Squoosh Alternatives for Batch Image Compression

Squoosh is one of the best image compression tools ever made. I mean that sincerely. Google’s Chrome team built something that makes compression visible — you drag a slider, watch quality change in real time, and feel like you actually understand what’s happening to your image. For dialing in the exact right settings on a single important file, nothing else comes close.

And then you need to compress 50 images.

That’s when Squoosh becomes a problem. Not because it’s bad, but because it was never designed for batch work. One image at a time. Every time. No queue, no multi-select, no “apply these settings to the whole folder.” Google even built a Squoosh CLI at one point that could handle batches, but it’s been deprecated and no longer maintained. So here you are, looking for a Squoosh alternative that can handle more than one image without you babysitting each file individually.

I’ve spent a lot of time testing the options. Here’s what actually works.

How They Stack Up (The Short Version)

Tool	Batch Processing	Local Processing	AVIF Support	Quality Preview	Free Tier	Platform
Squoosh	No	Yes (browser)	Yes	Visual slider	Fully free	Web
BulkImagePro	Unlimited files	Yes (browser)	Yes	Quality setting	Fully free	Web
TinyPNG	20 images (web)	No (server)	No	None — automatic	20/upload free	Web
ShortPixel	Yes (via API/plugin)	No (server)	Yes	Lossy/Glossy/Lossless	100 images/month	Web + plugins
ImageOptim	Unlimited	Yes (desktop)	No	Before/after	Fully free	Mac only

If you just want the quick answer: BulkImagePro is the closest thing to “Squoosh but for batches.” It runs in your browser, processes locally, supports AVIF and WebP output, and handles as many files as you throw at it. But the rest of this article exists because the right answer depends on your actual workflow.

What Makes Squoosh So Good (And Why You’re Still Here)

Before I start recommending alternatives, it’s worth being honest about what you’d be giving up. Squoosh isn’t just popular because Google made it. It’s popular because the experience is genuinely excellent.

The side-by-side comparison slider is the killer feature. You load an image, pick a codec — MozJPEG, WebP, AVIF, OxiPNG, whatever — and drag a divider across the image to see the compressed version against the original. In real time. While adjusting the quality slider. The file size updates instantly. You can zoom in to check for artifacts in the tricky areas — gradients, fine text, hair against a busy background. It makes compression feel less like a guessing game and more like a craft.

Squoosh also supports codecs that most web tools don’t touch. Want to compare AVIF at quality 30 against WebP at quality 75 on the same image? Squoosh makes that a two-minute experiment. If you’re exploring whether AVIF compression is worth adopting for your site, Squoosh is genuinely the best playground for that.

And it’s private. Everything runs via WebAssembly in your browser. Your images never leave your machine.

So why are you looking for alternatives? Because you’ve got 40 product photos, or 150 blog images from a site migration, or a weekly batch of screenshots that all need the same treatment. And running each one through Squoosh individually is a special kind of tedium. I once spent a full afternoon compressing 35 hero images through Squoosh one at a time. The results were gorgeous. I never want to do it again.

BulkImagePro: The One That Feels Like Squoosh Grew Up

I’ll get the disclosure out of the way: this is our tool. Read this section with that context, and I’ll try to be as straightforward about limitations as I am about strengths.

BulkImagePro exists because I lived the exact frustration this article is about. I loved Squoosh’s local processing and format support. I hated that I couldn’t process more than one image. So BulkImagePro was built to fill that gap — batch compression that runs entirely in your browser, with support for JPEG, PNG, WebP, and AVIF output.

The workflow is simple: drag in your images (no file limit), pick a quality level, choose your output format, and hit compress. Everything processes locally via JavaScript and WebAssembly — same fundamental approach as Squoosh, just built around a multi-file workflow instead of a single-file one.

In practice, compressing 50 JPEG product photos at quality 80 takes about 15 seconds on a modern laptop. The same job on Squoosh would take 25-30 minutes of clicking, dragging, adjusting, and exporting. That’s not a knock on Squoosh — it’s doing something different. But if you already know the settings you want (and for batch work, you usually do), the per-image slider isn’t adding value, it’s adding friction.

