Compress images online — free and private.

The most capable browser-based image compressor.

This tool compresses images using industry-leading encoders compiled to WebAssembly — mozJPEG for JPEG, libwebp for WebP, libaom for AVIF, and optimized deflate for PNG. Every format gets its own specialized encoder tuned for maximum compression efficiency. Unlike server-based tools that upload your images to a remote data centre, all processing happens locally in your browser. Your images never travel across the internet — they stay on your device from the moment you drop them until the moment you download the compressed result.

A typical 8-megapixel photo from a modern smartphone is 4-6 MB. Compressed at quality 80, the same image becomes 200-600 KB — a 90% reduction — with no visible difference at normal viewing distances. For websites, this means dramatically faster load times, lower bandwidth costs, and better Core Web Vitals scores. For email attachments, it means your photos arrive sharp and well within attachment limits. For social media, it means uploads that process instantly instead of hanging on "uploading."

Format-specific compression

Each image format has different strengths and optimal use cases. JPEG is ideal for photographs and complex images with smooth gradients — portraits, landscapes, and product shots. PNG excels at images with sharp edges, text overlays, and transparency — logos, screenshots, and UI elements. WebP offers the best all-around balance with 25-35% smaller files than JPEG at the same quality, plus transparency and animation support. AVIF represents the state of the art with 30-50% better compression than WebP, HDR support, and wide colour gamut. GIF is best kept for simple animations; converting to WebP or AVIF typically reduces file size by 60-90%.

Compression modes explained

Our compressor offers three modes to match your workflow. Auto mode applies heuristic defaults — quality 80, metadata stripping, and format-appropriate defaults — for a one-click compress experience. Custom mode gives you full control over quality (1-100), output format, resize dimensions, and metadata preservation. Target-size mode automatically finds the optimal quality setting to hit a specific file size target — for example, compress all images to under 500 KB for email attachments. This mode uses a binary search algorithm to find the highest quality that stays within your limit.

Batch processing and parallel compression

Our compressor processes images using all available CPU cores via Web Workers. A batch of 50 images is split across cores and compressed simultaneously, completing in seconds rather than minutes. There is no hard limit on the number of images you can process at once — the only constraint is your device's available memory. The queue is fully interactive: you can remove individual images, adjust settings per-file, or apply the same settings to everything. When processing is complete, download individual files or the entire batch as a structured ZIP archive that preserves your folder organisation.

Metadata handling and privacy

Images carry hidden metadata that most people never see. EXIF data from cameras includes make and model, lens and focal length, aperture, shutter speed, ISO, and GPS coordinates. IPTC and XMP metadata contain captions, keywords, copyright, and author information. Our compressor can strip all of this automatically — useful for privacy when sharing images online — or preserve it when copyright and provenance must be maintained.

A complete image optimization workflow

Image compression is most effective as part of a broader optimization pipeline. Start by resizing images to their display dimensions — serving a 4000px-wide image in a 600px-wide slot wastes bandwidth. Then crop to the exact aspect ratio you need. Apply the appropriate compression settings for your output format. Finally, convert to a modern format like WebP or AVIF if supported. Our tool ecosystem covers every step of this pipeline, all running locally in your browser with no uploads required.

The real-world impact of image compression is substantial. A photography portfolio with 50 full-resolution images at 5 MB each totals 250 MB. Compressing each to 500 KB brings that down to 25 MB — a 10x reduction that turns a sluggish gallery into a snappy one. An e-commerce catalogue with 1,000 product images at 2 MB each drops from 2 GB to roughly 200 MB. A news site serving 500,000 article views per month with three images per article saves approximately 3 TB of bandwidth monthly — cutting CDN costs by hundreds of dollars. For email marketing, reducing a hero image from 1.5 MB to 300 KB means it renders instantly instead of showing a broken placeholder while the recipient waits. Social media managers compressing batches of 30-50 images before uploading can cut monthly bandwidth from several gigabytes to a few hundred megabytes, keeping team workflows fast and cloud storage bills low.

Understanding which format to use for which image type is the difference between good compression and great compression. High-detail photographs — landscapes with foliage, cityscapes with brickwork, or macro shots with fine texture — benefit most from quality settings of 85-95 in JPEG, WebP, or AVIF. Smooth-gradient images like portraits, skies, or product shots on seamless backgrounds compress extremely well at quality 60-75 because large areas of similar colour are efficiently encoded. Screenshots and images with text overlays should use PNG with lossless compression or WebP with alpha channel to preserve sharp edges and prevent the blocking artefacts that JPEG introduces around high-contrast boundaries. Icons and simple graphics with fewer than 256 colours compress best as 8-bit PNG or WebP with palette reduction. Matching the format and quality to the image content is the most impactful optimisation you can make — and our compressor gives you the tools and preview to get it right every time.

How to compress images — step by step

1. Drop your images. Drag files onto the upload area or click to browse. 2. Choose your mode. Auto for one-click, Custom for full control, or Target-size for a specific file size. 3. Preview. Drag the comparison slider to verify quality on any image. 4. Download. Save individual files or everything as a ZIP.

Need format-specific help? Try our dedicated JPEG compressor, PNG compressor, WebP compressor, and AVIF compressor pages. For batch jobs, use the bulk compressor. Compare formats with our WebP vs AVIF comparison and lossy vs lossless guide.