Have you got an animated WEBP that the place you are posting to will not accept, and you need it as a GIF instead?
This webp to gif converter takes a few seconds. Add the file below and every frame comes across, in the right order and at the right speed, with the loop kept as the WEBP had it. It all happens in your browser, so nothing is uploaded and nothing is stored anywhere.
Your file never leaves this computer. The WEBP is read and the GIF is written in your browser. Nothing is uploaded.
This WEBP has a single frame, so the GIF will be a still picture too.
Why most converters give you one frame
If you have tried a converter and got a still picture out of an animation, this is why.
A browser will decode a WEBP for you, and it hands back one picture: the first frame. There is a newer way to ask for all of them, and Safari does not have it, so a tool built on that alone reads nothing on an iPhone and quietly gives you frame one.
This one opens the file itself, finds every frame inside it, and hands each frame to the browser on its own. That works everywhere, including on a phone.
And why the frames come out in pieces elsewhere
Inside an animated WEBP, only the first frame is a whole picture. The ones after it are usually small patches showing the part that changed, each with its own position and a rule about what to do with the frame underneath.
Think of it as a sheet of tracing paper laid over the last one, with a note saying whether to rub out the old drawing first. Ignore the notes and you get fragments floating on an empty background, which is what people mean when they say the frames came out broken.
Every frame here is built into a full picture first, in playing order, before the GIF is written.
What a GIF cannot carry over
A GIF is an old format and it has three hard limits. None of them is a fault in the converter, and all three are worth knowing before you look at the result and wonder.
256 colours in a frame. A WEBP holds millions. Each frame is cut down to the colours that are actually in it, which is as close as the format allows, and a smooth gradient or a photograph will still show bands.
See-through is on or off. There is no half in a GIF, so a soft shadow or a faded edge becomes either solid or gone. That is why the edge of a see-through GIF looks hard next to the WEBP it came from.
The speed is stored in hundredths of a second. A frame timed at 25 thousandths cannot be written exactly, so it is rounded, and browsers play anything under about two hundredths as a tenth of a second. A very fast WEBP plays slower as a GIF whatever anybody does.
The file will get bigger, usually a lot bigger
WEBP was designed to replace GIF and it is far better at it, so the same animation as a GIF is several times the size. The tool shows you both numbers after it runs, so you can see what it cost.
If the size matters, I recommend half size rather than accepting a heavy file. Halving the width and the height cuts the pixels to a quarter, and on a phone screen most people cannot tell. Our GIF resizer does the same job on a GIF you already have.
When not to convert at all
This will not help if the place you are posting to already accepts WEBP, and most of them now do, including WordPress, Slack and every current browser.
Converting then costs you colours and size for nothing. The honest reasons to make a GIF are an older forum or chat app, an email that must animate, a system that refuses the format, and somebody asking you for a GIF by name.
If you only wanted a still picture out of it, our WEBP to PNG and WEBP to JPG pages are quicker. Our GIF to PNG page pulls the frames out of a GIF as pictures.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does it keep the animation?
Yes. Every frame, the order, the timing of each frame and the loop all come across. A WEBP set to play once becomes a GIF that plays once, rather than one that loops forever.
Is anything uploaded?
No. The file is read and the GIF is written inside your browser, so it never leaves the computer or the phone you are on.
Why does my GIF look grainy?
Because a GIF frame holds 256 colours and your WEBP had far more. Flat colours and drawings come through cleanly, and photographs and gradients are where you see it.
Will it work on a phone?
Yes, in the phone’s browser, and it works in Safari too. A long animation takes longer there than on a computer, because all of the work happens on the device.
How big a file can it take?
It stops at 40 MB, and a very long animation at full size can run out of room in the browser before that. Choosing half size fixes it, since the tool shrinks each frame as it reads it.
What about a still WEBP?
It works and gives you a one frame GIF, and for a still picture PNG or JPG is the better answer. Our WEBP to PNG page does that without the colour loss.
If you have any issues, you can ask me via comment, and I will love to help you out.