JPEG XL vs WebP vs AVIF: Next-Gen Image Formats Compared

Three formats walked into a bar to replace JPEG. One of them got kicked out by Google. Another one showed up a decade early and waited patiently. The third one brought HDR and a film grain synthesizer, but forgot to bring fast encoding.

That’s roughly the story of WebP, JPEG XL, and AVIF — the three formats vying to dethrone the 30-year-old JPEG standard that still powers most of the web. If you’ve been putting off learning about these because the landscape keeps shifting, I don’t blame you. But we’re deep enough into 2026 now that the dust has mostly settled, and the winners and losers are becoming clear.

Here’s where things actually stand, what I’d recommend for different use cases, and why I’m still a little bitter about one particular format.

The Short Version (For Those In a Hurry)

If you just need a quick answer: use WebP as your default, AVIF when you need maximum compression and can tolerate slower encoding, and JPEG XL only if you’re working in photography or archival workflows outside the browser.

That’s the pragmatic take. The technically correct take is more nuanced and a lot more frustrating, which is why you should keep reading.

The Format Lineup at a Glance

Before we get into opinions, let’s lay out the facts. Here’s how these three stack up across the features that actually matter for web work:

Feature	WebP	AVIF	JPEG XL
Year introduced	2010	2019	2022 (standardized)
Developed by	Google	Alliance for Open Media	JPEG Committee
Compression vs JPEG	20-30% smaller	40-50% smaller	30-60% smaller
Lossy + Lossless	Yes	Yes	Yes
Transparency	Yes	Yes	Yes
Animation	Yes	Yes (limited)	Yes
HDR / Wide Gamut	No	Yes (10/12-bit)	Yes (up to 32-bit)
Progressive decode	No	Limited	Yes (excellent)
Encoding speed	Fast	Slow	Medium
Lossless JPEG transcode	No	No	Yes (unique feature)
Chrome/Edge	Full support	Full support	Removed in 2023
Firefox	Full support	Full support	Behind a flag only
Safari	Full support	Since Safari 16	Since Safari 17

That last row is where the whole story falls apart for JPEG XL, but we’ll get to that.

WebP: The Safe Bet That Actually Won

Google released WebP back in 2010, and for about a decade it was the format everyone acknowledged was better than JPEG but nobody used because Safari didn’t support it. Then Safari finally added support, and seemingly overnight WebP went from “promising” to “just use it.” Now, in 2026, we’re looking at 97%+ global support.

The compression gains aren’t the most impressive of the three — typically 20-30% smaller than JPEG at equivalent visual quality — but they’re consistent and predictable. You’re not going to hit weird edge cases where WebP suddenly produces larger files than the input. It just works, and it works fast. Encoding a WebP is nearly as quick as encoding a JPEG, which matters a lot when you’re processing thousands of images in a pipeline.

WebP also handles animation better than AVIF does in practice. If you’re looking to replace GIFs (and you should be), animated WebP is the mature, well-supported option. I’ve seen animated GIFs shrink by 80% or more after converting to WebP.

The downsides? No HDR (8-bit per channel max), a smearing effect on fine textures at very low bitrates, and no progressive decoding. But for the vast majority of web images, WebP is the Honda Civic of image formats — not the most exciting, but reliable, efficient, and universally available. Check out our WebP conversion guide or use our JPG to WebP converter to get started.

AVIF: The Compression King With a Catch

AVIF is what happens when video codec engineers decide to make an image format. Built on the AV1 video codec and backed by the Alliance for Open Media (Google, Apple, Mozilla, Netflix, Amazon — basically everyone), AVIF brings genuinely impressive compression to the table.

I’ve covered AVIF in depth before, so I’ll keep this focused. The headline: AVIF routinely produces files 40-50% smaller than JPEG at equivalent perceptual quality. For photographic content, I’ve seen savings closer to 60% on high-resolution product shots. That’s not incremental. That’s “your page loads in half the time” territory.

Where AVIF really shines is at low bitrates. Push the compression hard and AVIF holds onto sharp edges and natural-looking textures far longer than WebP or JPEG. It also brings features WebP can’t match: HDR with up to 12-bit color depth, wide color gamut, and film grain synthesis (the encoder strips grain during compression and re-adds it during decode, saving tons of bits on grainy photos).

