Convert an animated GIF to WebP, free
Animated WebP keeps the motion but drops the file size, often dramatically. Drop a GIF or a whole folder and convert as many as you want, no upload, no limit. Looking for the reverse conversion? This tool goes GIF to WebP only, not WebP back to GIF.
GIF vs. WebP for animation
GIF is limited to a 256-color palette and a fairly crude compression scheme, both holdovers from a format designed in 1987. WebP supports full color and real lossy compression, so the same animation usually comes out much smaller with comparable or better visual quality. Anyone who has typed "gif vs webp" into a search box trying to decide which one to use is really asking about this exact tradeoff: GIF is older and supported absolutely everywhere, WebP is newer, smaller, and now displays correctly in every major browser and on most social platforms too. If you need to hit a specific file-size limit and stay in GIF format, for a platform that does not accept WebP, use the GIF compressor instead. If dimensions rather than format are the problem, the GIF resizer handles that.
How to convert a GIF to WebP, step by step
- Drop your animated GIF into the box above, or click it to browse your files. Drag in a whole folder and every GIF inside gets picked up, so this works as a bulk GIF to WebP converter without any extra setup.
- Pick a mode. Default is a safe, general-purpose setting. Lossy gives the smallest possible file. Mixed lets the encoder decide frame by frame, which is a good middle ground when a GIF has both simple flat-color frames and busier, detailed ones.
- Adjust the quality slider if the default output looks softer than you want, or if you are trying to hit a specific size and can accept a bit more compression to get there.
- Hit convert and download the .webp file. There is no export dialog, no watermark, and no account needed, whether you are converting one GIF or fifty at once.
This works the same whether you searched "convert gif to webp online," "gif to webp converter," or landed here after ezgif's or Cloudinary's conversion tool felt slower than it should for a simple format swap. Since everything runs locally through WebAssembly, there is no upload wait either way, and no daily conversion cap the way some freemium converters enforce.
Where an animated WebP actually gets used
The most common reason to convert a GIF to WebP is a website. A page full of animated GIFs is one of the easiest ways to tank a Core Web Vitals score, and swapping them for animated WebP versions, same motion, smaller payload, is one of the cheapest wins available for page speed, since it needs no code changes beyond the file extension in most setups. Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and Edge all render animated WebP natively now, so there is no fallback plugin to worry about the way there was a few years ago.
Chat and messaging apps are the other big use case. WhatsApp stickers are built on animated WebP rather than GIF, so converting a GIF you already have into WebP is often the fastest way to turn it into a sticker without redoing the artwork from scratch. It is also the reason a lot of people run into this the other way around: Chrome has, for a while now, saved some animated images from the web as .webp by default instead of .gif, which is why "how to save a gif instead of webp" and similar searches are so common. That is a browser setting issue on the saving side, not something this converter changes, since this tool only takes GIF files in and produces WebP files out.
Choosing lossy, mixed, or default mode
Default mode uses libwebp's standard encoder settings and is the right starting point if you are not sure what you need, it balances size and quality without any tuning. Lossy mode compresses every single frame the way a JPEG would, which produces the smallest possible file and is the setting to reach for when a strict size ceiling matters more than preserving fine detail, similar in spirit to how the Discord compressor targets an exact size rather than a quality guess. Mixed mode is the more surgical option: the encoder looks at each frame individually and decides whether lossy or lossless compression will look better for that specific frame, which tends to land between the other two modes on both size and sharpness. None of these settings touch the animation timing, so frame count and playback speed stay exactly as they were in the source GIF regardless of which mode is used.
Frequently asked questions
Why convert a GIF to WebP?
Animated WebP files are typically a fraction of the size of an equivalent GIF, since WebP supports proper lossy compression and a much wider color range instead of the 256-color palette GIF is stuck with. Most modern browsers and platforms display animated WebP the same way they display GIF, so the swap is usually free performance with no visible downside.
How do I convert a GIF to WebP?
Drop your GIF into the box near the top of this page, or click it to browse your files. Pick a mode (default is fine if you are not sure), adjust the quality slider if you want, and hit convert. The WebP downloads straight to your device a moment later, no account and no export dialog involved. Several files at once works the same way, so a whole folder converts just as easily as a single GIF.
Will my WebP still animate?
Yes. This converts a whole animated GIF into an animated WebP, frame by frame, timing preserved. It is not a single-frame snapshot.
What is the difference between lossy and mixed mode?
Lossy mode compresses every frame the way a JPEG does, which gives the smallest files but can soften fine detail. Mixed mode lets the encoder choose lossless or lossy per frame depending on which looks better for that frame, usually landing between the two on both size and quality. Default mode uses libwebp's standard settings, a reasonable middle ground if you are not sure.
Does this upload my GIF anywhere?
No. The conversion runs entirely in your browser through WebAssembly. Your file never leaves your device, so there is no upload wait and no cap on how many files or how large a batch you can convert.
