GIF to APNG
Convert an animation to APNG — full colour and true transparency, no 256-colour limit.
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Processed securely and deleted within the hour.
What APNG is for
APNG is a PNG that animates. It is lossless, carries 24-bit colour and a full 8-bit alpha channel, and has none of GIF's 256-colour limit or binary transparency. For an animated logo, an icon, a UI element or anything that has to sit cleanly over an unknown background, it is the best-looking option available.
It is also, for the same reasons, considerably larger than a GIF — several times larger on photographic content. That is not a fault; it is what lossless means.
The compatibility situation, honestly
Every current browser plays APNG. Outside the browser it is worse than WebP: a very large amount of software will happily open an APNG, see a valid PNG signature, and display the first frame with no indication that it is missing anything. That silent degradation is the thing to know — an APNG in the wrong place does not break, it just quietly stops moving.
So APNG is a good choice for a web page you control and a poor one for anything you are sending to somebody.
Where it beats animated WebP
Two cases. It is lossless without WebP's occasional size penalty on flat-colour content, and it degrades gracefully — software that does not understand the animation still shows a correct first frame rather than nothing. For an animated favicon or a small looping UI element, both of those matter.
Where it does not
Anything photographic or video-derived. Lossless encoding of noisy content is enormous, and animated WebP or MP4 will be a fraction of the size with no visible difference. If your animation came from a camera, APNG is the wrong format.
Compression effort
The compression setting changes how hard the encoder works, not how much it throws away — every setting produces pixel-identical output. Higher is slower and smaller. There is no quality trade-off to reason about, which is a pleasant change.
Transparency is the real reason to be here
If your animation has soft or anti-aliased edges over transparency, GIF will wreck them into a jagged fringe and there is no setting that prevents it — GIF simply has no partial transparency to store. APNG keeps them exactly. That single difference is what most people converting to APNG are actually here for.
Common questions
Do browsers support APNG?
All current ones, yes. The problem is outside the browser: a great deal of software shows only the first frame, because an APNG is a valid PNG and that is all it sees.
Why is my APNG so much larger than the GIF?
It is lossless with full colour and alpha, where the GIF was reduced to 256 colours and dithered. For photographic content that is a very large difference.
APNG or animated WebP?
WebP for size, especially on photographic content. APNG for lossless flat colour, and when you want software that cannot animate it to still show a correct first frame.
Does the compression setting affect quality?
No. It is lossless at every setting — higher just spends more time to produce a smaller file.
Will transparency work properly?
Yes, including soft anti-aliased edges, which GIF cannot store at all. That is usually the reason to choose APNG.
Can I make an animated favicon with this?
Yes, and it is one of the better uses — browsers animate it and anything that does not shows a valid first frame.