WebP to GIF Converter

To convert WebP to GIF, drop your .webp files into the box above, or tap it to choose them, and click Convert all. Animated or still, each one comes out as a GIF you can save on its own or with the rest in one .zip. Need PNG, JPG or PDF from the same files, or WebP from your own images? The WebP converter does every direction on one page.

The animation comes along. Every frame is kept, in order, with the same timing and the same looping as the original. That's less obvious than it sounds: a browser normally hands a web page only the first frame of an animated WebP, which is why some online tools give you a still GIF. This one reads the WebP file itself, frame by frame, decodes each frame with your browser's own WebP decoder in a background worker, and writes the GIF on your device. So it works in Safari on an iPhone too, not only in Chrome.

It's free, with no account, no watermark and no limit on how many files you add. A still WebP becomes a one-frame GIF, which is fine if a form insists on GIF. If it doesn't, the WebP to PNG converter keeps more colors and a cleaner transparent edge.

Two things change on the way, and both come from GIF itself. A GIF frame can show at most 256 colors, so smooth gradients and photos can look banded. And a GIF pixel is either see-through or solid, nothing in between, so soft shadows and anti-aliased edges become hard. The finished row tells you when a file had those soft edges.

We made two test animations and converted them in Chrome. The first was a sticker: a bouncing ball, 320 × 320 pixels on a transparent background, 24 frames at 40 ms each, looping forever. As a lossy animated WebP it was 63 KB. The GIF came out at 134 KB about a third of a second later, with all 24 frames, the same 40 ms timing and the endless loop. One thing went missing: the faint shadow under the ball was only 25% opaque, so GIF's on-or-off transparency dropped it, and the row said soft edges had changed.

The second was a 480 × 270 clip with a moving color gradient and sliding text, 12 frames at a tenth of a second each. That one went from 23 KB to 245 KB, more than ten times bigger, in just over a second. Gradients are GIF's worst case: every frame needs its own 256 colors, the shades in between turn into visible bands, and the LZW compression can't do much with them. Flat cartoon colors fare far better, which is why the sticker only doubled.

GIF is the oldest image format still in daily use. CompuServe released it in 1987, and the 1989 revision, GIF89a, added the two things it's known for today: animation and a transparent color. Each frame holds up to 256 colors from its own palette and is compressed losslessly with LZW. Every browser, phone, email client and chat app made since the 1990s can play one, which is why the format refuses to die.

WebP is Google's format from 2010, and it can animate too, with full 24-bit color and smooth 8-bit transparency. Google's own measurements found animated GIFs converted to lossy WebP 64% smaller, and 19% smaller as lossless WebP. That's why GIF sites and messaging apps send WebP when they can.

So WebP vs GIF comes down to size against reach. WebP is smaller and looks better; GIF plays everywhere. Converting WebP to GIF trades the first for the second: the file grows, colors drop to 256 per frame, and soft edges turn hard. For a sticker, a reaction or a short loop with flat colors, you'll rarely notice. For a smooth, photographic clip, expect some banding. If you only need one still picture from an animation, the WebP to JPG converter gives you its first frame as a small photo file instead.