Convert HEIC to WEBP — keep the small file size, gain browser support
Drop a HEIC photo below and get a WEBP that every modern browser can display, at a fraction of the size a JPG would cost you. Runs entirely in your browser.
Your file is processed entirely in your browser. Nothing is uploaded.
If your photos come off an iPhone and end up on a website, HEIC to WEBP is the conversion that actually makes sense. The obvious move — converting to JPG — works, but it throws away the single best property of your source file: HEIC photos are small. A JPG of the same photo at the same visual quality is typically twice the size, and on a page where images dominate the payload, that difference lands directly on your Largest Contentful Paint. WEBP is the format that keeps you close to HEIC’s efficiency while being readable by every browser shipped since 2020.
The pipeline runs entirely on your device. libheif, compiled to WebAssembly and executed in a Web Worker, decodes the HEVC-compressed image out of its HEIF container. The resulting pixels are then encoded as WEBP by your browser’s own encoder at the quality you select. Because you control the quality slider, you can tune the output for exactly what the page needs — 80 for hero images, 70 for thumbnails and gallery grids, 90 when the photo is the product. No upload, no queue, no server ever sees the file.
How to convert HEIC to WEBP in 4 steps
- 1
Select your HEIC photo
Drop the .heic or .heif file into the dropzone above, or click to browse. Photos exported from an iPhone, iPad, or Apple Photos all work directly.
- 2
Choose a WEBP quality
For web publishing, 80 is the sweet spot on photographs and 70 is usually fine for thumbnails. Push to 90 only when the image is the main subject of the page and every detail counts.
- 3
Let the decoder and encoder run
libheif unpacks the HEIC in a background worker, then your browser encodes WEBP natively. A 12-megapixel photo completes in one to three seconds on a modern device.
- 4
Download your WEBP
Save the file and drop it straight into your site, CMS, or asset pipeline. Compare the size against the original — in most cases it is within striking distance of the HEIC.
HEIC vs WEBP: two modern codecs, one crucial difference
HEIC and WEBP are technically close cousins: both wrap a still image compressed by a video codec. HEIC uses HEVC (H.265, 2013), WEBP uses VP8 (2008, with VP9-derived lossless mode). HEVC is the more advanced of the two, so at identical visual quality a HEIC file is typically 15 to 30 percent smaller than the equivalent WEBP. On raw compression, HEIC wins. But compression is not the only variable that matters when a photo has to be displayed. HEVC is encumbered by a patent pool that charges licensing fees, and browser vendors will not ship a decoder they have to pay for — which is why Chrome, Firefox, and Edge cannot display a HEIC file at all, and why Safari is the sole exception. WEBP was released royalty-free by Google specifically to avoid that trap, and it has been supported in every major browser since Safari 14 in 2020. So the comparison comes down to this: HEIC is slightly better compression that no browser will render, WEBP is slightly worse compression that every browser will. For anything destined for a web page, that is not a close call.
When should you convert HEIC to WEBP?
Publishing iPhone photos on a website
Product shots, portfolio images, blog illustrations, restaurant menus — anything photographed on a phone and destined for the web should be served as WEBP rather than a bloated JPG.
Protecting your Core Web Vitals
Images usually make up the majority of a page’s bytes and are usually the LCP element. Shipping WEBP instead of JPG typically cuts image weight 25 to 35 percent, which shows up directly in your LCP score.
Uploading to a modern CMS
WordPress has accepted WEBP uploads natively since 5.8, and Shopify, Webflow, Ghost, and most headless CMS platforms handle it too. None of them accept HEIC.
Cutting CDN and storage costs
On an image-heavy site, a 30 percent reduction in average image weight is a 30 percent reduction in bandwidth billed. For a photo gallery or catalogue, that is real money every month.
Frequently asked questions
- Why not just publish the HEIC file directly?
- Because no browser except Safari can render it. Chrome, Firefox, and Edge will show a broken image icon, which means the large majority of your visitors would see nothing at all. HEIC is a storage format for Apple devices, not a delivery format for the web — there is no fallback or polyfill that changes this.
- Which browsers support WEBP?
- All of them, in practice. Chrome since 2010, Firefox since 65 (2019), Edge since 18, and Safari since 14 (2020) on both macOS and iOS. Global support sits above 96 percent. The remaining gap is old Internet Explorer and long-unsupported mobile browsers.
- How does the WEBP size compare to the original HEIC?
- At quality 80, WEBP output usually lands within 20 to 40 percent of the HEIC size, sometimes larger, sometimes smaller depending on the photo. That is dramatically better than JPG, which typically doubles the HEIC size at comparable quality.
- Should I convert to WEBP or AVIF for my website?
- AVIF compresses better — usually another 20 percent below WEBP — but browser support arrived later and encoding is much slower. WEBP is the safe default in 2026: near-universal support, fast encoding, and a large improvement over JPG. Use AVIF when you have a build pipeline that can generate both and serve them with a picture element.
- Is the conversion done on a server?
- No. The HEIC decoder is WebAssembly running in your browser tab, and WEBP encoding uses your browser’s built-in encoder through the Canvas API. Your photos are processed on your own hardware and never transmitted anywhere.