Images can help a blog post, but they can also slow it down. If your WordPress site still uses large PNG or JPG files, switching to WebP images for WordPress can make pages load faster and keep visitors around longer.
That can improve user experience and may enhance search visibility, which matters when every click counts. You’ll see why the format works so well and how to use it on your site.
Table of Contents
Key Takeaways
- WebP images are significantly smaller than JPEG and PNG files, often 25–35% smaller than JPEG and up to 50% smaller than PNG, which reduces page weight, storage, and bandwidth.
- Switching to WebP delivers faster loading times, better Core Web Vitals scores, and improved user experience while helping your SEO.
- WordPress has had full native WebP support since version 5.8 (2021). You can upload .webp files directly on modern sites (6.x or 7.0+). Plugins are mainly needed for bulk-converting existing libraries.
- For best results on image-heavy sites, combine WebP with a lightweight optimizer like ShortPixel, Imagify, EWWW, or Jetpack Boost; many now support AVIF for even greater compression.
- Using WebP is now a standard best practice in 2026. It’s one of the easiest ways to make your WordPress site faster without sacrificing image quality.
What’s The Image Format?
The WebP format is a web-based image format that provides lossy compression for web images.
The WebP format was developed by Google and outperforms JPEG in file size while still providing quality comparable to PNG. (Not to mention, the PNG image format has the highest grade image quality as of now).
To be precise, WebP is way smaller than other image formats. It is 26% smaller than the other kind, PNG. WebP images are also 25-34% smaller than JPEG images at the same quality level. That’s a lot.
This means if you have 1GB of JPEG images on your WordPress site, you can store the same number of images in just 650MB of space on your server. That i,s if you’re using WebP format instead of plain old JPEG.
7 Reasons for Using WebP Images In WordPress
1: Reduce the file size of your images by up to 50%
By converting your images to the WebP format, you can reduce their size by up to 35% for JPEGs and 50% for PNGs.
Large files also take time to load completely & if they exceed 500KB, they can slow the website entirely. Who wants heavy files that take up too much space & consume your server bandwidth?
2: Consume Less Storage Space
The second obvious reason to use WebP is that it uses less storage. Many server companies charge their clients an additional fee for upgraded storage space.
“But with WebP enabled, you can save 35% of your overall hosting costs.”
3: Use Less Bandwidth
Bandwidth and storage space are 2 different things.
In simple words, bandwidth refers to a lane through which data can be transferred from the server to your users on the web. Suppose you’ve got 1GB of server bandwidth; the maximum number of files you can transfer in 1 go shouldn’t exceed 1GB. And images make up the most part.
A smaller image size uses less bandwidth, saving your server resources and allowing them to be better utilized for other processing tasks.
Not only does your server transfer images, but it also sends other important data. If the image size is large, it’ll consume a lot of bandwidth, leaving less room for other files (such as text) to be transferred.
4: Image SEO And Google Guidelines Compliant
Since the WebP image format was officially released by Google & they’ve also claimed that WebP is optimized for images on the web. In Google Page Speed Insights, you also get to see a repeated recommendation that “Try To Use WebP images.”
Thus, using WebP versions of images rather than JPEG or PNG tends to perform better in image SEO because it complies with Google guidelines. This also helps them drive traffic to your blog, not only from Google search but also from image search.
5: Faster Loading Web Pages
As stated, WebP lossless images are smaller. They highly reduce your page loading times.
Also, a smaller file size takes less time to get transferred from the server to your client browsers. On my personal website, switching from PNG to WebP reduced loading time by 2.5 seconds.
Then, my page size was reduced from 2MB to 700KB, saving bandwidth & decreasing loading times. This increased the site speed, which is vital today.
6: Improve Your Core Web Vital Score
Recently, Google has emphasized Core Web Vitals & stated that they are important in determining your rankings.
There’s a term in Core Web Vitals (CWV) called LCP (Largest Contentful Paint). It refers to the time it takes for a part of your web page to get rendered by your browser.
The larger your file size or image dimensions, the longer it will take to paint the image in your browser, thus increasing the LCP & reducing interaction time. WebP minimizes this by reducing file size.
Also, keep in mind that your image dimensions should not exceed 1024px in width & overall size shouldn’t go beyond 100Kb for a better experience.
7: Deliver A Good User Experience
Overall, the benefits mentioned above help you:
- Minimize costs.
- Improve performance.
- Increase Google rankings.
