Will the WebP be bigger or smaller than my HEIC?

HEIC and WebP are both modern, highly efficient image formats - But they live in different worlds. HEIC is Apple's camera capture format; no web browser will display it in an tag. WebP is Google's web delivery format with over 97% global browser support. Converting HEIC to WebP is the natural step when iPhone photos need to be published on a website: you keep small, efficient files while gaining universal browser compatibility.

Because both formats use sophisticated modern compression, the size change is modest - Unlike converting to JPG or PNG, a WebP is typically only slightly larger than the source HEIC at equivalent visual quality. WebP also supports alpha transparency, so any transparency in the HEIC carries across. For web developers, small WebP files translate directly into better Core Web Vitals scores - Particularly Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) - And lower bandwidth costs.

As of 2025, WebP is supported in all versions of Chrome, Firefox, Edge, Opera, and Safari 14+. That makes WebP the safe choice for serving iPhone photography on the web, where uploading raw HEIC files would simply fail to render for every visitor.

Reasons to convert HEIC to WebP usually come down to compatibility, file-size, or specific feature requirements. Common situations:

• An app or platform only accepts WebP uploads.
• You need a feature unique to WebP (e.g. transparency, vector scaling, animation, multi-page pages, etc.) that HEIC doesn't provide.
• You're optimising file size — modern formats often produce smaller files than the older format you started with.
• You need a single archival format across a project so files behave consistently in the same viewer.

1. Open the HEIC → WebP tool on heic.now.
2. Drag your HEIC file onto the drop zone, or click Select files. You can drop a whole folder of files at once.
3. The output is fixed to WebP. If the format supports extra options (page size, transparency background, quality, EXIF stripping), tweak them in the right-hand panel.
4. Click Convert. The job runs on our server and finishes in a few seconds for typical photos.
5. Download the result. Files stay in storage for 24 hours and are then permanently deleted.

The entire flow is free for the first 10 jobs per day with no signup required. A free account doubles that quota; a premium plan removes the limit entirely.

• Target 80–85% WebP quality for web images - This preserves the visual quality of the iPhone original at web-appropriate file sizes.
• Use WebP for hero images, product photos, and any image loaded above the fold - These have the greatest impact on page load speed.
• Transparency in the HEIC source is preserved in the WebP output - Both formats support a full alpha channel.
• Run a quick visual comparison before deploying - Open the original and the WebP side-by-side at 1:1 zoom to confirm quality is acceptable.
• If your CMS or upload form rejects HEIC (most do), converting the whole shoot to WebP in one batch is the fastest route to web-ready assets.