GIF Compressor
Reduce the size of animated and still GIFs with our GIF Compressor. Set the palette size from 2 to 256 colors, control the amount of Floyd-Steinberg dithering, and lower the quality to let nearly unchanged pixels reuse the previous frame. Every frame, delay and the loop count are kept, and identical frames are merged. Great for chat, documentation and email animations.
Frequently asked questions
How does the GIF Compressor make GIFs smaller?
It rebuilds the GIF with a palette of the size you choose, optional dithering and frame differencing. Pixels that barely change between frames are stored as transparent so the previous frame shows through, and consecutive identical frames are merged into one frame with their delays added together. Fewer colors and less change between frames give much smaller files.
What does the colors setting do?
Colors sets the maximum palette size, from 2 to 256, with a default of 128. Fewer colors mean smaller files, but gradients and photos start to look posterized below about 64 colors. Simple screen recordings and cartoons often look fine with 32 colors or fewer.
What does dithering do?
Dithering mixes palette colors in fine patterns to imitate colors that are not in the palette, which hides banding in gradients. It runs from 0 to 100 percent and defaults to 100. Lower values produce flatter colors and usually smaller files, because noise patterns compress poorly.
How does the quality setting work for GIF?
GIF has no quality setting of its own, so quality controls how much change between frames is ignored. At 100, every changed pixel is stored exactly; lower values let small color differences reuse the previous frame, up to the encoder maximum at quality 1. The default of 80 removes flicker noise from video based GIFs with little visible change.
Are animation timing and looping preserved?
Yes. Every frame keeps its delay and the GIF keeps its loop count. When two consecutive frames are identical they are merged into one frame whose delay is the sum of both, so the animation plays exactly as long as before.
Can I upload animated WebP or still images?
Yes. Animated WebP becomes an animated GIF with the same frames and delays. JPEG, PNG, TIFF and AVIF uploads, and still WebP images, become a single frame GIF.
What are the limits?
Uploads can be up to 5 MB. Animations can have up to 300 frames, up to 2000 pixels per side and up to 16 megapixels across all frames. Still images larger than 4000 pixels per side are scaled down to fit.
Why does my compressed GIF look grainy?
Graininess comes from dithering with a small palette. Lower the dither value for flatter colors, or raise the number of colors. For photographic animations, an animated WebP made with the WebP Compressor gives much better quality at the same size.
Does transparency survive compression?
Yes, transparent areas stay transparent. GIF supports only fully transparent or fully opaque pixels, so semi-transparent edges become either solid or clear.
How long does compression take?
Small GIFs finish in a second or two. Long animations with many colors take longer because a palette is computed for every frame, and processing stops after 60 seconds. If that happens, reduce the frame size with the GIF Resizer first.