- Enhance your visitors’ user experience.
Therefore, the chances of your site ranking higher increase severalfold and users staying longer on your website.
How To Use WebP Images on a WordPress Website in 2026
Great news: WordPress has had full native support for WebP images since version 5.8 (released in 2021). On any modern WordPress site (6.x or 7.0+), you can upload .webp files directly to the Media Library, and they work just like JPG or PNG files; no extra code required.
For New Images
- Simply export or convert your images to WebP format.
- Upload them normally through the Media Library.
- Insert them into posts and pages as usual.
WordPress handles thumbnails, responsive sizes, and displays automatically.
For Existing Image Libraries (Recommended Approach)
If you have hundreds of older JPG/PNG images, use a modern optimization plugin. These tools automatically:
- Convert existing images to WebP (and often AVIF for even better compression)
- Generate and serve the best format to each visitor
- Create responsive sizes
Top recommendations in 2026:
- ShortPixel or Imagify — Excellent for bulk conversion and automatic WebP/AVIF delivery.
- EWWW Image Optimizer — Lightweight and powerful.
- Jetpack Boost — Great all-in-one performance option with image CDN support.
These plugins are much smarter than manual methods and often improve your Core Web Vitals scores with minimal effort.
Note for very old sites (pre-5.8): The old functions.php workaround (adding MIME types and thumbnail support) still works as a temporary fix. However, updating WordPress is the better long-term solution.
A Few More Tweaks and Hacks To Make Your WebP Image Load Faster
Many image editors still don’t offer one-click WebP export. In that case, export as JPEG or PNG first, then bulk-convert using a free tool like Image To WebP.
Use WP Rocket (or a similar caching plugin)
WP Rocket remains one of my favorite performance plugins. It doesn’t generate WebP files, but it works beautifully with optimization plugins by:
- Enabling intelligent lazy loading
- Creating separate cached versions for WebP/AVIF
- Reducing image requests overall
This combination delivers noticeable speed gains with minimal effort.
Use a CDN for Faster Image Delivery
Switch to a good CDN (Cloudflare, Bunny.net, or your host’s built-in option) that supports automatic WebP/AVIF delivery and further compression. Modern CDNs can automatically serve the best format to each visitor.
Enable Browser Caching
Browser caching tells visitors’ browsers to store images locally so they don’t have to re-download them on every visit. This is especially powerful on sites with returning traffic.
WP Rocket (or most good caching plugins) makes this easy to enable.
Pro Tip: Remove Image Backgrounds When Possible
If your image has a white (or solid-color) background that matches your site’s theme, remove the background entirely.
This can shrink the file size even further with zero noticeable difference to your readers. I do this on almost every image on my site.
Final Thoughts: Why WebP Is a Must-Have in 2026
Switching to WebP images (and adding AVIF where possible) is one of the smartest and easiest performance upgrades you can make on your WordPress site.
You’ll enjoy faster loading times, lower hosting costs, better Core Web Vitals scores, and happier visitors; all while giving Google exactly what it recommends for image SEO.
Whether you’re starting fresh or optimizing an older site, the combination of native WordPress support + a good optimizer plugin makes the switch simple.
Start small: convert your most-viewed posts first and measure the difference. You’ll likely see results quickly, just like I did on my own Inspire To Thrive site.
Make WebP (and AVIF) your new standard, your readers and search rankings will thank you!
Frequently Asked Questions About WebP Images for WordPress
Yes, most modern browsers support WebP image files. That makes WebP a safe choice for most WordPress sites, especially if you also use fallback handling for older browsers.
A free bulk converter like Image To WebP is a simple option for converting images outside WordPress. For larger sites, a plugin or image optimization tool may be easier to manage.
ShortPixel and Imagify are both solid options if you want automatic WebP versions of your images. They are better suited to large sites than manual conversion is, especially if you upload images frequently.
Yes, smaller image files usually load faster and reduce page weight. That can help page speed, Core Web Vitals, and the overall user experience.
WebP is a strong default for most web images, but the best setup depends on your workflow and theme support. If you want a simple, faster site and your tools support it, WebP makes a lot of sense.
This was such an interesting read, I always upload as .png or .jpeg then use a plugin compressor to make the files smaller. I’ll definitely be having a think about using webp, especially for speeding up my site.
Hi Jordanne, this really made a big difference for me here on Inspire To Thrive. I love having a fast site as it is so important today for viewers who have no patience to wait around for anything to load. Thanks for coming by and have a great day.
