JPG vs AVIF
| Property | JPG | AVIF |
|---|---|---|
| Full name | JPEG (Joint Photographic Experts Group) | AV1 Image File Format |
| File extensions | .jpg, .jpeg, .jpe | .avif |
| Created by | Joint Photographic Experts Group (ISO and ITU) | Alliance for Open Media (Google, Netflix, Apple, Microsoft and others) |
| Introduced | 1992 | 2019 |
| Compression | Lossy: each save throws away detail you rarely notice | Lossy or lossless (AV1); often smaller than WebP at the same quality |
| Transparency | No | Yes |
| Animation | No | Yes |
| Typical size | About 2–5 MB for a 12-megapixel phone photo | — |
| Opens on | Every phone, computer, browser, printer and upload form | Chrome 85+, Firefox 93+, Safari 16+; many desktop apps and upload forms cannot open it yet |
| Best for | Photos you share, print or upload anywhere | The smallest high-quality images on the web |
Why convert JPG to AVIF?
Images are usually the heaviest part of a web page, and AVIF is currently the most efficient format every major browser can show (Chrome 85+, Firefox 93+, Safari 16+). Swapping JPGs for AVIF is one of the quickest ways to improve Largest Contentful Paint on image-heavy pages.
Two things to know. First, AVIF encoding is slow: a 12-megapixel photo can take several seconds, and a batch of fifty a few minutes on a laptop. That is the price of the small files. Second, AVIF is a web format. Email, Office documents, print shops and many apps still cannot open it, so keep your JPG originals and serve AVIF from your site, ideally with a JPG or WebP fallback in a <picture> element.
The quality slider here is matched to JPG's scale, so 80 gives roughly the look of a JPG at 80. If your platform does not accept AVIF, JPG to WebP gets most of the saving with wider support.