alt Hacker News> Animated PNGs can't beat GIF nevermind video compression algorithms.
Not entirely true, it depends on what's being displayed, see a few simple tests specifically constructed to show how much better APNG can be vs GIF and {,lossy} webp: http://littlesvr.ca/apng/gif_apng_webp.html
Of course I don't think it generalizes all that well…
Replies
bmacho • 06/25/2025
I tried these examples on ezgif, and indeed apng manages to be smaller than webp every single time. Weird, I was under the impression that webp was almost always smaller? Is this because GIF images are already special, or apng uses better compression than png?
edit: using the same ezgif webp and apng on a H.264 source, apng is suddenly 10x the size than webp. It seems apng is only better if the source is gif
➕ show 3 replies
You're correct and I was considering adding a footnote that if you use indexed colors like a GIF then PNG can beat GIF due to better compression algorithms. But when most people think of APNG they think of lossless compression rather than lossy compression.