WebP to PNG converter

Why you end up with WebP files

Websites serve pictures as WebP because the files are smaller than JPG or PNG at the same look, so pages load faster. When you save a picture from a page, you often get a .webp file, and then an editor, an older program or an upload form refuses it. PNG opens everywhere and keeps everything the WebP had, including transparency.

What the conversion does

The converter decodes the WebP and stores the result as lossless PNG. Nothing is lost on the way: we converted six photos and compared every pixel, and not one value differed. Transparent and half transparent areas come through exactly, so a logo with a soft shadow keeps it.

The PNG is much larger, because PNG stores every pixel exactly while WebP keeps only what the eye notices. Our six photos, 2048 pixels wide and saved as WebP at quality 75, a common setting on websites:

PNG or JPG?

Choose PNG when the picture has transparency, when it is a logo, icon, chart or screenshot, or when you will edit it further. For a photo you only want to send, print or upload, WebP to JPG gives a file a fraction of the PNG's size that opens everywhere just as well. Our article on JPG, PNG, WebP and AVIF compares the four formats on the same photos.

The colours setting

Full colour keeps the conversion exact. For logos, icons and screenshots, which use few colours, 256 or fewer makes the PNG much smaller with no visible change. On photos it does the opposite: in our test a photo at 256 colours came out larger than the full colour PNG and looked grainy, because the dots used to fake the missing colours are hard to compress.

Animated WebP

A PNG holds one picture, so for an animated WebP only the first frame is converted. If you need the animation in a format that opens everywhere, a GIF or a short video is the usual choice.

If something goes wrong

• The PNG is too big to upload. Cap the longest side at 1920 or 1280 pixels, or use WebP to JPG for photos.
• The background turned white somewhere else. The program you opened the PNG in may not show transparency. The transparency is still in the file; open it in an editor or a browser to check.
• The file is refused here. It may not be a WebP at all despite its name. Try the image converter, which reads every common format.

How we tested. Six CC0 photos scaled to 2048 pixels wide, saved as WebP at quality 75 with the libwebp encoder of this site, then converted with the converter's own code in Chrome. Every colour and transparency value of the decoded WebP was compared with the PNG.