JPG to WEBP Converter
WEBP usually stores the same photo in 25-35% fewer bytes than JPG, which is why it is worth doing for anything you serve over a network. This converter re-encodes each file at quality 0.9 in your browser and reports the exact size change per image. Because a JPG is already lossy, this is a second compression pass, not a free lunch.
Click to choose files or drag and drop
Supported types: image/jpeg, .jpg, .jpeg (Max: 50 MB)
Which JPGs actually get smaller
The 25-35% figure holds best for large, high-quality photos: camera originals, detailed screenshots, hero images exported at quality 90 or above. Those still have redundancy left for a better encoder to exploit. The win shrinks fast as the source gets more compressed. A JPG already exported at quality 60, or already squeezed by an optimizer, has had its fine detail discarded, and asking WEBP to faithfully reproduce the remaining blocking and ringing artifacts at 0.9 can cost more bytes than the original used. Small images lose out for a second reason: a few hundred bytes of container overhead matter on a 4 KB thumbnail and are invisible on a 4 MB photo. Quality here is fixed at 0.9 with no slider, which is a deliberate safe default for photographs. If you are chasing a specific kilobyte budget, or you want lossless WEBP, use an encoder that lets you set the number yourself.
Everything except the pixels is discarded
The conversion decodes your JPG, paints it onto a canvas, and asks the browser to encode that canvas as WEBP. Only pixels survive the trip. EXIF camera settings, capture date, GPS coordinates, IPTC and XMP copyright fields, and any embedded ICC color profile are all absent from the output. For images headed to a public website that is mostly a feature, since it strips location data you probably never meant to publish. It is a real loss in two cases. If you depend on embedded credit or licence fields, export those separately before converting. And if the source was tagged Adobe RGB or Display P3, the untagged result gets interpreted as sRGB, so saturated reds and greens can drift; convert to sRGB first. Rotation is the one tag that gets applied rather than lost, because the image is baked to canvas exactly as your browser drew it.
Where WEBP still bites
Browser support stopped being the issue years ago. Chrome, Safari, Firefox, and Edge all decode WEBP, as do Android and iOS. The friction now lives outside the browser. Older desktop applications, some print and prepress workflows, a handful of email clients, and the upload forms on certain marketplaces and job portals will still reject a .webp file or fail to preview it. So the sensible split is WEBP for anything delivered over a network, where the bytes are the whole point, and JPG for attachments, submissions, and anything a stranger will open in software you do not control. Keep your originals either way. The detail this pass removes cannot be restored by converting back.
How to convert JPG to WEBP
- Drop in your JPG or JPEG files. There is no limit on how many, and each one can be up to 50 MB.
- Press Convert to WEBP. Images are encoded one at a time at quality 0.9, so a big batch is paced by your own hardware rather than a queue on someone's server.
- Read the size badge on each row. Green means the WEBP came out smaller; amber with a plus sign means the re-encode grew the file and you should keep the JPG.
- Download files individually, or take everything as filekit-webp.zip once at least two have converted. Filenames are preserved and only the extension changes.
Frequently Asked Questions
Some of my files got bigger. Why?
That happens when the source JPG was already heavily compressed, or when it is very small to begin with. WEBP at quality 0.9 tries to reproduce what it is handed, including the compression artifacts the earlier JPG encoder left behind, and encoding those faithfully takes bits. The badge on each row tells you the truth per file: green means you gained, amber with a plus sign means you did not. When it is amber, keep the JPG and move on.
How much quality does this actually cost?
More than zero, and it is permanent. Your JPG already threw away detail the first time it was saved, and this adds a second lossy pass on top of whatever survived. At quality 0.9 the added damage is hard to spot on a normal photo at normal viewing size, but it accumulates, so avoid round-tripping the same image between formats over and over. Keep the original as your master copy.
Does the WEBP keep my EXIF data and color profile?
No. The output holds pixels and nothing else, so camera model, capture date, GPS position, copyright fields, and any embedded ICC profile do not carry over. That is useful when you are publishing images you would rather not geotag, and unhelpful when you need credit metadata to travel with the file. If the original was in a wide-gamut space such as Adobe RGB, convert it to sRGB first, because the untagged result will be read as sRGB regardless.
Where do my photos go while this runs?
Nowhere. This is a static site with no upload endpoint and no backend capable of receiving an image; the work is done by your own browser's canvas and WEBP encoder, and the result sits in memory until you save it. If you would rather verify that than take our word for it, open your browser's network panel and watch it stay silent through a conversion, or disconnect from the internet once the page has loaded and convert anyway. Closing the tab discards everything.
What if a file will not convert?
Each file is handled on its own, so one failure does not stop the batch; that row shows the reason and the remaining files still finish. Empty files, files over 50 MB, and anything whose type or extension is not JPG are turned away before conversion starts. A file that only claims to be a JPG gets as far as decoding and then fails with a message saying it could not be read as an image. Pictures beyond roughly 268 megapixels are refused too, because that is more than a browser canvas can hold, and on the rare browser that can display WEBP but not create it you get an explicit unsupported-encoding message rather than a silent failure.