Same loop, usually lighter, and no more speckled gradients.
This page decodes your GIF itself, rebuilds each frame as shown, has your browser encode each frame as WebP, and assembles the animated WebP chunk by chunk, storing only the rectangle that changed. In mixed mode each frame is encoded both lossy and lossless and the smaller kept, as gif2webp -mixed does. It then decodes the result again to check it, and says plainly when the GIF stays smaller. Open a GIF, or try one of three built here: a flat cartoon, a dithered gradient and a screen recording.
With only 256 colours, GIF encoders fake smooth gradients by scattering pixels of neighbouring colours (dithering). WebP has no colour limit, so that speckle is now pure cost: a lossy encoder spends bits copying it, and a lossless one can't predict it. Smoothing the frames before encoding brings the gradient back and the size down. All three files here come from the same dithered GIF.
The first rows test the file this page just made in the browser you're using. The rest are first versions that play animated WebP. Some places (many email clients, older chat apps, some CMSes) still expect GIF. For social sharing, video (MP4) is often smaller still.
Yes, GIF to WebP conversion is completely free with no signup, no watermark, and no usage limit. Convert as many files as you need.
No. The GIF to WebP converter runs in your browser when your file is supported there, so the file stays on your device for that workflow, reducing server exposure for that workflow. Check which processing mode is in use before you upload anything sensitive.
Most GIF to WebP conversions finish in under a minute. Larger files take proportionally longer, but everything happens locally so there is no sign-up wait.
That comes down to the formats at each end. A lossless conversion changes nothing you can measure. A lossy one shaves the file down and takes a small amount of quality with it.
Yes. The GIF to WebP converter works on phones, tablets, and desktops in any modern browser including Chrome, Safari, Firefox, and Edge.