The animated GIF has been a staple of the web since 1987, but two newer formats — WebP and AVIF — now offer dramatically smaller file sizes with comparable or better visual quality. Choosing the right format depends on your target audience, the platform you're publishing on, and how much compatibility you need to sacrifice for efficiency gains.
A Quick History of Animated Image Formats
GIF (Graphics Interchange Format) was designed by CompuServe for dial-up modem speeds. Its 256-colour limit and LZW compression were reasonable constraints in 1987, but they make it a poor fit for modern high-colour animations. Despite this, GIF survived because it was universally supported before any alternative existed, and that installed base proved nearly impossible to displace.
WebP was introduced by Google in 2010 as a replacement for both JPEG and GIF/PNG. Its animated variant (ANIM/ANMF) uses VP8 inter-frame compression, meaning it only encodes the differences between frames rather than storing each frame in full — the same technique that makes MP4 video so much smaller than GIF. AVIF, based on the AV1 video codec, arrived in 2019 and pushes compression even further, typically achieving 50–60% smaller files than WebP at equivalent quality.
Browser Support in 2025
Browser support is the most important practical consideration. GIF works everywhere — every browser, every email client, every messaging app, every social platform. WebP animated images are supported in Chrome, Edge, Firefox, and Safari (since version 14 in 2020), giving it near-universal modern browser coverage. AVIF animated support is more limited: Chrome and Firefox support it, but Safari's support for animated AVIF is still partial as of 2025.
| Format | Chrome | Firefox | Safari | iOS | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| GIF | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Animated WebP | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ (v14+) | ✗ | ✓ (iOS 14+) |
| Animated AVIF | ✓ | ✓ | Partial | ✗ | Partial |
File Size Comparison
The compression difference between formats is substantial. In typical real-world tests, an animated WebP is 25–35% smaller than an optimised GIF of the same content, while animated AVIF is 50–60% smaller. These numbers vary significantly depending on the content: photographic animations compress better with newer formats, while simple graphics with few colours are already well-served by an optimised GIF palette.
| Format | Typical Size vs GIF | Colour Depth | Transparency | Best For |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| GIF | Baseline | 256 colours | 1-bit (on/off) | Email, universal compat |
| Animated WebP | −25 to −35% | Full 24-bit | 8-bit (full alpha) | Modern web pages |
| Animated AVIF | −50 to −60% | Full 24-bit + HDR | 8-bit (full alpha) | Cutting-edge web, no email |
When to Use Each Format
Use GIF when you need guaranteed compatibility across all platforms, especially email. Gmail, Outlook, and Apple Mail all support animated GIF but none support animated WebP or AVIF. For messaging apps like iMessage, WhatsApp, and Telegram, GIF remains the safest choice. If your animation has very few colours (under 64) — such as a simple logo animation or a UI loading spinner — an optimised GIF with a reduced palette will be competitive in size with WebP anyway.
Use animated WebP for web pages targeting modern browsers. The 25–35% size saving is meaningful for page performance, and browser support is now broad enough that you can use WebP without a fallback for most web audiences. The <picture> element allows you to serve WebP with a GIF fallback for older browsers if needed.
Use animated AVIF only when you control the viewing environment and can guarantee Chrome or Firefox. This means internal tools, apps with a known browser requirement, or progressive enhancement where AVIF is served to capable browsers and WebP/GIF as fallbacks. The encoding time for AVIF is significantly longer than WebP or GIF, which matters if you're generating animations on the fly.
The Practical Recommendation
For most web developers in 2025, the best strategy is to produce an optimised GIF as the baseline (using FFmpeg palette optimisation to minimise its size), then also export an animated WebP for modern browsers using the <picture> element. This gives you the best of both worlds: full compatibility via GIF and meaningful bandwidth savings for the majority of your users who are on modern browsers.
AVIF is worth watching but not yet worth the encoding complexity and limited Safari support for most production use cases. Revisit it in 2026 when Safari's animated AVIF support matures.