How it works
How to convert PNG to WebP
- 01
Add your PNG files
Drop .png images into the box, or tap it to choose them. A whole folder at once is fine.
- 02
Pick lossy or lossless
Lossy with the quality slider for the smallest files, or Lossless to keep every pixel. Then click Convert all.
- 03
Download
Save each WebP on its own, or the whole batch as one .zip. Nothing was uploaded.
To convert PNG to WebP, drop your .png files into the box above, or tap it to choose them. Pick Lossy or Lossless, click Convert all, then download each WebP on its own or the whole batch as one .zip. JPG files work in the same box. This page is one part of the WebP converter, which also goes the other way, from WebP to PNG, JPG, GIF or PDF.
Which mode? Lossy makes the smallest files and has a quality slider. 75 to 85% suits photos and most web images: our 52 KB social card came out at 14 KB at 85%. Lossless keeps every pixel exactly, which is what you want for a logo, an icon, a chart or a screenshot with small text. It usually beats PNG by a fifth to a half on size. Both modes keep transparent backgrounds, soft edges included.
The converter is free, with no account, no watermark and no cap on how many files you add. Your browser decodes each PNG in a background worker and writes the WebP on your device. Chrome, Edge and Firefox can write lossy WebP themselves. Safari can't, so there (and for Lossless in every browser) the page loads libwebp, Google's own WebP encoder compiled to WebAssembly, about 350 KB, fetched once the first time it's needed. Nothing is sent anywhere.
A few limits, so they don't surprise you. WebP can't go past 16,383 pixels on either side, and a bigger image is refused with a message. An animated PNG (APNG) becomes a still of its first frame, and its row says so. If a WebP comes out bigger than the PNG, which can happen with the slider near 100%, the row tells you that too.
Convert PNG to WebP in Photoshop
Photoshop 23.2 and later saves WebP with nothing to install: File, Save a Copy, then pick WebP and choose Lossy with a quality or Lossless. Older versions need Google's WebPShop plugin. It's one image at a time, so for a folder of PNGs it's quicker to drop them all in above and take one .zip.
Convert PNG to WebP from the command line
Google's free cwebp tool, part of libwebp, does it in one line: cwebp -q 80 image.png -o image.webp for lossy, or cwebp -lossless image.png -o image.webp. It's the same encoder this page uses, so the files come out much the same. It suits a build script; for a handful of images, this page saves you installing anything.
Convert PNG to WebP on iPhone or Android
Open this page in Safari or Chrome on your phone, tap the box and pick the PNG from Files, Photos or Downloads. Tap Convert all, then Download. On an iPhone the WebP lands in the Files app, in Downloads. Big images take longer on a phone, so give a 12-megapixel lossless one a little while.
When you need this
Your pages load slowly
Big PNGs are often the heaviest thing on a page, and speed tools like Lighthouse and PageSpeed Insights flag them. Serving them as WebP is the fix those reports suggest.
An upload limit you keep hitting
Website builders, shop platforms and forums cap image sizes. The same picture as WebP often fits where the PNG didn't, with no visible change.
Logos and icons with a transparent background
JPG would put a box behind them. WebP keeps the alpha channel, and Lossless keeps the edges exactly as they were, at a fraction of the PNG's size.
Screenshots for docs and blog posts
A screenshot saved as PNG is crisp but heavy. Lossless WebP keeps the text sharp; lossy at 85% shrinks it further, and you'd have to zoom right in to spot a difference.
Worked example
We took our own 1200 × 630 social sharing card, a 52 KB PNG with flat colors and a little text, and converted it in Chrome.
At the default 85% lossy, it came out at 14 KB, 73% smaller, in a fraction of a second. Side by side at full size we couldn't tell the two apart. Dropping to 50% made it 9.4 KB, still fine for a thumbnail. Lossless gave 31 KB, 41% smaller than the PNG with every pixel identical.
Then we pushed the slider to 100%, and the WebP grew to 134 KB, two and a half times the PNG. That's not a bug. Lossy WebP at its top setting spends bytes on detail a flat graphic doesn't have, while PNG compresses flat color very well. For images like this, Lossless is the better way to keep full quality, and the row warns you whenever a WebP ends up bigger than what you put in.
A screenshot of one of our pages (1440 × 900, 99 KB as PNG) went to 40 KB at 85% and 81 KB lossless. A photo-like 4000 × 3000 image went from 25 MB to 2.5 MB lossy in under two seconds; lossless brought it to 12 MB but took about 11 seconds, which is why photos are better off lossy.
Format explainer
PNG dates from 1996 and never throws anything away. It compresses pixels with DEFLATE, the same method inside ZIP files, keeps a full alpha channel and opens in practically everything. The price is size, especially for photos and anything with smooth gradients.
WebP is Google's format from 2010, and it has two separate compressors. Lossy WebP comes from the VP8 video codec: it predicts each block of pixels from its neighbors, stores the difference, and drops detail you're unlikely to notice. Lossless WebP is a different design that remembers repeated pixels and patterns, and it typically makes graphics about a quarter smaller than PNG, with nothing lost. Both keep transparency. Every current browser displays WebP, Safari included since iOS 14 and macOS Big Sur, which is why sites switched to it.
So PNG to WebP is a size trade, and the mode decides what you give up. Lossless gives up nothing. Lossy gives up a little detail for a much smaller file. Either way the WebP holds the image itself; text chunks and color profile data in the PNG aren't carried over, and the colors are saved as standard sRGB. If an app later won't open the WebP, you can always convert the WebP back to PNG.
Frequently asked questions
Only if you choose Lossy. Lossless WebP stores every pixel exactly as it was in the PNG, transparency included. Lossy throws away fine detail to make the file much smaller; at 75 to 85% it's very hard to see the difference on a normal screen.
Lossy for photos and anything with gradients, where it makes files several times smaller. Lossless for logos, icons, line art, charts and screenshots with text, where sharp edges matter and it still beats PNG on size. Not sure? Convert once each way and keep the one you like.
It happens with lossy near the top of the slider, on flat graphics that PNG already compresses well. Our 52 KB social card became 134 KB at 100%. Use Lossless for those images, or bring the quality down. The finished row tells you whenever this happens.
Yes, in both modes. WebP has a full alpha channel like PNG, so see-through areas and soft, partly transparent edges come across. Lossless keeps them pixel for pixel.
Yes. Safari can show WebP but can't write it from a web page, so on Safari this page loads Google's WebP encoder as WebAssembly instead, about 350 KB, once. It runs on your device like everything else here.
Yes. Select or drop as many PNG files as you like and click Convert all. Each gets its own row with the size before and after, and a single button saves them all as a .zip.
You get a still WebP of its first frame. Browsers only hand a web page the first frame of an APNG, so the animation can't come across, and the row says when a file was animated.
No. The PNG is read and the WebP is written inside your browser tab, on your own device. If you'd like to check, open your browser's developer tools and watch the Network tab while you convert.
Related pages
- WebP to PNG converter
Pick this when you're going the other way: a .webp that won't open somewhere, turned back into a PNG with its transparency.
- WebP to JPG converter
Pick this when a .webp photo has to go somewhere that only takes JPG, like an older upload form or editor.
- WebP to GIF converter
Pick this when you have an animated WebP and need it to keep moving in apps that don't play WebP.
- SVG to WebP converter
Pick this instead when your logo or icon is a vector SVG, so it's rendered at exactly the pixel size you need rather than scaled from a PNG.
- WebP to SVG converter
Pick this when a WebP logo needs to become scalable vector paths for print or a design tool.
- PNG to SVG converter
Pick this instead when a PNG logo needs to scale to any size, not just get smaller on disk.