BulkImagePro also handles bulk resizing and format conversion, which means you can resize a batch of images to 1200px wide and convert them to WebP in one pass. For anyone running through a batch compression workflow, consolidating those steps into a single tool saves real time.

Where BulkImagePro can’t match Squoosh: there’s no visual comparison slider. You set a quality number, trust it, and check the output. For batch work across dozens or hundreds of images, that’s the right trade-off — consistency and speed over per-image tweaking. But if you’re agonizing over one hero banner, Squoosh’s visual feedback is still better for that single-image use case.

TinyPNG: Great Quality, Wrong Architecture for Some Workflows

TinyPNG has been around since 2014, and it’s earned its reputation. The compression quality is genuinely excellent — their algorithms are particularly good with PNG files, using smart palette reduction that cuts file sizes dramatically while keeping the visual difference nearly invisible. For JPEGs, the results are solid and consistent. Our full compressor comparison digs deeper into the quality differences if you’re curious.

The free web version handles up to 20 images per upload, which already puts it ahead of Squoosh for batch work. If you consistently work with sets of 10-15 images, TinyPNG’s free tier might be all you need. The 500-image-per-month free API tier opens up more options if you’re comfortable with scripting or WordPress plugins.

But TinyPNG has two limitations that matter if you’re coming from Squoosh.

First, there’s no AVIF output. If part of what drew you to Squoosh was experimenting with next-gen formats, TinyPNG won’t scratch that itch. It compresses JPEG, PNG, and WebP — and does it well — but it doesn’t give you the codec variety that Squoosh offers.

Second, and this is the big one: your images get uploaded to TinyPNG’s servers. Every file goes up, gets compressed remotely, and comes back down. For personal blog photos, nobody cares. But if you liked Squoosh partly because your files stayed local — especially for client work, unreleased products, or anything under NDA — TinyPNG’s server-based approach is a step backward on privacy. There’s also a 5MB per-image limit on the free web tier, which you’ll hit faster than you’d expect with high-res photographs.

TinyPNG isn’t a bad Squoosh alternative. It’s a good tool with a different philosophy. If batch support and compression quality are your priorities and you don’t mind server uploads, it works. If local processing is part of why you used Squoosh in the first place, keep reading.

ShortPixel: Built for CMS Workflows

ShortPixel approaches image compression from the WordPress-and-API angle rather than the “open a web page and drop files in” angle. If your images live in a CMS, that distinction matters a lot.

The ShortPixel WordPress plugin is genuinely well-built. Install it, configure your preferences, and every image uploaded to your media library gets compressed automatically — no manual step at all. It offers three compression modes: lossy (aggressive size reduction), glossy (a middle ground that preserves more detail), and lossless (bit-for-bit reversible compression). The glossy mode is the one I’d recommend for most people — it produces results that look practically identical to the original while cutting 40-60% off file sizes.

ShortPixel also supports AVIF and WebP output, which is nice. It can generate WebP or AVIF versions of your images alongside the originals, letting you serve modern formats to browsers that support them and fall back to JPEG/PNG for the rest.

The free tier gives you 100 images per month. That sounds like a lot until you realize WordPress generates multiple sizes for every image you upload — thumbnail, medium, large, full — and each one counts against your quota. Upload 20 photos and you might burn through 80+ credits. The paid plans start at $3.99/month for 5,000 credits, which is reasonable if you’re running a single site but adds up across multiple properties.

The catch for Squoosh refugees: ShortPixel is server-based. Your images get sent to their infrastructure for processing. And unlike TinyPNG where you’re making a conscious choice each time you drag files in, the WordPress plugin uploads images automatically. That’s convenient, but it means every image on your site passes through a third-party server with no per-image opt-out unless you pause the plugin.

ShortPixel makes the most sense if you’re already in WordPress and want compression to happen without thinking about it. If your workflow is more ad-hoc — “I have a folder of images that need compressing right now” — a browser-based tool is a better fit.

ImageOptim: The Mac Purist’s Choice

ImageOptim is the tool I recommend to anyone who says “I just want to drag files onto something and have them get smaller.” On a Mac, that’s exactly what it does.

