Three formats animate images on the web, and they are good at different things: GIF at being accepted everywhere, WebP at being small, APNG at looking perfect. Pick by destination — here is the honest map, with a converter for every direction.
The one-paragraph verdicts
GIF (1989): 256 colours, all-or-nothing transparency, big files — and flawless support everywhere from Outlook to WhatsApp. Use it when you cannot control where the file will be viewed. WebP (animated, 2013): full 24-bit colour, alpha, and typically 3–5× smaller than the same GIF. Use it on the web — sites, docs, READMEs — where every modern browser renders it. APNG (2008): full colour and real alpha in a PNG, quality-first at the cost of size. Use it for stickers and UI animations where edges and gradients must be perfect.
Converting between them
- Shrinking a heavy GIF, or turning a clip into a web-friendly animation: Video to WebP — it takes GIFs too, making it a GIF→WebP compressor.
- Upgrading a GIF's quality (banding, jagged edges): GIF to APNG keeps the animation and timing, drops the 256-colour ceiling.
- A WebP that won't paste into email or a doc: WebP to GIF recovers universal compatibility, animation intact.
- Video into the classic format: Video to GIF, with palette optimisation per clip.
All conversions run on FFmpeg in your browser — nothing uploads.
Why the size gap is so large
GIF compresses each frame with a 1987 algorithm and a 256-colour palette; WebP uses modern video-style prediction between frames. On a typical screen recording that is the difference between 8 MB and 1.5 MB — visible in page load times and in chat-app upload limits. The palette limit also explains GIF's look: gradients band because 256 colours must cover the whole image. When a GIF must stay a GIF, resizing it smaller is the honest size lever.