How do I convert a WebP back to a GIF?
That is the reverse of what this particular page does, so it is worth saying plainly rather than leaving you guessing: this tool takes a GIF in and gives you a WebP out, not the other way around. To go from WebP to GIF, you want a converter built for that direction specifically, ezgif has a WebP to GIF tool, and desktop apps like GIMP, IrfanView, or XnConvert can open a WebP and export it as a GIF too. One thing worth knowing either way: GIF caps out at 256 colors per frame, so a WebP with a wider color range will lose a bit of that richness once it becomes a GIF, that is a property of the GIF format itself, not a sign anything went wrong in the conversion.
How do I convert WebP to GIF without installing any software?
Any browser-based converter avoids the install step entirely, you upload or drop the WebP file, choose GIF as the output, and download the result, the same pattern this page uses in the other direction. If you would rather not send the file anywhere, a handful of WebP to GIF tools also run client-side in the browser the way this one does. Desktop programs like Picosmos Studio or IrfanView are the option if you are converting a large batch offline and do not want to rely on an internet connection at all, though they do mean installing something first.
A GIF I downloaded saved as a WebP instead. How do I get a GIF file back?
This usually happens because the site you downloaded from actually hosts the file as WebP, and your browser saved it exactly as it found it, rather than the browser deciding to change the format on its own. The fix is simple even if it is an extra step: save the WebP as normal, then run it through a WebP to GIF converter to get a genuine .gif file with the .gif extension. If you specifically need the file to end in .gif rather than .webp, renaming the extension alone will not do it, since the actual file data underneath is still WebP, it needs an actual conversion pass.
Why do my GIFs keep saving as WebP, and how do I stop it?
Chrome and a few other browsers will sometimes serve an animated image as WebP instead of GIF, mainly because WebP is smaller and the site itself can choose to serve it that way to save bandwidth, your browser is just displaying what the server sent. There is no single global switch to force every site back to GIF, but a couple of things help. Right-clicking and choosing to open the image in a new tab first, rather than saving directly from a page, sometimes surfaces the original file. A handful of browser extensions exist specifically to convert WebP images to GIF or PNG on the fly as you browse, if this happens to you often enough to be worth the extra install.
How do I save a GIF from Giphy or Tumblr instead of getting a WebP?
On Giphy, use the actual "GIF" download or copy-link option on the post itself rather than right-click saving the preview image, the preview is sometimes served as WebP for speed while the real GIF sits behind the dedicated download button. Tumblr posts can go either way depending on how the original poster uploaded the image, so if a right-click save gives you a WebP, running it through a WebP to GIF converter afterward gets you a usable .gif file without having to track down the original source post.
Is there a quick WebP to GIF tool, something as simple as Handbrake is for video?
For a single image, an online WebP to GIF converter is about as close as it gets, drop the file in, click convert, done, similar in spirit to how Handbrake takes a video file and a couple of clicks to a different format. Picosmos Studio is a free Windows batch converter people reach for when they have a whole folder of WebP images to turn into GIFs at once rather than one at a time, if you would rather work offline on a big batch than through a browser.
Should I save a WebP as a GIF or as a JPG?
It depends on whether the WebP is animated. If it is a still image, JPG or PNG is usually the better choice, since neither format loses the color range GIF is limited to, and both are just as widely supported. Save it as a GIF specifically when you need the animation to keep working, or when a particular platform or upload field flatly requires a .gif file extension and will not accept anything else.
Why won't XnConvert convert my WebP files to GIF?
The most common cause is that XnConvert is reading only the first frame of an animated WebP and treating the file as a static image, which is a limitation of how some batch converters handle the WebP format rather than something wrong with your files. Updating to the latest version sometimes resolves it, since animated WebP support has improved release to release, but if it still only pulls one frame, a converter built specifically around animated WebP and animated GIF, rather than a general-purpose batch image tool, is more likely to preserve the full animation.
Does WebP support animation the same way GIF does?
Yes. Animated WebP is a real, standard part of the WebP format, not a workaround or a hack, and it supports the same frame-by-frame looping animation a GIF does, generally at a smaller file size. The confusion mostly comes from static WebP images being far more common on the web than animated ones, so a lot of people only ever encounter the non-animated kind and assume the format cannot animate at all.
Is animated WebP the same thing as a GIF?
They serve the same purpose, a small looping animation, but they are different formats under the hood. GIF has been around since 1987 and caps out at 256 colors per frame. WebP is newer, supports millions of colors and real lossy compression, and generally produces a smaller file at the same visual quality. The tradeoff is that GIF is universally supported everywhere, including some older chat apps and email clients, while WebP support, though now very wide, is not quite as old.
Will converting to WebP lose quality?