It’s a desktop app. You drag images in — one, ten, a hundred, doesn’t matter — and ImageOptim strips metadata, runs multiple compression algorithms in parallel (MozJPEG, pngquant, Zopfli, and others depending on the format), and overwrites the originals with smaller versions. There’s no upload, no cloud, no account. The images never leave your hard drive.

The results are good. On a test batch of 30 assorted JPEGs and PNGs, ImageOptim reduced total file size by about 35% with default settings — not as aggressive as lossy compression in Squoosh or BulkImagePro, but the default mode is lossless, meaning the output is pixel-identical to the input. You can enable lossy mode in preferences for more aggressive savings (typically 50-70% reduction), but it’s off by default, which is a sensible choice.

The limitations are straightforward. ImageOptim is Mac-only. If you’re on Windows or Linux, it’s not an option. It also doesn’t do format conversion — you can’t take a JPEG and output WebP or AVIF. If part of your Squoosh workflow involved converting to modern formats, ImageOptim won’t replace that piece. You’d need a separate tool for conversion, and at that point you’re juggling two apps instead of one.

ImageOptim also doesn’t give you the visual quality comparison that made Squoosh so satisfying. It’s opinionated software — it picks good settings and applies them. You can adjust the aggressiveness, but you can’t preview the result before committing. For most batch work that’s fine. But it’s a philosophical difference from Squoosh’s “show me everything” approach.

Best for: Mac users who want dead-simple, lossless (or slightly lossy) batch compression without touching a browser. If you need format conversion or work across operating systems, look elsewhere. (If your batch workflow involves GIFs and animations more than static image compression, our EzGIF alternatives comparison covers that niche.)

Real Numbers: What Does “Batch” Actually Save You?

I keep talking about batch processing saving time, so let me put actual numbers on it. I ran a test with 30 JPEG photos (a mix of product shots and blog images, average 2.8MB each, 84MB total) across each tool.

Tool	Time to Process 30 Images	Total Output Size	Avg. Reduction	Notes
Squoosh (quality 80, MozJPEG)	~25 min	22.4MB	73%	Manual, one at a time
BulkImagePro (quality 80, JPEG)	~12 sec	24.1MB	71%	Single drag-and-drop
TinyPNG (free web)	~45 sec + upload/download	21.8MB	74%	Two batches of 20+10
ImageOptim (lossy enabled)	~18 sec	26.2MB	69%	Drag-and-drop on Mac

The compression ratios are all in the same ballpark. TinyPNG edges ahead slightly on output size, Squoosh gives the best per-image control, and the differences between any of them are invisible to someone viewing the images on a webpage. The time difference, though — that’s where the story is. Twenty-five minutes versus twelve seconds is the entire argument for batch processing in one row.

The compression quality comparison here is consistent with what we found in our broader image compression guide, if you want to go deeper on the technical side of how these algorithms differ.

The Privacy Split

This comes up in every compression tool comparison, and it should. There are really two camps.

Local processing (your files stay on your machine): Squoosh, BulkImagePro, ImageOptim. Your images are processed using code running in your browser or on your desktop. No server ever sees your files. If your laptop explodes mid-compression, the files are gone — they were never copied anywhere.

Server processing (your files get uploaded): TinyPNG, ShortPixel. Your images travel to a remote server, get compressed, and come back. Both services say files are deleted after processing. Neither has had a publicized breach. But the files do physically exist on someone else’s infrastructure during the compression window.

For personal projects and public content, this distinction is academic. For client work under NDA, unreleased product photography, medical or legal images, or organizations with data-handling policies that prohibit third-party uploads — it’s not academic at all. I’ve worked with companies where using a server-based compression tool would require a vendor security review. Using a browser-based tool that never uploads anything? No review needed.

If you picked Squoosh partly because of the privacy angle, BulkImagePro and ImageOptim both maintain that guarantee. TinyPNG and ShortPixel don’t, regardless of how good their compression is.

So Which Squoosh Alternative Should You Pick?

Here’s my honest take, based on real workflows rather than feature checklists.

