JPG vs PNG vs WebP: Which Image Format Should You Use?

Three formats cover almost every image you will ever handle. Picking the wrong one costs you either file size or quality, and usually you cannot tell which until it is too late.

Here is the short version, then the reasoning.

The short version

Use	Format	Why
Photographs	JPG	Smallest files for photographic content, supported everywhere
Screenshots, logos, sharp edges	PNG	Lossless, no artefacts around text, supports transparency
Anything on a website you control	WebP	25-35% smaller than PNG, and smaller than JPG too
Work in progress	PNG	Lossless, so repeated saves do not degrade it

JPG: lossy, universal, best for photographs

JPG discards data to achieve its size, and it is very good at discarding the data you are least likely to miss in a photograph — subtle colour variation across smooth gradients like skin and sky.

It is the wrong choice for two things:

• Text and sharp edges. JPG produces visible halos around high-contrast boundaries. A screenshot saved as JPG looks noticeably worse than the same screenshot as PNG, at a larger file size.
• Anything you will edit again. Every save discards more. Five rounds of edit-and-resave and the damage is obvious. If you are still working on an image, convert it to PNG first.

JPG also has no transparency at all. A logo exported as JPG arrives with a white box around it.

PNG: lossless, transparent, larger

PNG stores every pixel exactly. Nothing is discarded, no matter how many times you save it. That makes it right for screenshots, diagrams, logos, icons, and anything with an alpha channel.

The cost is size. A photograph saved as PNG can easily be five times its JPG equivalent for no visible benefit, because lossless compression cannot match what JPG achieves by throwing information away.

One thing PNG cannot do: recover what JPG already destroyed. Converting a heavily compressed JPG to PNG preserves it faithfully, artefacts included. It stops further loss; it does not undo past loss.

WebP: the modern default for the web

WebP does both jobs — it has a lossy mode that competes with JPG and a lossless mode with transparency that competes with PNG — and it beats both on size. Typically 25-35% smaller than PNG at comparable quality, and meaningfully smaller than JPG too.

Browser support stopped being a concern years ago: Chrome, Firefox, Safari and Edge all handle it, on desktop and mobile.

So why is anything still PNG? Because WebP is awkward off the web. Plenty of desktop editors, print shops, photo services and upload forms still refuse it. That is the one real limitation, and it is why the two most useful conversions are opposite each other:

• PNG to WebP — when the image is going on a page you control
• WebP to JPG — when something downstream will not accept WebP

The rule that covers most cases

Photograph on the web? WebP, falling back to JPG. Photograph going anywhere else? JPG. Anything with text, sharp edges or transparency? PNG on the desktop, WebP on the web. Still editing it? PNG, always, until you are finished.

And whichever you land on, resize it to the size it will actually be displayed at before you compress it. Format choice is worth a lot less than not shipping a 4000-pixel image into an 800-pixel slot.