Format comparison
HEIC vs JPG: keep the HEIC or convert it?
Checked against the sources on Sizes measured
Short answer
Keep HEIC as your stored copy if your own devices open it, and make a JPG whenever the photo goes somewhere else. HEIC (HEIF with HEVC coding) is compact: the JPG this site's converter made from the HEIC sample was more than twice its size. But JPG opens practically everywhere, while MDN's browser guide does not list HEIC and the browser measured here could not decode it.
A storage format and a sharing format
The two formats are good at opposite things. HEIC uses HEVC, a video-era codec, to pack a photo into few bytes, and its HEIF container can hold more than one image item in a file. JPG's coding standard dates from 1992; it is less efficient, and understood by almost everything that displays images.
So the useful question is not which format is better but where the photo is going. On your own phone or computer, if they open HEIC, it saves space. On its way to anyone else, to a website, a form or a print shop, JPG avoids the risk that the other end cannot read it.
What converting costs
Converting HEIC to JPG decodes the HEVC image and compresses it again with JPEG. That has two costs. The file grows, as the measurement below shows. And the picture goes through a second lossy step; at a high JPG quality this is usually hard to see, but it is not free, so keep the HEIC if it is your only original.
Converting to PNG instead avoids the second loss, at the price of a much larger file. Choose PNG when you intend to edit the image; choose JPG when you intend to send it.
Why the browser can't simply show it
Viewing HEIC needs an HEVC image decoder. MDN's guide to the image types web browsers support, read on 13 November 2026, does not include HEIC, and the Chromium build measured for this page rejected the sample. AltFTool's HEIC to JPG Converter brings its own decoder (the heic2any library, libheif compiled to JavaScript) so the conversion still happens inside your browser tab without sending the photo to a server.
HEIC or JPG, by what happens next
| Next step | Choose | Reason |
|---|---|---|
| Keep on a device that opens HEIC | HEIC | Fewer bytes per photo, no second lossy step. |
| Upload to a website or form | JPG | Widely accepted; a form may refuse HEIC. |
| Send to someone else | JPG | Their software may not read HEIC. |
| Edit in desktop software | PNG (from the HEIC) | Lossless working copy; avoids a second lossy step. |
| What the service lists | Check its accepted types; convert a copy to match. | |
| Only copy you have | Keep the HEIC, export a JPG | Converting is not reversible. |
Measured example
| File | Bytes | Size | Fidelity to the original |
|---|---|---|---|
| Photo as HEIC (reference file) | 49,461 | 48.3 KB | browser could not decode it |
| Converted to JPG, quality 0.90, by heic2any | 127,442 | 124 KB | 29.1 dB |
| Same photo straight to JPG at 0.82 (no HEIC step), for scale | 86,531 | 84.5 KB | 36.1 dB |
The HEIC is 48.3 KB. The JPG the converter made from it at its default quality of 0.90 is 124.5 KB, 2.6 times larger, at 29.1 dB against the original pixels.
For scale, the same photo encoded straight to JPG at 0.82, with no HEIC in between, was 84.5 KB at 36.1 dB. The converted JPG's lower figure combines the HEIC's own compression, heic2any's decoding and the JPEG step; the measurement does not split them, so this page does not say how much each contributes.
photo.heic was made outside the site with pillow-heif 1.8.1 (libheif 1.23.6, x265 4.3+1-e9b8812), Pillow 13.0.0: quality 43 (pillow-heif scale 0-100), RGB 8-bit; picked as the quality whose PSNR, decoded by libheif 1.23.6 and measured with FFmpeg, came nearest the WebP 0.82 encode (about 36.2 dB against 36.5 dB). Decoded by heic2any in the browser, the same file measures lower.
What this page does not claim
- The HEIC file on this page was made outside the site (libheif with x265 through pillow-heif) because no browser here encodes HEIC; the JPG was made by the site's own converter.
- Which devices save HEIC by default is not stated; no primary source for it was opened.
Questions
Is HEIC better quality than JPG?
Not as such: quality depends on the settings each file was saved at. What is certain is that converting an existing HEIC to JPG cannot improve it; it adds a second lossy step.
Should I convert my HEIC photos to JPG?
Convert the copies you share, upload or print. Keep the HEIC originals if your devices open them, since they are smaller and have not been re-encoded.
Why is the converted JPG so much bigger?
Partly because the converter saves at a high JPEG quality (0.90 by default) to limit the second loss. In this page's measurement the JPG was more than twice the HEIC's size.
Is the conversion private?
AltFTool's HEIC to JPG Converter decodes and re-encodes in your browser with the heic2any library, so the photo is processed on your device.
Can I convert HEIC to PNG instead?
Yes. PNG avoids a second lossy step but produces a much larger file. It is the better choice when you plan to edit the image.
Sources
- IANA, 9 August 2018Media type registration for image/heif and image/heicRegistration (registered 2018-07-30, last updated 2018-08-09) · opened 13 November 2026
- ITU-T (CCITT), copy hosted by W3C, 18 September 1992ITU-T Recommendation T.81 (09/92): Digital compression and coding of continuous-tone still imagesITU-T Recommendation · opened 13 November 2026
- MDN Web Docs, 5 November 2026Image file type and format guideReference guide (page last modified 5 November 2026) · opened 13 November 2026
Convert between them in your browser
Convert one or many HEIC photos to JPG or PNG in the browser. The HEIC to JPG Converter runs in your browser tab, with no account.