Drop an animated GIF into the box above and the compressed version appears beside the original, with both sizes and how much you saved. Choose a level, compare the two, and download. The work happens in your browser: the GIF is never uploaded, and there is no signup or watermark.
How the compressor makes a GIF smaller
A GIF stores every frame as a picture of up to 256 colors. Most GIFs repeat a lot from one frame to the next, and that is where the savings are:
- Only what changes. After the first frame, each frame stores just the area that changed since the one before, and marks the unchanged pixels inside that area as see-through. A talking head or a moving cursor over a still background shrinks the most.
- One color table. All frames share one table of colors instead of carrying their own, and you can choose how many colors it holds.
- Identical frames merge. A frame that repeats the one before is dropped and its time is added to the previous frame, so the animation plays the same.
- Ignore small changes. In GIFs made from video, every frame carries a little noise, so pixels that look still change slightly all the time. Ignoring changes below a threshold keeps them from being stored over and over.
Best quality, Balanced or Smallest
- Best quality keeps up to 256 colors, smooths gradients and stores every change. For a GIF that already has few colors, the result is identical to the original, just stored more efficiently.
- Balanced uses 128 colors and ignores very small changes. It is the starting point and suits most GIFs.
- Smallest uses 64 colors, turns off gradient smoothing and ignores larger changes. Expect visible banding in gradients and some smearing behind fast movement, in exchange for the smallest file.
More settings
Under More settings you can set each part yourself. Colors goes from 256 down to 16. Ignore small changes runs from off to 60: low values drop the flicker of video noise, high values save more but can smear moving edges. Smooth gradients mixes neighboring colors to hide banding, which costs a little size. Size scales the GIF down to 75%, 50%, 33% or 25%; halving the width and height leaves about a quarter of the pixels. Frames keeps every second or third frame and shows each kept frame for longer, so the animation runs at the same speed but less smoothly.
What makes a GIF big
The size of a GIF grows with its width times its height, its number of frames, and how much changes between frames. A 640 × 360 clip of 100 frames from a video is large because almost every pixel changes in every frame; the same length of a screen recording can be a fraction of that. If you control how the GIF is made, a shorter clip and a smaller size save more than any compression setting. To build a GIF from still images, use the GIF maker; to make the background of a GIF transparent, use the GIF background remover.
Transparent GIFs
GIFs with transparent areas keep each frame whole, because a pixel that has been drawn can't be made see-through again by a later frame. Each frame is still cropped to its visible area and shares the one color table, so transparent GIFs get smaller too, just usually by less than opaque ones.
Still GIFs and other formats
A GIF with one frame is compressed the same way, mainly by its colors. For photos, PNG and JPG files, the image compressor makes smaller WebP, JPG or PNG files; WebP can hold animations too, and the WebP to GIF converter turns an animated WebP into a GIF.
Frequently asked questions
How much smaller will my GIF get?
It depends on the GIF. Screen recordings, cartoons and animations with a still background usually shrink the most, because only the moving parts are stored. GIFs made from video carry noise in every frame, so they need Balanced or Smallest, fewer colors or a smaller size to shrink a lot.
Does the compressed GIF still animate?
Yes. It keeps every frame you keep, each frame's timing and the loop setting. If you drop frames, the frames that remain show for longer, so the animation runs at the same speed.
Is my GIF uploaded?
No. The GIF is compressed inside your browser tab, so it never leaves your device. There is no signup or watermark.
Why is the compressed GIF sometimes bigger?
Some GIFs are already well optimized. The tool then says so instead of pretending to save space; try Smallest, fewer colors, a smaller size or fewer frames.
Does it keep a transparent background?
Yes. Transparent pixels stay transparent. GIF transparency is on or off for each pixel, so soft edges were already hard in the original GIF.
What does Ignore small changes do?
It treats a pixel as unchanged when its color moves only a little from one frame to the next, so flickering noise in video GIFs is no longer stored again and again. Higher values save more but can leave faint smears behind moving edges.