Some, if you use lossy or mixed mode, the same way a JPEG loses some detail compared to a PNG. In practice the size savings are large enough relative to the quality drop that most people cannot tell the difference at normal viewing sizes. If quality matters more than file size for a specific image, raise the quality slider, or use mixed mode so the encoder only compresses the frames where it will not be noticeable.
Can I convert a whole folder of GIFs to WebP at once?
Yes. Drop in as many files as you want, or select a whole folder, and they convert in parallel with per-file progress and no cap on batch size. That is worth knowing if you are used to tools like ezgif or Cloudinary that convert one file at a time, or gate batch conversion behind a paid plan.
Do I need Photoshop, ffmpeg, or ImageMagick to do this?
No. Command-line tools like ffmpeg and ImageMagick can convert GIF to WebP, and Photoshop can export WebP with a plugin in newer versions, but all three mean installing software or learning a flag syntax for what is really a one-step job. This page does the same conversion in a browser tab, with a drag-and-drop and a quality slider instead of a terminal.
Does renaming a .webp file to .gif actually convert it?
No, and this trips people up constantly. A file's actual format lives in its underlying data, not its file extension, so typing .gif instead of .webp at the end of a filename just gives you a WebP file wearing a GIF name tag. Most programs will either refuse to open it or throw an error, and the few that do open it are just ignoring the mismatched extension and reading the real WebP data underneath anyway. There is no shortcut here: getting an actual .gif file means running the WebP through a real converter, online or a desktop app like GIMP or IrfanView, so the image data itself gets re-encoded into GIF format.
How do I convert a WebP to an animated GIF, not just a single frame?
This catches people out with some converters and batch tools, which quietly grab only the first frame of an animated WebP and save that as a static image, throwing away the rest of the animation. To keep the full animation, you need a converter that specifically reads animated WebP frame by frame, the same way a proper GIF encoder does, rather than a general image tool that treats every file as a single picture. When you try a new converter for this, open the result afterward and check that it actually plays, a GIF that loads as a still image is a sign the tool only pulled the first frame.
What's the best free offline app for turning a batch of WebP files into GIFs?
Picosmos Studio is a common pick on Windows if you've got a whole folder of WebP images to get through at once, since it is built around batch conversion rather than one file at a time. IrfanView and GIMP both handle single-file WebP to GIF conversion too, GIMP in particular is free and cross-platform if you are not on Windows, though neither is really built for bulk batches the way Picosmos is. All three run fully offline once installed, worth it if you are converting a large batch and do not want to depend on an internet connection, the tradeoff being you do need to install something first rather than just opening a browser tab.
How do I stop Chrome from saving my GIFs as WebP, or force it to save as an actual GIF?
There is no setting inside Chrome itself that flips this back to GIF across every site, since the format choice happens on the website's server before the image ever reaches your browser. A couple of things do help in practice: right-clicking the image and choosing "Open image in new tab" before saving, rather than saving straight off the page, sometimes surfaces a different version of the file. A few browser extensions exist purely to intercept WebP images and convert them to GIF or PNG as they load, worth installing if this happens to you often enough to be annoying. Otherwise, saving the WebP as it comes and running it through a converter afterward is the reliable fallback.
I've already got a WebP file saved, maybe someone sent it to me in a chat. How do I get a real GIF out of it?
Same process either way, whether the WebP came from a download, a messaging app, or anywhere else: drop it into a WebP to GIF converter and let it re-encode the actual image data into GIF format. It does not matter how the file ended up on your device, the conversion step is identical. If you are doing this often enough that it is worth avoiding a browser upload each time, a desktop app like GIMP or IrfanView does the same job without needing an internet connection at all.
Is there a way to convert a .webp file to GIF without installing any software at all?
Yes, that is what browser-based converters are for. You open the tool in a tab, drop in the .webp file, pick GIF as the output, and download the result, no install and nothing to learn. Some of these run entirely client-side in your browser using WebAssembly rather than uploading your file to a server, worth checking for if you would rather not send an image anywhere, especially for anything you consider private.
Will a GIF converted from WebP look worse or lose quality?
A little, and it is baked into the GIF format itself rather than a sign the converter did something wrong. GIF caps every frame at 256 colors, while WebP supports millions, so converting from WebP to GIF means the color palette gets squeezed down no matter which tool you use. Smooth gradients and photo-like frames show this the most, since they get visibly banded once forced into 256 colors, while simple, flat-color animations barely change at all. If the source WebP was already fairly simple in its color range, you likely will not notice much difference after conversion.
Can I convert a whole folder of WebP files to GIF at once, not just one at a time?
Yes, though it depends on the tool. Picosmos Studio is built specifically around batch conversion on Windows, so a whole folder of WebP files becomes a whole folder of GIFs in one pass. Most single-file browser converters only take one WebP at a time, so if you are converting dozens or more on a regular basis, a batch-capable desktop app saves a lot of repetitive uploading and downloading.