and released in 2010 as part of an effort to reduce the bandwidth cost of delivering images on the web.

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WebP supports both lossy and lossless compression in one format

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VP8L codec for lossless, VP8 codec for lossy encoding

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Files 25 to 35% smaller than equivalent PNG or JPEG

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Convert to PNG instantly for full software compatibility

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WebP Format: VP8 Codecs, Browser Support, and When PNG Is Still Needed

WebP was introduced by Google in 2010, derived from the VP8 video codec that Google acquired through its 2010 purchase of On2 Technologies. The format has two main encoding modes that share a common container but use different compression techniques. Lossy WebP uses the VP8 codec, which applies block-based discrete cosine transform compression similar to JPEG but more efficiently, achieving the same perceptual quality at roughly 25 to 34 percent smaller file sizes. Lossless WebP uses the VP8L codec, which applies predictive coding, entropy coding via a modified LZ77 algorithm, and colour transforms to achieve file sizes approximately 26 percent smaller than equivalent PNG files. Both modes also support an alpha channel for transparency, which JPEG lacks entirely, plus optional animation similar to animated GIF but with far better compression efficiency.

Browser support for WebP reached near-universal status in late 2020 when Safari 14 on iOS and macOS added decoder support, completing the set of major browsers. Chrome has supported WebP since 2012, Opera since 2014, Firefox since version 65 in early 2019, and Edge since it switched to the Chromium engine in 2020. For web delivery, WebP is the recommended format because smaller images improve page load times, reduce bandwidth costs for site owners, and contribute to better Core Web Vitals scores including Largest Contentful Paint. Google's own image serving infrastructure, including Google Images, Google Photos, YouTube thumbnails, and Google Search result carousels, serves WebP to compatible browsers by default whenever the HTTP Accept header signals WebP capability.

Despite strong browser support, WebP remains problematic outside the browser environment. Design tools like Adobe Photoshop added native WebP read and write support only in version 23.2 released in February 2022, meaning users on Photoshop 2021 or earlier must install the WebPShop plugin from Google or convert files externally. Email clients including Apple Mail on older iOS versions, Outlook 2019, and many webmail services do not render WebP inline, displaying broken image icons or attachment links instead. Social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn convert WebP uploads to JPEG automatically, sometimes degrading quality in the process. Many content management systems built before 2020, including older WordPress installations without media-type plugins, Squarespace legacy templates, and self-hosted Drupal sites, reject WebP files in their media library uploaders.

For any workflow that moves images from the web into design tools, email attachments, print pipelines, or legacy software, converting WebP to PNG provides the broadest compatibility with no quality tradeoff for graphics, logos, and illustrations because PNG is also lossless. The technical conversion is straightforward: a WebP decoder reads the file into a raw pixel buffer, and a PNG encoder writes that buffer to disk using zlib compression and a defined chunk structure. FixTools performs this conversion entirely in the browser using the HTML5 Canvas API, so no file ever leaves your device, and the resulting PNG preserves every pixel from the WebP source along with full alpha transparency. PNG is supported by every operating system since Windows 95 service pack additions, every version of macOS, every version of Linux, and every piece of image-handling software made in the last two decades.

WebP format specification (Google Developers)WebP browser support data (Can I Use)

How to use this tool

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If you have a WebP file that needs to open in desktop software, a CMS, or an email client, convert it to PNG here. PNG is accepted everywhere and preserves full quality including transparency.

How It Works

Step-by-step guide to what is webp format?:

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Identify your WebP file
WebP files typically use the .webp extension, but some are mislabelled as .jpg or .png because the source URL kept the original extension while the server delivered WebP bytes. FixTools detects the real format from the file content using its file signature rather than relying on the filename, so any saved file containing WebP data is handled correctly without renaming or extension fixing.
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Open the Image Format Converter
Click the button below to open the FixTools Image Format Converter in your browser. The tool loads in a couple of seconds, requires no installation, no account, no email, and no plugin. It runs in any modern browser including Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and Edge on desktop, tablet, or mobile devices.
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Upload your WebP file
Drag your WebP file onto the upload area or click the area to open a file browser and select it from your Downloads or Pictures folder. You can also upload multiple WebP files at once for batch conversion. There is no maximum file size limit beyond what your browser memory can accommodate, which is typically several gigabytes on a modern device.
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Select PNG as output
Choose PNG from the output format selector dropdown. PNG is a lossless format, so the conversion preserves every pixel from the WebP source with no quality degradation. PNG also supports transparency, so any alpha channel in the original WebP is carried through to the output file without flattening or background fill.
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Convert and download
Click the Convert button to start the conversion. The browser decodes the WebP and re-encodes it as PNG using its native Canvas API. For a single file this takes well under a second on a modern machine. Click Download to save the lossless PNG to your device. The file opens cleanly in any application that accepts standard image formats.

