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GIF to WebP Converter

Our free GIF to WebP converter turns your GIF into a much smaller WebP image right in your browser. Upload a GIF, pick a quality and an output size, and download a real .webp file — no upload to any server, no sign-up, and no watermark. One honest limit, stated plainly: an animated GIF becomes a static WebP of its first frame only, because a browser canvas cannot preserve animation.

Choose a GIF file

Your file stays on your device. It is converted in your browser and never uploaded anywhere. PNG, JPG, and WebP files work through the same pipeline too.

Animated GIFs: only the first frame is converted. The WebP you download will be a still image — the movement is not kept. If you need the animation, keep the original GIF file.

Quality: 0.90

0.1 is the smallest file, 1.0 is the best quality. 0.9 suits most pictures.

Output size Original size 75% of original 50% (half size) 25% (quarter size) Custom width…

Resizing keeps the picture's proportions — only the width changes.

Background for transparent areas Keep transparency White Black Custom colour…

WebP keeps transparency, so the default leaves see-through areas see-through. Pick a colour only if you need a solid background.

Output file name (optional)

Leave blank to keep the original name with a .webp ending.

Convert to WebP

How it works

GIF is one of the oldest image formats on the web. It was designed in 1987 for simple graphics, and it still has one hard limit from that era: a GIF can hold at most 256 colours. That is fine for a flat logo or a cartoon, but a photograph saved as a GIF looks banded and flat, because smooth skies and skin tones have to be rounded to the nearest of those 256 colours. WebP, the modern format built for the web, has no such limit — it holds millions of colours and compresses smooth tones far better, so the same picture usually takes up much less space.

When you pick a file, the tool first checks that it really is an image. It looks at the file type your browser reports and at the ending on the file name, and it accepts GIF, PNG, JPG, and WebP. If you picked a PDF, a video, or any other file type by mistake, it stops and shows a friendly message instead of producing a broken download. Then it reads the image into your browser and draws it onto a hidden canvas — a drawing surface browsers use for images — and shows the picture's dimensions in pixels and its file size, so you can see what you are starting with before you convert.

Here is the honest part, and it matters. A browser canvas holds one still picture. When an animated GIF is drawn onto it, the canvas takes the first frame and only the first frame; the rest of the frames, and the timing that made them move, are gone. The WebP that comes out is therefore a static image of the first frame. This is not a setting you can switch off — no browser tool that works through a canvas can keep the animation — so the page says so in three places: above the button, in the diagram, and in the FAQ. If you need the movement, keep the original GIF and use the WebP only as a smaller still copy, for example as a preview thumbnail.

Finally, the canvas exports the picture as WebP at the quality on your slider, from 0.1 to 1.0. Quality 1.0 keeps the most detail and makes the largest file, 0.9 is the sweet spot for most pictures, and 0.5 to 0.7 makes a much smaller file with slightly softer edges — fine for a web page or a message, less good for a picture you plan to print. You can also shrink the picture: original size, 75 percent, half, quarter, or a custom width in pixels, with the height worked out automatically so the picture never stretches. WebP keeps transparency, so see-through areas stay see-through by default; if you pick a background colour instead, the tool fills those areas with white, black, or your own colour first.

The result is offered as a download named after your original file with the ending changed to .webp, or the name you typed in the output box. The page shows the original size next to the new size, the saving in kilobytes, and the saving as a percentage, with a side-by-side preview so you can check the picture still looks right before you use it. Because every step happens on your computer, there is no waiting for an upload and no copy of your image sitting on someone else's server.

Worked example

Suppose you saved a product photo as lamp.gif for a listing, and the file is 480 KB at 800 by 600 pixels. The photo looks flat because GIF only allows 256 colours, and the listing form prefers small files.

Step 1: you click "Choose a GIF file" and pick lamp.gif. The tool confirms it is a GIF and shows "800 × 600 px, 480 KB" under the file picker. A note reminds you that if this GIF were animated, only its first frame would convert.
Step 2: you leave the quality at 0.90 and the size on Original, and click "Convert to WebP". The tool draws the first frame onto a canvas and exports it as WebP.
Step 3: the result appears with a side-by-side preview and a download button. The new file is called lamp.webp and is about 95 KB — roughly a fifth of the original size. The saving is 385 KB, or about 80 percent, and the photo looks smoother than the GIF because WebP is not limited to 256 colours. You click "Download .webp" and the file lands in your Downloads folder.

If the listing needed an even smaller file, you could run the same GIF through again at quality 0.7 and 50 percent size. The file would drop to around 30 KB at 400 by 300 pixels — fine for a thumbnail, but not the best choice for a photo a buyer might zoom into. And if the file had been an animated GIF of a spinning lamp, the WebP would show the lamp in its first position only — still a useful still image, but not a moving one, so you would keep the original GIF for anywhere the motion matters.

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