Convert GIF to WebM
Free online converter for GIF files. Open, royalty-free format optimised for the web. Nothing to install, no watermark, and every file is deleted automatically.
Drag and drop your files
or
Upload a GIF file to convert it to WebM. Up to 3 files at once, 100 MB each.
Free · up to 3 files · 100 MB each · files deleted automatically after 1 hour.
About GIF and WEBM
GIF .gif
A 1987 format that survives for one reason: it animates, and it plays everywhere without a video player. Its palette is capped at 256 colours per frame.
Good for
- Animation that works in any browser and any chat app
- Lossless within its 256-colour palette
- Universally supported after nearly four decades
Trade-offs
- 256 colours means visible banding on photographs
- Transparency is on-or-off per pixel, so edges look jagged
- Far larger than a real video file for the same clip
image/gif
WebM .webm
An open container built for the web, holding VP8, VP9 or AV1 video with Vorbis or Opus audio. Royalty-free by design.
Good for
- Open and royalty-free
- Smaller than H.264 MP4 at similar quality
- Supports transparency, which MP4 does not
Trade-offs
- Weaker support in desktop editors and older devices
- Slower to encode than H.264
- Not the safe choice for sending a file to someone
video/webm
GIF and WEBM side by side
| GIF | WEBM | |
|---|---|---|
| Compression | Lossless, 256-colour palette | Lossy (VP9 or AV1) |
| Transparency | Yes — 1-bit, no partial | Yes — with VP9 or AV1 |
| Animation | Yes | n/a |
| Typically used for | Short loops, reaction clips, simple animations | Web video, background loops with transparency |
What changes when you convert GIF to WEBM
Transparency is flattened
GIF carries an alpha channel and WEBM has none, so anything transparent has to become a solid colour. We composite onto white. If the image was designed to sit over a coloured background, convert to a format that keeps alpha instead — or expect a white box around it.
What your WEBM will contain
The output is VP9 video with Opus audio — both are royalty-free, which is the reason WebM exists — VP9 encodes considerably slower than H.264, so expect a longer wait than the same clip as MP4.
A far smaller file, the same 256 colours
Video compression is enormously better suited to motion than GIF is, so the WEBM will typically be a fraction of the size. What it will not be is more colourful: the palette was reduced when the GIF was made, and the banding is already baked into the frames. The result also gains an audio track it has nothing to put in, and will not autoplay silently everywhere a GIF does.
Other GIF conversions
Other ways to get WebM
Worth reading next
GIF is a terrible video format, and sometimes the right one
A three-second GIF can be larger than the minute-long video it came from. Here is why that happens, and the narrow set of cases where GIF still wins anyway.
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Where your transparent background went
Transparency is the property most often lost silently in a conversion — the file looks perfect until it lands on a coloured background and grows a white rectangle.
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