Real-world examples

Common situations where this approach makes a real difference:

Designer opening a client-supplied WebP asset

A client emails a product image as a WebP file for use in marketing materials, but the designer is still running Photoshop 2021 which lacks native WebP support and refuses to open the file with an unrecognised format error. Installing the WebPShop plugin would require restarting Photoshop and updating workflows across the studio. Converting the file to PNG in FixTools takes under ten seconds, produces a lossless file that opens immediately, and lets the designer continue without changing any software or asking the client to resend.

Blogger embedding an image in a legacy CMS

A blogger maintaining a five-year-old WordPress site or an older Squarespace template tries to upload a WebP image to the media library and receives an upload rejection saying the file type is not allowed. Updating the CMS or installing a media-type plugin risks breaking the theme. Converting the WebP to PNG first sidesteps the rejection entirely. The PNG is accepted by every CMS media uploader from the last twenty years regardless of version, theme, or plugin configuration, and the blog post can be published on schedule.

Developer auditing production site assets

A developer scraping a client's live website during a redesign audit finds that every image is served as WebP because the site uses a Cloudflare image optimisation pipeline. To use these images as reference layers in Figma mockups or as content for redesign presentations, the developer batch uploads the downloaded WebP files to FixTools and converts the entire set to PNG in one operation. The resulting PNG folder integrates cleanly into Figma, Sketch, and any other design tool without watermarks, quality loss, or per-file conversion overhead.

User sharing an image via email

An email recipient reports that an attached image does not display inline in their email client and instead appears as a broken icon or a generic attachment. The sender investigates and finds the original was a WebP file saved from a website. Outlook 2019, Apple Mail on older iOS, and several webmail services do not render WebP inline. Converting the file to PNG using FixTools before re-sending ensures the image displays correctly in Apple Mail, Outlook, Gmail, Yahoo Mail, and every other email client without any recipient-side configuration changes.

Pro tips

Get better results with these expert suggestions:

Check the VP8 or VP8L header to identify WebP compression type

Open a WebP file in a hex editor or use a command-line tool such as xxd, and look at bytes 12 through 15 of the file header. The four-byte string "VP8L" identifies a lossless WebP, while "VP8 " with a trailing space identifies a lossy WebP, and "VP8X" identifies an extended file with alpha or animation. This tells you whether the PNG conversion will be truly lossless or a lossless snapshot of a lossy source, which matters for professional colour-accurate work and archival decisions.

WebP is not suitable for email attachments

Most enterprise email clients, including Outlook 2019 and earlier, Apple Mail on iOS versions before iOS 14, Lotus Notes, and many corporate webmail systems, do not render WebP images inline. Recipients see a broken icon or an attachment link instead of the image you intended to share. Always convert WebP to PNG or JPEG before attaching images to emails, especially for business communication where recipient client diversity is unpredictable. PNG is best for graphics, logos, and screenshots, while JPEG is the better choice for photographs.

Lossless WebP is common for UI and logo assets on production sites

Web developers often use lossless WebP for logos, icons, and interface elements where exact colour fidelity is required because lossless WebP is smaller than PNG while preserving every pixel. These files convert back to PNG with zero data loss because both formats are lossless. If you download a logo or icon from a production website as WebP, it is almost certainly lossless and the PNG conversion will reproduce the original exactly. For photographic content, the source is more likely lossy WebP and the PNG is a lossless snapshot of an already lossy source.

Google Images serves WebP by default to Chrome users

When you right-click and save an image from Google Image Search in Chrome, the downloaded file is almost always WebP regardless of the source format on the original website. The file may appear to have a .jpg or .png name in the URL because Google preserves the source URL extension, but the actual saved bytes are WebP. FixTools detects this correctly by reading the file signature and converts the actual file format, ignoring the misleading filename extension. No manual renaming or extension fixing is required before uploading the file for conversion.

FAQ

Frequently asked questions

WebP is a modern raster image format developed by Google and first released in 2010 as part of an effort to reduce the size of images served on the web. It uses VP8 codec technology, originally designed for video compression, to compress still images more efficiently than JPEG or PNG. WebP supports both lossy and lossless compression in the same container format, as well as transparency through an alpha channel and optional animation similar to animated GIF. It is widely used on websites because smaller file sizes reduce bandwidth costs and improve page load speed. Most modern browsers support WebP natively, but many older desktop applications, email clients, and content management systems do not handle the format and produce errors when WebP files are loaded.

