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.
GIF Graphics Interchange Format
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.
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
APNG Animated Portable Network Graphics
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.
APNG image, 2.18 MB, 67 frames
WebP Modern image format developed by Google
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
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.
AVIF image, 87.4 KB, 67 frames
JXL JPEG XL
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 2025, Safari is the only major browser with JPEG XL enabled by default, and support is currently limited to still images. Up-to-date support chart: https://caniuse.com/jpegxl.
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.
JXL demo image: https://ezgif.com/images/format-demo/butterfly.jxl, 1.1 MB, 67 frames.
MNG Multiple-image Network Graphics
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.
MNG demo image: https://ezgif.com/images/format-demo/butterfly.mng, 2.9 MB, 67 frames.
FLIF Free Lossless Image Format
FLIF is an experimental image format that supports lossless compression, animation, alpha transparency, and progressive decoding (allowing a low-quality preview while the image is still downloading). At the time of its introduction, it demonstrated impressive compression results compared to existing formats.
FLIF is not supported natively by any major browser. A JavaScript browser polyfill exists, but it does not fully support animated FLIF files and comes with performance limitations.
Ezgif previously supported FLIF, but this support was removed as the format appears to be abandoned and no longer actively developed, and similar or better formats have since become available.
FLIF image, 699 KB, 67 frames
(rendered using a <canvas> element and Poly FLIF)