AVIF vs JPG
AVIF is roughly half the size of JPG at the same visual quality, and supports transparency and HDR. JPG opens everywhere, including in email and older software. Use AVIF on your own website; JPG for anything you send to someone else.
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Choose AVIF when
- Images on a modern website, where page weight matters.
- Photos needing transparency, which JPG cannot hold.
Choose JPG when
- Email, documents and upload forms.
- Anything that might be opened in older software or on an old device.
What AVIF actually is
AVIF is the smallest of the widely supported image formats, often half the size of a JPG that looks the same. It handles high dynamic range, wide colour, transparency and animation, and it degrades more gracefully than JPG when pushed hard.
Reading AVIF is nearly universal; writing it is not. A browser without an encoder quietly hands back a PNG instead of refusing, so the conversion looks as though it worked. Current Chrome on macOS is one of them. This site checks for a real encoder first and says so when there is none.
What JPG actually is
JPG discards detail your eye is least likely to notice, then compresses what is left. The quality setting decides how much it discards. It is the reason photographs on the web are measured in hundreds of kilobytes rather than tens of megabytes.
Re-saving a JPG repeatedly degrades it every time, because it re-encodes from the already damaged version. Edit from the original, and export to JPG once at the end.
AVIF and JPG side by side
| AVIF | JPG | |
|---|---|---|
| Extension | .avif | .jpg |
| Media type | image/avif | image/jpeg |
| Compression | Lossy | Lossy |
| Transparency | Yes | No |
| Animation | No | No |
| Quality setting | Yes | Yes |
| We can write it | Yes | Yes |
Questions
Why can I not open an AVIF file?
Older software and some operating system versions do not support it yet. Converting to JPG or PNG fixes it.
Do all browsers support AVIF?
All current major browsers do.