WebP was created by Google. It originated from the VP8 video codec that Google acquired when it bought On2 Technologies in early 2010 in a deal worth approximately 124 million US dollars. Google open-sourced both the VP8 codec and the WebP format, releasing a reference encoder and decoder library called libwebp under a BSD-style licence that is freely available for any project to integrate. The format is defined in a publicly available specification and has been adopted by all major browser vendors including Mozilla, Microsoft, and Apple, as well as imaging libraries such as ImageMagick, GIMP, and Pillow. Google continues to maintain the format and publish performance improvements through ongoing libwebp releases.

PNG is a lossless format introduced in 1996 that stores every pixel exactly using zlib compression and is universally supported by every operating system and image-handling application made in the last two decades. WebP supports both lossless and lossy modes and produces files that are typically 25 to 35 percent smaller than equivalent PNG or JPEG at comparable visual quality, but the format is not compatible with many desktop applications, email clients, social media platforms, and content management systems built before 2020. For web delivery to modern browsers, WebP is more efficient because it reduces bandwidth. For editing in design software, archiving for long-term storage, sharing across all software environments, and printing, PNG remains the more compatible choice.

WebP files are typically 25 to 35 percent smaller than JPEG or PNG at equivalent visual quality, sometimes more for images that compress particularly well. Smaller images load faster, improving page speed scores including Largest Contentful Paint and First Contentful Paint, which are direct ranking signals in Google Search. Google ranks faster websites higher in search results, creating a strong commercial incentive for web developers to adopt WebP. Serving WebP is straightforward using modern CDNs and image optimisation pipelines such as Cloudflare Images, Imgix, and Akamai Image Manager, which convert and cache format variants automatically based on the requesting browser's HTTP Accept header without requiring manual conversion of source assets.

For web delivery to browsers, WebP is generally better than PNG because it produces smaller files at equivalent visual quality, reducing bandwidth and improving page load performance. For offline use, editing in design software, printing, email attachments, archiving, and sharing to applications that predate 2020 or are built for environments outside the web, PNG is more compatible and a safer choice for ensuring the file opens correctly everywhere it is sent. There is no universal answer to which format is better. The better format depends on whether bandwidth efficiency or universal compatibility is the priority for your specific use case, and many professional workflows keep PNG masters and generate WebP variants only for web delivery.

Yes. WebP supports a full alpha channel for transparency in both lossy and lossless encoding modes. This is one of WebP's major advantages over JPEG, which has no transparency support at all and requires a solid background colour or matting against a known colour during export. WebP transparency is fully preserved when converting to PNG using FixTools, since PNG also supports alpha transparency as part of its standard specification. The conversion carries the alpha channel through without flattening or compositing, so transparent backgrounds, semi-transparent edges, and complex alpha masks remain intact in the output PNG with the same per-pixel alpha values as the source WebP.

Many applications built before 2020 do not include a WebP decoder because the format was not widely deployed enough at the time to justify integration. This affected category includes older versions of Adobe Photoshop, Microsoft Office prior to certain updates in 2021, legacy CMS media libraries on older WordPress and Drupal installations, several email clients including Outlook 2019, and most print-oriented software which prioritises CMYK formats over web formats. The practical solution is to convert the WebP to PNG using FixTools, which produces a file that opens in every application made in the last twenty years without requiring software updates, plugin installations, or workflow changes.

Upload your WebP file to the FixTools Image Format Converter, select PNG as the output format from the format selector dropdown, and click the Convert button. The conversion happens entirely in your browser using the HTML5 Canvas API, with no upload to a server at any point in the process. Your PNG downloads directly to your device immediately after conversion completes, typically within a second for a single file. The resulting PNG can be opened in any application that handles standard image formats, supports the same alpha transparency as the source WebP, and contains no watermark, branding, or quality degradation introduced by the conversion process.

Yes. WebP supports animation as an extension to the standard format, providing a more efficient alternative to animated GIF. Animated WebP files are typically 64 percent smaller than equivalent animated GIFs while supporting full 24-bit colour and alpha transparency, compared to GIF's palette of 256 colours and binary transparency. The animation is encoded as a sequence of frames within the WebP container, each with timing information. When converting an animated WebP to PNG, only the first frame is extracted by default because PNG does not support standard animation. To preserve animation when converting from WebP, an animated GIF or APNG output is needed instead of a single PNG frame.

Yes. WebP is an open format released under a BSD-style licence by Google. The format specification is publicly documented, the reference libwebp encoder and decoder library is open source, and there are no royalties or patent licensing fees for using WebP in commercial or personal projects. This open status is one reason WebP was adopted by competing browser vendors including Mozilla, Microsoft, and Apple, none of whom would have integrated a proprietary format with restrictive licensing into their browsers. You can freely create, distribute, and convert WebP files for any purpose, although the copyright of the image content itself depends on the original image source and its individual licensing terms.