Convert GIF to WebP

Why leave GIF behind

GIF was born in 1987, when screens showed 256 colors and connections were measured in baud. It still works everywhere, but it carries serious limitations:

• A palette of 256 colors at most. Photos and gradients show banding and dots (dithering).
• 1-bit transparency. A pixel is either fully transparent or fully opaque; anti-aliased edges on colored backgrounds end up with a halo.
• LZW compression, the same idea as an 80s ZIP file. Far behind what current formats achieve.

WebP fixes all three: millions of colors, transparency with 256 levels (a full alpha channel) and much more efficient compression, both lossy and lossless. It has worked in every modern browser since 2020.

How to convert GIF to WebP

1. Drag your .gif files onto the drop zone or paste them from the clipboard.
2. WebP is already selected. For graphics with flat colors (logos, icons, screenshots), turn on Lossless in the quality settings: you'll get identical pixels and a much smaller file than the GIF. For photos, leave the quality at 75-80.
3. Click Convert, compare the result with the original and download.

Important: animated GIFs

ImageZap converts still images. If you upload an animated GIF, only the first frame will be converted. It's a deliberate limitation: the tool is designed to optimize website images, and the encoders it uses work one frame at a time.

If your goal is an animated GIF, consider these alternatives, which are usually even better than an animated WebP:

• MP4 or WebM video with <video autoplay muted loop playsinline>. A 5 MB GIF often ends up at 300-500 KB as video, with better quality. It's what Twitter/X, Giphy and Imgur do under the hood when you see a "GIF".
• Animated WebP or AVIF, which you can produce with command-line tools such as gif2webp or ffmpeg.

How much you save

It depends on the content, but as a rough guide:

With photos, besides being lighter, the image will look better: WebP isn't limited to 256 colors, so the banding and dithering go away. That said, converting can't restore colors the GIF already lost when it was created.

Transparency

If your GIF has a transparent background, WebP keeps it. And because WebP supports partial transparency, if you later re-export the graphic from the source (for example from Figma or Illustrator) straight to WebP or PNG, the edges will be smooth on any background, without the classic GIF white halo.

How to use the WebP on your site

Every current browser displays WebP, so you can simply swap the file in your <img> tag. If you need to support very old browsers, use <picture> with the GIF or a PNG as a fallback:

<picture>
  <source srcset="logo.webp" type="image/webp">
  <img src="logo.gif" alt="Logo" width="200" height="80">
</picture>

There's more detail in the guide on the picture element and fallback formats.

Frequently asked questions

Is the animation preserved when converting GIF to WebP?

No. The first frame is converted. For animations we recommend converting to MP4/WebM video, which is far lighter than any animated GIF or WebP.

Is lossless WebP really identical to the GIF?

Yes. With Lossless turned on, every pixel of the WebP is exactly the same as in the original GIF. Only the way it's compressed changes.

What if I prefer PNG?

PNG is also lossless and supports full transparency, but it's usually larger than lossless WebP. You can select both formats at once and keep the lighter one.

Are my images uploaded to a server?

No. The whole process happens in your browser.