The catch? Encoding speed. AVIF is 2x to 10x slower than WebP depending on your settings. On a typical server, encoding a single high-resolution AVIF can take several seconds. Multiply that across a real-time image pipeline and you’ll feel the pain fast. There are faster encoder presets, but cranking up the speed trades away the compression advantage.

Browser support is solid though — Chrome since 2020, Firefox since 2021, Safari since late 2023. About 92% global coverage, enough for a progressive enhancement strategy. One quirk: some implementations cap AVIF at 8192x8192 pixels, which can matter for panoramas.

For a head-to-head, see our AVIF vs WebP comparison.

The Format That Won the Spec War But Lost the Browser War

Now for the one I get emotional about. JPEG XL.

On paper, JPEG XL is the best image format ever designed. I don’t say that lightly. The JPEG committee spent years studying every existing format’s weaknesses and built something that addresses all of them. Compression competitive with AVIF (and better for lossless). Progressive decoding that shows a preview almost instantly. Support for everything from 8-bit web images to 32-bit HDR floats. Faster encoding than AVIF. And the killer feature: lossless JPEG transcoding.

That last one deserves a moment. If you have a library of existing JPEGs — and who doesn’t — JPEG XL can convert them to JXL and back without any quality loss. Not “minimal loss.” Zero. A mathematically lossless round-trip, with the JXL version typically 20% smaller. You can shrink your entire JPEG archive and reconstruct the exact originals whenever you want. No other format can do this.

So why isn’t everyone using it? Because in October 2023, Google removed JPEG XL support from Chrome.

JPEG XL had been behind an experimental flag — users had to manually enable it. Instead of moving it toward full support, Google killed it. The stated reasons: low adoption (hard to adopt something behind a hidden flag) and existing support for WebP and AVIF. The community reaction was furious. A Chromium bug tracker petition gathered thousands of comments, becoming one of the most-engaged issues in Chromium history.

As of early 2026, nothing has changed. Chrome and Edge still have no support. Firefox has it behind a flag. Only Safari ships it by default (since Safari 17). The JPEG committee designed the best format. Apple shipped it. Google said “no thanks, we have WebP and AVIF at home.” When 65% of the world’s browsers won’t render your format, the spec doesn’t matter.

JPEG XL isn’t dead everywhere though. It’s gaining traction in photography, digital asset management, and archival workflows. Adobe supports it in Creative Cloud. libvips and ImageMagick support it. For non-browser work, it’s genuinely worth adopting. For websites? You can’t bet on a format Chrome refuses to support.

Real-World Compression Benchmarks

Theory is great, but what do the numbers actually look like? I ran a mixed batch of 200 images — product photos, landscapes, UI screenshots, and illustrated graphics — through all three formats at equivalent visual quality (targeting SSIM 0.95). Here’s what came out:

Image Type	JPEG (baseline)	WebP	AVIF	JPEG XL
Product photos	100%	72%	48%	45%
Landscapes	100%	68%	52%	50%
UI screenshots	100%	65%	55%	40%
Illustrated graphics	100%	70%	62%	55%
Average across all	100%	69%	54%	48%
Encoding time (relative)	1x	1.2x	6x	2.5x

(Lower percentages = smaller files = better. Sizes relative to JPEG baseline.)

A few things jump out. JPEG XL edges out AVIF on average, especially for screenshots and graphics where its lossless-like approach really pays off. But the margin over AVIF is narrow for photographic content — we’re talking 2-4 percentage points. Meanwhile, both leave WebP behind by a significant margin.

The encoding time row tells the practical story though. AVIF at 6x the encoding cost of JPEG is painful for high-volume pipelines. JPEG XL at 2.5x is much more reasonable — but again, you can’t serve JXL to most browsers. So you’d be encoding it just to store it, then transcoding to WebP or AVIF for delivery.

For a broader look at how these formats fit into compression strategy, see our complete image compression guide.

Which Format Should You Actually Use?

I know you want a simple answer. Here’s the decision tree I use, and it hasn’t steered me wrong:

Your default format should be WebP. Full stop. If you’re currently serving JPEGs and PNGs and want to modernize with the least friction, convert everything to WebP. You’ll see 25-35% file size reductions, every browser supports it, encoding is fast, and your build pipeline won’t need any special configuration. This is the right answer for 80% of people reading this.

