What alternatives to animated GIF are there?
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In short, as of 2025, APNG, WebP, and AVIF are all viable alternatives to GIF. While they are not quite as universally supported in image viewers and editors, they are supported by nearly all major web browsers and offer significantly better compression, image quality, and transparency support.
MNG, FLIF and JPEG XL currently have very limited support and are therefore not practical for general use on the web.
Below is a more detailed comparison of each image format that supports animation, along with example files, ordered by browser support.
GIF Graphics Interchange Format
Browser support: ~100%
GIF is the oldest and simplest image format still commonly used on the web. Despite its limited color palette (256 colors per frame), lack of alpha transparency, and relatively large file sizes, it remains widely used nearly 40 years after its introduction. It is still the only animated image format supported by virtually all web browsers, image editors, and image viewers. Learn more about GIF's history and technical details in our What is GIF? article.
This longevity is largely due to the lack of a single, universally accepted replacement. Multiple competing animated image formats exist, along with ongoing debate about whether animation should instead be handled exclusively by video formats. For many years, support for alternative formats was fragmented. Nevertheless, in recent years browser support for APNG, WebP, and AVIF has improved significantly, making them all increasingly viable alternatives to GIF.
GIF image, 781 KB, 67 frames
Ezgif offers many ways to create animated GIFs and optimize GIF file size.
APNG Animated Portable Network Graphics
Browser support: 97.24%
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/APNG
APNG is an extension of the PNG format (although it was originally rejected by the PNG working group). It works similarly to GIF, but supports 24-bit color (millions of colors), an 8-bit alpha channel (partial transparency).
Drawback of APNG is relatively large file sizes (compared to WebP or AVIF), which can be a problem for animated images with many frames.
APNG was introduced in 2008, but adoption remained low for many years, with Firefox being the only major browser to support it. In more recent years, support has expanded to Safari, Chrome, Opera, and Edge. Today, APNG has the broadest browser support among GIF alternatives, with only Internet Explorer and some legacy or embedded browsers lacking support. When viewed in software that does not support APNG, the first frame is typically displayed as a normal PNG image, providing a degree of backward compatibility.
Up-to-date browser support chart: https://caniuse.com/#search=apng.
Ezgif allows you to create APNG files and edit them using most of our tools. See our guide to making animated PNG for step-by-step instructions.
APNG image, 2.18 MB, 67 frames
WebP Modern image format developed by Google
Browser support: 96.96%
https://developers.google.com/speed/webp/
WebP is a newer image format, first announced in 2010. Like APNG, it supports 24-bit color and 8-bit alpha transparency. WebP offers both lossy and lossless compression, allowing either very small file sizes or fully lossless quality. This versatility makes it well suited for both static and animated images.
Because WebP is a completely separate format, unsupported software does not fall back gracefully and will typically display a broken image or alt text. However, WebP is now supported by all major modern browsers except Internet Explorer.
Some websites serve WebP images to supported browsers and fall back to GIF or APNG for others. This approach requires server-side logic or additional configuration, as well as maintaining multiple versions of each image.
Browser support chart: https://caniuse.com/#search=webp.
Ezgif allows you to create, edit, and convert WebP files.
WebP image, 1.19 MB, 67 frames
WebP (higher compression), 531 KB, 67 frames
AVIF AV1 Image File Format
Browser support: 96.19%
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AV1#AV1_Image_File_Format_(AVIF)
AVIF is an image file format for storing still images or image sequences compressed using the AV1 video codec. The AVIF specification was finalized in 2019 and has since quickly gained widespread support across all major web browsers, including Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and Edge.
AVIF offers excellent compression efficiency, often achieving dramatically smaller file sizes than GIF, APNG, or WebP, while supporting both lossy and lossless compression, high bit depth, and full alpha transparency.
Browser support chart: https://caniuse.com/#search=avif.
Ezgif allows you to create, convert, split, and edit AVIF files using most of our tools. Read our complete AVIF guide to learn more about creating and working with animated AVIF images.
AVIF image, 87.4 KB, 67 frames
JXL JPEG XL
Browser support: 14.74%
JPEG XL is a royalty-free image format designed as a long-term replacement for legacy formats such as JPEG and PNG. It supports both lossy and lossless compression, alpha transparency, animation, and high bit depths, while offering excellent compression efficiency.
Browser support remains limited. As of early 2026, Safari is the only major browser with JPEG XL enabled by default, and support is currently limited to still images.
Google Chrome has recently added support for JXL behind a flag, but it is not enabled by default.
Up-to-date support chart: https://caniuse.com/jpegxl.
To enable JPEG XL in Chrome: open chrome://flags/#enable-jxl in your address bar, set "JPEG XL Decoding Support" to Enabled, and restart the browser.
After this, the JXL demo image below should display correctly.
Ezgif allows you to convert video to JXL and convert JXL files to formats such as PNG, JPG, or MP4. Since no major browser currently supports JXL for animated images, the preview of JXL files most likely will not work (unless you have some kind of special configuration/plugin), but you can still generate and download the files.
Most browsers do not support JPEG XL yet,
the image above may not display
MNG Multiple-image Network Graphics
Browser support: 0%
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiple-image_Network_Graphics/
MNG is an animated image format related to PNG and predates APNG. Although some browser vendors experimented with it in the past, it is no longer supported natively by any major web browser.
Despite this, MNG has relatively good tooling support, largely because it is supported by ImageMagick, which is widely used as an image processing backend in many applications.
Ezgif allows you to create MNG files, convert MNG to APNG or GIF, and use MNG with most of our editing tools. However, MNG images are unlikely to display in your browser. Given the current state of support, APNG is generally a more practical choice, though MNG may still be useful in niche scenarios such as certain game engines.
No major browser supports MNG format natively,
a javascript polyfill is in use
Other notable animated image formats
In addition to the formats above, a few other legacy animation formats are still encountered, though they are not commonly used on the web.
ANI Animated Cursor
ANI is Microsoft's animated cursor format, introduced in Windows NT. ANI files contain a sequence of ICO frames with timing information and are primarily used for animated mouse cursors in Windows. Though not an image format in the traditional sense, ANI files are sometimes shared as animated images, particularly in retro computing and pixel art communities.
No web browser supports displaying ANI files natively. Ezgif can convert ANI files to GIF, APNG, or WebP.
FLIC Autodesk Animator FLI/FLC
FLIC (.fli, .flc) is an animation file format created by Autodesk for use with Autodesk Animator and Animator Pro in the early 1990s. It was widely used in DOS-era games, demos, and multimedia presentations. FLI files are limited to 320x200 resolution, while the later FLC variant supports arbitrary resolutions. Both use indexed color (up to 256 colors) with various delta compression schemes.
FLIC files are not supported by any modern web browser or most image viewers. However, they are still encountered in retro computing archives and classic game assets. Ezgif can convert FLIC to GIF and also includes a JavaScript polyfill to display .fli/.flc files directly in the browser.
FLIF Free Lossless Image Format
FLIF is an experimental lossless image format that supports animation, alpha transparency, and progressive decoding. At the time of its introduction it demonstrated impressive compression, but the project has been abandoned since 2020 in favor of JPEG XL, which incorporates many of the same ideas. FLIF is not supported by any browser and the development has ceased, it never gained any traction. Ezgif used to support it, but no longer does since the tooling is not maintained and there were no real use cases for it.