Convert PNG to WEBP

WEBP is the format that finally makes you choose between small files and transparent backgrounds — because it does both. If you are putting images on a website, this is usually the conversion worth making.

Why WEBP

For years the choice was awkward: PNG if you needed a transparent background, JPG if you needed a small file, and no way to have both. WEBP removes that trade-off. It supports full alpha transparency like PNG, and compresses roughly as well as JPG — often better.

In practice, converting a PNG to WEBP typically cuts the file to a quarter or a fifth of its original size with no visible difference. On a page carrying a dozen images, that is the single largest speed improvement most sites can make, and page speed feeds directly into search ranking and how many visitors stay.

How to convert

1. Drop your PNG files onto the converter — a whole folder at a time is fine.
2. Set the output to WEBP.
3. Choose a quality. 90% is near-indistinguishable from the original; 80% is a good setting for images on a website.
4. Download individually or use Download all.

Does transparency survive?

Yes. That is WEBP's main advantage over JPG. A logo, an icon or a cut-out product photo keeps its transparent background through the conversion, which is why WEBP works as a drop-in replacement for PNG on the web where JPG cannot.

Where WEBP works, and where it does not

• Every current web browser: Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Edge and their mobile versions all display WEBP. This has been true for years now.
• Websites and web apps: ideal. This is the format's home ground.
• Desktop software: mixed. Some editors open it happily, others do not recognise it at all.
• Upload forms, print services, e-mail: often rejected. Send JPG when you are handing an image to someone else.
• Anything going to print: use PNG or a TIFF from your original.

The rule of thumb: WEBP for images you serve, JPG for images you send.

A note on quality settings

PNG is lossless, so a PNG-to-WEBP conversion is your first round of lossy compression on that image — which means the quality slider genuinely matters. For photographs, 80–85% is usually the sweet spot on a website. For flat graphics, logos and anything with sharp text, push it to 95–100%: the file stays small anyway because there is little detail to store, and you avoid soft edges around the lettering.

Always convert from your original PNG rather than from an image that has already been through a lossy format. Each lossy round is permanent, and stacking them shows.

Which PNGs shrink dramatically, and which barely move

The savings from WEBP are real but very uneven, and it depends entirely on what's in the image:

• Photographs stored as PNG: enormous savings. This is the case where people see files drop by 70-90%. A PNG has to store every subtly different pixel exactly; WEBP is allowed to approximate, and on photographic content the approximation is invisible. If someone handed you photos as PNG, this conversion is close to free money.
• Screenshots of text, UI and code: modest savings, and a risk. PNG is already efficient at flat colour and crisp edges, so there's less to win — and lossy compression is at its worst exactly where you have thin dark text on a light background. Push the quality down and letter edges get a faint mush around them. For anything with small text, keep the slider at 90 or above, compare the two side by side at 100% zoom, and be willing to keep the PNG.
• Logos and flat graphics with a handful of colours: often a wash. A PNG with few colours is already tiny. Convert if it fits your pipeline, not because you expect a saving.
• Gradients, film grain and noise: good savings, but check banding in large smooth gradients — that's the first artefact to appear.

The habit that matters: convert from the PNG every time, not from a WEBP you made earlier. Lossy re-encoding compounds, and a file that's been through two lossy passes at 80% looks worse than one pass at 65%.

Before you put WEBP live on a site

Browser support is no longer the question — every current browser reads WEBP. The remaining friction is in everything that isn't a browser, and it's worth checking before you replace your images wholesale:

• Email is the weak spot. Mail is read in dozens of clients, some of them years behind, and a WEBP that fails to render is a blank box in your newsletter. If an image matters in an email, send JPG.
• Upload forms and older plugins still reject the extension. Plenty of CMS installs, marketplaces, job portals and print services accept only JPG and PNG by filename. Keep a JPG copy of anything you might need to upload elsewhere.
• Social and messaging previews. Most scrapers handle WEBP now, but an og:image is the last place you want to find an exception — a JPG there costs you nothing.
• Office documents and older desktop software. Inserting a WEBP into a document or opening it in an older image editor is where you'll meet the friction on someone else's machine, not yours.

None of that is an argument against WEBP for your own pages, where it's straightforwardly the better format. It's an argument for keeping the original PNG: it stays your master copy, and you re-export from it whenever something downstream wants a different format.

Common questions

Will old browsers break? In practice, no. Support is universal across browsers still receiving updates. If you must cover very old software, keep a JPG fallback.

Can I convert back? Yes — the same converter does WEBP to JPG and WEBP to PNG. Detail lost in the WEBP encode does not come back, though, so keep your originals.

Is there a limit? No cap, no watermark, no account.

Questions

The other conversions

• HEIC and HEIF to JPG, PNG or WEBP — for iPhone photos
• PNG to JPG — the size-saving one
• WEBP to JPG — for files downloaded from websites
• JPG to PNG — when a tool insists on PNG
• PNG to WEBP — for images on your own site