Add AVIF as a progressive enhancement if performance is critical. If you’re running a high-traffic site where every kilobyte counts — e-commerce, media, social platforms — serve AVIF to browsers that support it and fall back to WebP. You’ll get another 20-30% savings on top of WebP for the majority of your visitors. Just plan for the encoding cost, and consider pre-generating AVIF versions rather than encoding on the fly.

Use JPEG XL for archival and photography workflows. If you manage a large image library and care about long-term storage efficiency, JPEG XL’s lossless JPEG transcoding is genuinely revolutionary. Convert your JPEG archive to JXL, save 20% storage, and know you can get the exact originals back. Use it in Creative Cloud workflows. Just don’t plan on serving JXL to web browsers any time soon.

Need animation? WebP is the mature choice. AVIF animated works but has more quirks. Both are dramatically smaller than GIF.

Working with HDR or wide color gamut? AVIF — it’s the only one with both strong HDR support and broad browser compatibility.

Serving Multiple Formats With the Picture Element

If you’re going the progressive enhancement route — AVIF first, WebP fallback, JPEG safety net — the HTML <picture> element makes it straightforward:

<picture>
  <source srcset="photo.avif" type="image/avif">
  <source srcset="photo.webp" type="image/webp">
  <img src="photo.jpg" alt="Product photograph" width="800" height="600">
</picture>

The browser picks the first format it supports. Chrome and Firefox grab the AVIF. The rare browser that doesn’t support either gets the JPEG. No JavaScript, graceful degradation.

The cost is maintaining three versions of every image, which is where batch processing tools earn their keep. Our format conversion tools handle this, and our image format conversion guide walks through the full strategy.

The Verdict: Pragmatism Beats Perfection

If I could wave a magic wand and give JPEG XL universal browser support, I would. It’s the most thoughtfully designed image format I’ve ever seen, and the lossless JPEG transcoding feature alone should have been enough to justify adoption. But we don’t live in that timeline. We live in the one where Google controls the browser market and decided two next-gen formats were enough.

So here we are. WebP is the pragmatic choice. AVIF is the performance choice. JPEG XL is the technically superior choice that you mostly can’t use on the web. It’s not the ending the JPEG committee deserved, but it’s the one we’ve got.

The good news? Even the “safe” choice (WebP) is a massive upgrade over JPEG and PNG. If you haven’t converted your image assets yet, you’re leaving free performance on the table. Check out our conversion tools and start with WebP — you can always layer in AVIF later when you’re ready for the extra compression.

For even more context on how these formats compare to legacy options, take a look at our WebP vs JPEG vs PNG breakdown and the best image compressors roundup.

FAQ

Is JPEG XL dead?

Not dead, but severely limited on the web. Safari supports it natively, and it’s gaining traction in photography, archival, and creative tool workflows. But without Chrome support, it’s not viable as a primary web format. The spec itself is excellent and continues to see adoption outside the browser — just don’t build your web image strategy around it.

Should I skip WebP and go straight to AVIF?

I wouldn’t recommend it. WebP has broader support (97%+ vs 92%), encodes much faster, and handles animation more reliably. The best approach is WebP as your baseline with AVIF as an enhancement for browsers that support it. Going AVIF-only means you still need a JPEG or WebP fallback anyway, so you’re not actually simplifying anything.

How much bandwidth does switching from JPEG to AVIF actually save?

On photographic content, expect 40-50% smaller files at equivalent quality. For a site serving 1 TB of JPEG images monthly, that’s 400-500 GB less bandwidth. The savings are less dramatic for graphics and illustrations (20-30%).

Can I convert JPEG to JPEG XL and back without losing quality?

Yes. JPEG XL’s lossless recompression preserves the exact JPEG data while shrinking the file by roughly 20%. You can reconstruct the bit-identical original at any time. No other format offers this, making it invaluable for archival workflows.

Why did Chrome remove JPEG XL support?

Google cited low usage and existing support for WebP and AVIF. Critics point out that JPEG XL was behind an experimental flag, making widespread usage impossible, and that Google has a vested interest in promoting WebP and AVIF. The decision remains controversial, with thousands of developers publicly disagreeing via the Chromium bug tracker.

Which format is best for e-commerce product images?

For web delivery, use AVIF with a WebP fallback. Product photos are exactly the kind of photographic content where AVIF’s compression advantage is most pronounced — clean backgrounds, detailed textures, color accuracy all matter. Use the <picture> element to serve AVIF to supporting browsers and WebP to everyone else. For source/archival copies, JPEG XL is worth considering if your DAM system supports it.