WebP Is Smaller and Better — So Why Isn't Everyone Using It?

As of 2024, WebP is supported by all major browsers including Chrome, Firefox, Edge, Safari (since 2020), and their mobile variants. Global browser support is above 97%. The only meaningful holdout is Internet Explorer 11, which has essentially no usage outside some enterprise environments. For most public websites, WebP can be served without fallbacks. For applications that absolutely must support IE11 or certain enterprise environments, using the <picture> element to serve WebP with JPG/PNG fallback is the standard practice.

Google's research shows WebP files are 25–34% smaller than JPG at equivalent visual quality. Independent testing generally confirms this range, with some images compressing better and some closer to parity. The gains are more consistent for photographs. For images with transparency (like PNG), WebP is typically 25–35% smaller than PNG. In practice, switching a heavily-imaged website from JPG/PNG to WebP usually reduces total image payload by 25–30%, which meaningfully improves page load times.

The main practical downsides: older software may not open WebP files (Photoshop required a plugin until CC 2022, some image editors still don't support it), email clients handle WebP inconsistently (avoid it for email images), and some content management systems and social media platforms convert uploaded WebP to JPG anyway. For web-served images where you control the delivery, the downsides are minimal. For images that will be downloaded and reused by others, sticking with JPG or PNG is more considerate of the recipient's toolset.