Compress WebP

WebP's quality scale behaves differently from JPEG's, and the difference matters most at the top and bottom of the range:

• 90–95 — Very close to the original. Worth it for logos, icons, screenshots and anything with text or hard edges, which WebP's lossy mode treats less kindly than photographs.
• 70–89 — The general range. 75 is the default and handles photographs well.
• 50–69 — Distinctly smaller. Fine for large background images and thumbnails.
• Below 50 — Flat colour areas start to blotch and soft gradients band into visible steps. Semi-transparent pixels suffer first, so a soft drop shadow is usually the first thing to look wrong.

If your source was lossless, be more generous than you would be with a photograph. Lossless WebP is usually chosen precisely because the image is a graphic, and graphics are what lossy compression handles worst.

If the file will not shrink, reducing the dimensions is the more effective lever. Halving the width and height leaves a quarter of the pixels, which almost always beats pushing the quality down into the range where the image visibly degrades — see the resize tool.

When compressing a WebP is worth doing

• The file came from a design tool. Exports are frequently lossless or near-lossless, and are far larger than they need to be for the web.
• You are publishing a lot of images and every kilobyte multiplies across page loads and bandwidth.
• The image is decorative — a background, a hero image, a card thumbnail — where nobody will inspect it closely.
• You are hitting an upload limit on a system that accepts WebP.

When to leave it alone

If the WebP was downloaded from a website, it has almost certainly been compressed already — that is why the site was serving WebP. Re-compressing gains little and costs quality.

If the image is a logo, an icon or a screenshot that needs to stay crisp, and it is currently lossless, think carefully. The size saving is real, but so is the softening around edges. Try 90 or above first and compare.

And if you need the file to open in older desktop software rather than a browser, compression is not your problem — converting to JPG or PNG is.

Reading the size change

Each file shows its result as a percentage. Three outcomes, each meaning something different:

• A large saving — the original was lossless or lightly compressed. This is the case where the tool earns its keep.
• A small saving — the original was already lossy at a similar quality. Weigh whether a few percent is worth another generation of loss.
• An increase — the original was compressed harder than the setting you chose. Keep the original; nothing has been gained.

Compressing a batch

Add as many files as you like; each is processed independently with its own download and its own size report. Each file can be up to the size shown on the upload area.