APNG vs WebP
APNG favors fidelity and tooling familiarity. Animated WebP often favors byte size. Pick based on whether visual exactness or transfer cost dominates your use case.
Visual quality
APNG: Lossless, PNG-grade output and predictable alpha behavior.
WebP: Can be lossless or lossy; lossy mode may introduce artifacts.
Compression efficiency
APNG: Usually larger than optimized animated WebP.
WebP: Typically smaller for photo-like or noisy animations.
Editing workflow
APNG: Excellent for design assets and UI animation pipelines.
WebP: Great for delivery optimization and web performance budgets.
Decoder expectations
APNG: PNG-compatible tooling often works with first-frame fallback.
WebP: Requires WebP-capable pipeline end to end.
Practical recommendation
Use APNG while producing assets and reviewing quality. Convert final delivery files to animated WebP when you need tighter payloads for production web pages.