I’m glad Jordane you found this post useful
Hello Palash
I have been compressing all my jpeg images prior to loading them up to wordpress. The image stays in the jpeg format. I just ran a couple images that I recently uploaded through the free webP converter that you included in your post.
The compressed jpeg images were still smaller in terms of file size than the webP images. In this case would you still recommend converting to webP? I only use images for my blog. Also I am not super techy so when it comes to changing themes, adding plug ins, changing/adding code, I would rather leave it.
Look forward to your insight in this.
Thank you
SharlaAnn
Yeah Sharla, thank you so much for your comment.
And yeah sometimes webp can be a little bit larger in size than jpeg but you can surely use the webp compressor to further reduce your file size.
If you’re compressing your jpeg files, why not compress webp also.
Though it’s not needed & I won’t advise you to go with such unnecessary steps, but you’ve seen that when you compress jpeg images, they reach the size of about webp images.
Means webp is still good (you can further reduce the webp file size by using the compress images tool online like https://ezgif.com/optiwebp or https://shrinkme.app/).
But as far as webp is considered, you need not to compress it (it’s your choice) & een google guidelines recommend using webp.
So, in my opinion, using webp is still a great option to go with.
And if you’re not at all techie, I would advise you not to play with your settings.
Though images are an important part of the web, but still the heart of any blog post is it’s content originality & backlinks.
Everything else comes secondary.
Making these changes will definitely give you an edge over your competition but still nothing beats content & backlinks.
So don’t worry, keep writing & keep publishing.
Thanks for some clarification Palash.
I think you are correct and for now I will just focus on content and backlinks. I am definitely not up to messing around with my WordPress. One day when I am a rich and famous blogger I will hire someone to do the techie stuff for me.
SharlaAnn
Hope you found that helpful SharlaAnn
Our website had issues with loading speed and overall site performance, by changing the image formats we could see a lot of improvement.
Glad to see that Ramkumar.
Hi Palash Nag,
I hope you are doing good.
Thank you for sharing this post. I was in my mind to convert all my .png and .jpeg images to .webp. I was looking for suggestions and I found your post. Now, I am comfortable using .webp for my website to sue .webp Images…
Thanks, Palash Nag.
Hope that this post cleared your doubts. Feel free to message me if you face any problem thereafter.
Yes, Palash. My doughts are clear. But now I am trying to make changes on ongoing pics as .webp but I want to keep old pics as usual. If there is anything or any function in WordPress or.php please let me know.
#doubts.
you can definitely use the above plugins I mentioned in the post. Search for shortpixel plugin in WordPress plugin sections & install it. Go through the shortpixel link mentioned in the post above & create your free account. Connect your account to your plugin & voila, everything’s been set up.
Palash Nag
So far, I have been using PNG format mostly. I think WordPress’s upcoming version will support WebP format by default.
I will definitely give it a try in a post to see the improvement.
Well, thanks for sharing the benefits of using the same.
Amit Garg
Happy to help Amit. If you need any other assistance, feel free to message me. Thank you
Hello Palash,
I have recently started using the webp images on my blog and the experience is just awesome. The performance of blog has increased significantly. I highly recommend bloggers to using webp images. Thanks for sharing this awesome post
Regards,
Vishwajeet Kumar
see, I told you people that shifting to webp will definitely benefit you. Happy to see Vishwajeet that you’re happy with the results
I usually use pngs or jpgs as they work fine for me and also minimize their size so that they can load faster. I wonder how this webp format works now.
try out for yourself, & share your experiences. We are here to listen
Sounds great to optimize images, but does the quality will reduce too? This is very helpful to the websites containing the bigger sizes of images. Thank you
yeah quality gets reduced but you won’t see much ofa difference. But it’s not advisable to use if you’re running a photography website. because in that case, quality matters
I wasn’t aware of this format, the question is why isn’t this standard by default on WordPress?
I hope that in the next version of WordPress, they might take care of this thing.
Hi Palash,
Interesting post here. I had never heard of Webp but see the benefits of using it to speed up blogs. Any weapon in the page speed arsenal needs to be used to improve our UX. Thanks for sharing with us.
Ryan
Hey Ryan, thank you so much for the comment. And yeah, having made these changes to my own blog shifted my rankings by 5 to 8 posts up. Also, recently Google has implemented the new core web vitals too, which means these tips also will come in handy.