WebP Is the Image Format You Should Be Using (With Fallbacks)

A JPEG image at acceptable quality is typically 200-400KB for a full-width hero image. The same image in WebP is 100-200KB -- roughly 25-34% smaller with no visible quality difference. For a page with 10 images, that is 1-2MB of savings. For users on mobile data, that is the difference between a page that loads in 2 seconds and one that loads in 4. WebP is not new. Google released it in 2010. But adoption was slow because Safari did not support it until 2020 (macOS Big Sur / iOS 14). Now, in 2026, WebP is supported by every current browser. The compatibility excuse is gone. How WebP achieves smaller files WebP uses a more efficient compression algorithm than JPEG. Specifically: Better spatial prediction. WebP predicts each block of pixels from neighboring blocks, then stores only the prediction error. Its prediction modes are more flexible than JPEG's DCT-based approach. Adaptive block sizing. JPEG uses fixed 8x8 pixel blocks. WebP uses variable block sizes (4x4 to 16x16), choosing the