Where AVIF wins
- Compression efficiency: AVIF often reaches a given quality in less space, especially at lower bitrates.
- Features: higher bit depth, wide colour and HDR are part of the format.
- Smooth gradients and low-bitrate images tend to hold up better than in JPEG or WebP.
Where WebP wins
- Encoding speed: WebP encodes far faster, which matters for batches and build pipelines.
- Tooling: more editors, CMS plugins and services understand WebP.
- Browsers can encode WebP natively from canvas in most cases; AVIF encoding needs a WebAssembly encoder.
What to serve on a website
A common approach is to offer AVIF first, WebP second and JPG or PNG as the final fallback using the picture element. If that sounds like too much, WebP alone is a sensible upgrade over JPG and PNG, and AVIF is a worthwhile extra for large hero images.
Test with your own images
Results vary by image. Convert a few representative files with both formats here, compare the sizes shown, and view the outputs at full size before deciding.