AVIF converter

What is AVIF?

AV1 Image File Format, created by Alliance for Open Media in 2019.

AVIF is what happened when the industry decided it wanted HEIC's compression without HEVC's patent licensing. The Alliance for Open Media — Google, Mozilla, Netflix, Amazon, Microsoft, Apple and others — built AV1 as a royalty-free video codec, and AVIF wraps an AV1 keyframe in the same ISO base media container that HEIC uses.

That licensing distinction explains everything about its adoption. HEIC is technically excellent and browsers refused it, because shipping HEVC means paying patent pools. AVIF is comparable and browsers adopted it quickly: Chrome in 2020, Firefox in 2021, Safari in 2022. Within about three years it went from experimental to something you can serve without a fallback for most audiences.

The compression gains are real and large. AVIF routinely produces files half the size of JPEG at visually equivalent quality, and it holds up much better at aggressive settings — where JPEG breaks into 8×8 blocks, AVIF degrades into a gentle softness that most people do not consciously notice.

The cost is encoding time. AV1 was designed for video, where an encoder can spend minutes on a scene, and that inheritance shows: encoding a 6-megapixel AVIF takes seconds where JPEG takes milliseconds. Decoding is fast, so the cost lands entirely on whoever produces the file.

Technical specification

AVIF support in browsers and operating systems

Checked on 2026-08-10. We re-verify this table every quarter.

AVIF compared with nearby formats

Against JPEG. No contest technically — about half the size at comparable quality, with 10-bit colour, transparency, animation and HDR that JPEG cannot represent. JPEG wins only on universal compatibility, which for files sent to other people is still the deciding factor.

Against WebP. AVIF is meaningfully smaller, typically 20–30% below WebP at matching quality, and adds 10-bit colour and HDR. WebP encodes far faster and has a few more years of support behind it. Most sites serve AVIF with a WebP fallback for exactly this reason.

Against HEIC. Technically very close — same container family, same generation of thinking. The difference is licensing: HEVC is patent-encumbered, AV1 is royalty-free. That single fact is why browsers support AVIF and refuse HEIC, and it is why AVIF is the format to target if you want HEIC-class efficiency on the web.

Against JPEG XL. JXL is arguably the better format for photography — faster encoding, lossless JPEG recompression, excellent quality — but Chrome removed support in 2022 and the ecosystem stalled. AVIF won on adoption rather than on merit alone.

When to use AVIF, and when not to

Use AVIF for images on a website where you control the pipeline and can afford the encoding time. The bandwidth savings over JPEG are substantial, and every current browser reads it.

Use it when 10-bit colour or HDR matters — long gradients, sunsets, studio backdrops — where 8-bit JPEG will band visibly.

Do not use AVIF for files you send to other people. Desktop support is still thin: Windows 10 needs an extension installed, and a great deal of professional and corporate software cannot open one.

Do not use it in a pipeline that processes thousands of images under time pressure without measuring first. Seconds per image adds up quickly, and WebP may be the better trade.

Do not use it as an archival or working format. Encoding is lossy by default and the tooling is young compared with TIFF or PNG.

Frequently asked questions