Updated July 2026 · 4 min read
Images are usually the heaviest thing on a web page — often 60–80% of the total download. Compressing them properly is the single fastest way to speed up a site, improve Core Web Vitals, and rank better in search. Here's how to do it right.
Format matters more than any quality slider:
| Format | Best for | Typical size |
|---|---|---|
| WebP | Almost everything: photos, screenshots, graphics | 25–35% smaller than JPEG |
| JPEG | Photos when WebP isn't an option (old email clients) | baseline |
| PNG | Only when you need lossless quality or transparency that WebP can't serve | often 5–10× larger than WebP |
Every modern browser has supported WebP since 2020. Unless you have a specific reason not to, convert to WebP.
A camera photo is typically 4000+ pixels wide, but the largest it will ever display on a website is about 1920 pixels — and just 800 or so inside a blog column. Resizing to the actual display width often cuts file size by 80% before any quality compression is applied. As a rule of thumb, export images at 2× the width they'll be displayed at (for sharp rendering on high-DPI screens) and no more.
Lossy compression quality is a curve of diminishing returns. Between 100 and 85 the file shrinks dramatically with no visible difference; below about 60, artifacts appear around edges and gradients. The sweet spot for almost all web images is quality 70–85.
You don't need Photoshop or a paid service. Our free image compressor runs entirely in your browser: drop an image, choose WebP, set the quality slider, watch the live before/after preview, and download. Your files never leave your device — there's no upload, no account, and no watermark.
⚡ Compress an image now — free & private