DuckConvert · · Updated
What is an AVIF file and why should you use it?
If you run a website or deal with digital photography, you've probably heard about the importance of image compression. For years, JPEG and PNG have been the absolute standards. Recently, WebP has seen massive adoption. But now, there's a new format on the block: AVIF.
What exactly is AVIF?
AVIF stands for AV1 Image File Format. It's an open-source, royalty-free image format based on the AV1 video codec. The Alliance for Open Media (which includes tech giants like Google, Amazon, Netflix, and Apple) developed it to provide superior image compression and quality compared to existing formats.
The Benefits of AVIF
Here is why you should consider migrating your images to the AVIF format:
- Massive File Size Reduction: AVIF files are generally 50% smaller than JPEGs and 20-30% smaller than WebP images at the exact same visual quality.
- Support for Modern Features: AVIF supports HDR (High Dynamic Range), wide color gamuts, and transparency (like PNGs), making it an incredibly versatile format.
- No Royalties: Because it is open-source and royalty-free, developers and businesses can use it without worrying about licensing fees.
- Better Web Performance: Smaller files mean faster loading times, which significantly improves your website's Core Web Vitals and SEO rankings.
Browser Support
As of 2024, AVIF is supported by all major web browsers, including Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Apple Safari, and Microsoft Edge. This means you can confidently use AVIF on your websites without worrying about major compatibility issues.
How to Convert to AVIF
Ready to try AVIF for yourself? You don't need to download any complicated software. With DuckConvert, you can easily and securely convert your existing images to AVIF right in your browser.
- Image Converter — convert JPG, PNG or WebP sources to AVIF
- Convert AVIF to PNG — for when software won't open an AVIF you were sent
Because DuckConvert processes everything locally on your device, your images are never uploaded to a server, guaranteeing 100% privacy and blazing-fast speeds. Start converting today and optimize your digital presence!
What AVIF inherits from video
Understanding why AVIF compresses so well means understanding where it came from. It is not a new image codec so much as a single frame of AV1 video in an image container, and it inherits techniques developed for a much harder problem.
Video codecs spend enormous effort predicting one part of a frame from another, because that is where the savings are. AV1 brought a large intra-prediction toolkit, directional predictors, block sizes that adapt to local detail, transforms chosen per-block. Applied to a still image, all of that machinery is available to describe a photograph in far fewer bits than JPEG's fixed eight-by-eight blocks ever could.
It also explains AVIF's oddities. The format supports film grain synthesis, a video feature that discards actual grain during encoding and regenerates something statistically similar on playback. It is why a grainy photo can shrink dramatically as AVIF: the grain is not being stored, it is being described and reconstituted. Usually this looks fine. Occasionally, for archival or forensic work where the grain pattern is itself information, it is exactly wrong.
Where AVIF is a poor fit
The format is not a universal upgrade, and it is worth knowing the cases where reaching for it costs you.
Encoding is slow and CPU-intensive, again a video inheritance. That is fine in a build step and painful in a request path that generates images on demand.
Very small images can come out larger than their WebP or PNG equivalents, because the container overhead does not shrink with the content. Below a few kilobytes it is worth measuring rather than assuming.
There is no progressive rendering. Where a progressive JPEG paints something early and sharpens, an AVIF arrives all at once, which can feel slower on a poor connection even when fewer bytes moved.
And support outside browsers still lags. Browsers handle AVIF well now, but plenty of desktop software, older operating systems, email clients, print workflows and social platforms do not. An AVIF is a good format to serve from your own site and a poor one to email to somebody or hand to a printer.
Where it sits among the alternatives
JPEG XL is the format most often raised as a competitor, and it is genuinely strong: better progressive rendering, faster encoding, and lossless recompression of existing JPEGs that can be reversed exactly. Its problem is adoption, having been removed from Chrome after a period of support, which left its future on the web unsettled.
WebP remains the pragmatic middle. It compresses well, encodes quickly, is supported essentially everywhere, and has none of AVIF's small-file or encode-cost awkwardness.
The honest summary is that AVIF wins clearly on large photographic images where bytes matter most, and is a wash or a loss elsewhere. That is a good reason to adopt it for hero images and photography while leaving interface assets on something cheaper, rather than migrating a whole library on the strength of a headline compression figure.