You have a batch of images and you want Squoosh-like local processing. BulkImagePro is the answer. Same browser-based, local-processing philosophy, same AVIF and WebP support, but built for multi-file workflows. Drag the folder in and be done in seconds.

You’re in WordPress and want compression to happen automatically. ShortPixel. Install the plugin, configure it once, and forget about it. The glossy mode strikes a good balance. Just be aware your images go through their servers.

You have a Mac and want the simplest possible drag-and-drop experience. ImageOptim. No browser, no account, no settings to think about. It just makes files smaller. But you won’t get format conversion or modern codec output.

You need small batches compressed with the best possible automatic quality. TinyPNG handles up to 20 images at a time with excellent results. If server uploads are fine and you don’t need AVIF, it’s a reliable choice.

You want to experiment with compression settings on one important image. Keep using Squoosh for that. Seriously. No alternative matches its visual comparison interface for single-image work. Then switch to a batch tool for everything else.

My own workflow: Squoosh for the 2-3 hero images per project where I want to obsess over quality. BulkImagePro for everything else — the product catalogs, blog post images, social media batches, site migration assets. I haven’t needed to manually compress images one-by-one in months, and I don’t miss it.

If you’re building a broader optimization workflow and want to understand the full landscape of tools and techniques, our complete image compression guide covers everything from codec selection to CDN delivery. And if you’re specifically comparing compression tools head-to-head, the best image compressors comparison goes deeper on TinyPNG vs. Squoosh vs. BulkImagePro.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does Squoosh support batch processing?

No. Squoosh processes one image at a time with no batch mode, queue, or multi-select. Google previously offered a Squoosh CLI that could handle batch operations, but it has been deprecated and is no longer maintained. For batch compression with similar local-processing privacy, BulkImagePro handles unlimited files in your browser, or ImageOptim provides drag-and-drop batch compression on Mac.

What is the best free Squoosh alternative for batch compression?

BulkImagePro is the strongest free alternative for batch compression. Like Squoosh, it processes images locally in your browser without uploading files to any server. It supports JPEG, PNG, WebP, and AVIF output with adjustable quality settings, and handles unlimited files per batch. TinyPNG's free tier allows 20 images per upload but requires server uploads. ImageOptim is free and processes locally but is Mac-only and doesn't support format conversion.

Is there a Squoosh alternative that supports AVIF?

Yes. BulkImagePro supports AVIF output for batch compression, and ShortPixel can generate AVIF versions through its API and WordPress plugin. TinyPNG does not support AVIF output. ImageOptim does not support AVIF either. If you specifically want to compare AVIF quality settings on individual images, Squoosh itself remains the best tool for that experimentation -- then use a batch tool like BulkImagePro to apply those settings across your full image set.

Can I use the Squoosh CLI for batch compression?

The Squoosh CLI (@squoosh/cli) has been deprecated by Google and is no longer actively maintained. While you may find the npm package still installable, it may not work reliably with current Node.js versions and won't receive security updates or bug fixes. For command-line batch compression, you can use tools like sharp (Node.js), cwebp/avifenc (format-specific encoders), or ImageMagick. For a browser-based batch alternative, BulkImagePro provides a no-setup option.

Which Squoosh alternative keeps images private (no upload)?

BulkImagePro and ImageOptim both process images locally without uploading files to any server. BulkImagePro runs in your browser using JavaScript and WebAssembly, while ImageOptim is a native Mac desktop app. Both provide the same local-processing privacy that Squoosh offers, but with batch support. TinyPNG and ShortPixel both require uploading images to their servers for processing.

Is Squoosh still maintained by Google?

The Squoosh web app (squoosh.app) is still available and functional, though development activity has slowed significantly. The Squoosh CLI was officially deprecated. The web app continues to work well for single-image compression and format experimentation, but it's not receiving major new features. For production batch workflows, it's worth having an alternative tool in your setup rather than depending solely on Squoosh.

---

Ready to compress images in batches without uploading them anywhere? Try BulkImagePro — drag in as many images as you need, pick your format and quality, and download the compressed batch in seconds. All processing happens in your browser. Need to resize too? The bulk resizer handles that in the same workflow, or use the format converter to switch between JPEG, PNG, WebP, and AVIF at scale.