How much smaller will the MP4 be?

Dramatically. In our own testing a 448 KB GIF became 19 KB as WebM and 23 KB as MP4 — around five per cent, playing identically. The gap is that large because GIF stores every frame as a complete picture while video stores one frame and then only what changed. On footage with a static background the difference is even greater.

Will it still autoplay and loop like a GIF?

Yes, if you tell it to. In HTML that means `autoplay`, `loop`, `muted` and `playsinline` on the video element — the muted attribute is the one people forget, and browsers refuse to autoplay without it. Chat platforms and social networks handle this themselves; most of them already convert your GIF to video behind the scenes.

Does the animation lose quality?

It usually gains some. A GIF has already been crushed to 256 colours per frame, and the video encoder is working from that — it cannot restore what was lost, but it also does not impose a palette of its own, so the banding does not get worse. What you may notice is a little softening on very hard edges, which the quality setting under the result addresses.

No. A GIF has no audio to carry over, so the MP4 is silent. That is worth knowing if you are uploading somewhere that expects video with sound, and it is not something a converter can invent.

MP4 if it is going anywhere general — every device, browser and platform made in twenty years plays it. WebM if it is going onto a web page you control and you want the smallest possible file; in our testing it was about twenty per cent smaller again. Serving both and letting the browser choose is the ideal, and MP4 alone is the safe answer.

No. The frames are read with the browser’s own image decoder and encoded with its own video encoder, so the file stays on your device. There is no account and no limit on how many you convert.

GIFtoMP4

Convert GIF to MP4

Up to 100 files at once. Mixed formats are fine.

Converting GIF to MP4 keeps the same animation at a fraction of the size — in our own testing a 448 KB GIF became a 23 KB MP4, playing identically. Drop the file above and it converts inside your browser. This is what the big platforms already do to your GIFs behind the scenes, because they are the ones paying for the bandwidth.

Why a video of the same animation is twenty times smaller

The whole difference is one idea: motion compensation. A video encoder stores one complete frame and then, for each frame after it, records only what changed. An animation of a logo moving across a static background costs almost nothing after the first frame, because almost nothing is different.

GIF has no such mechanism. It stores every frame as a whole picture, one after another, with at most 256 colours each. That design is from 1989 and has never changed, which is why a five-second GIF can outweigh the minute-long video it was cut from. Converting does not compress the same file better — it stores the same animation in a fundamentally more efficient way.

The platforms already do this to you

Upload a GIF to Twitter, Reddit, Discord or most messaging apps and it does not stay a GIF. It is converted to video on arrival, silently, and served back as one. The little "GIF" label you see is a label; the file behind it is MP4.

They do this because bandwidth is their cost, not yours. Doing it yourself before uploading means you control the quality setting rather than accepting theirs, your page loads faster if you are hosting it, and you find out now rather than later whether the animation survives the conversion — which it does.

Making it behave like a GIF on a web page

A GIF autoplays, loops and has no controls, and people reasonably expect a replacement to do the same. A video element does all of it, but only if you ask: `autoplay`, `loop`, `muted` and `playsinline`. The muted attribute is the one that catches people out — every browser refuses to autoplay video with sound, and a GIF replacement has no sound anyway, so there is nothing lost by declaring it.

Without `playsinline`, iOS opens the video full screen instead of playing it in place, which is the other common surprise. With all four, the result is indistinguishable from a GIF except that the page loads faster.

What the conversion cannot fix

The colours were already reduced. A GIF holds at most 256 per frame, and whatever banding that caused is baked into the frames the encoder receives. The MP4 stores them faithfully and does not add a palette of its own, so the animation does not get worse — but it does not get back what the GIF discarded when it was made.

If you have the original video that the GIF was cut from, converting that directly will always look better than converting the GIF. This page is for the common case where the GIF is all you have.

How to turn a GIF into an MP4

Drop your GIF onto this page, or click to choose one.
Every frame is read and re-encoded as video, in your browser.
Download the MP4, or raise the quality under the result if the edges look soft.

GIF vs MP4: complete frames against differences

GIF compared with MP4
	GIF	MP4
Full name	Graphics Interchange Format	MPEG-4 Video
File extension	.gif	.mp4
Media type	image/gif	video/mp4
Compression	Lossless — nothing is discarded	Lossy — file size is bought with quality

Quality: Some quality is given up for a smaller file. At the default setting the difference is hard to see.
Where it runs: This conversion runs inside your browser. Your file is never uploaded, and it works with the network disconnected.
What can be lost: The result has no sound, because a GIF has none to carry. Each frame keeps its own timing, so an animation with irregular delays plays at the speed it was authored at rather than an averaged one.

GIF to MP4: common questions

How much smaller will the MP4 be?: Dramatically. In our own testing a 448 KB GIF became 19 KB as WebM and 23 KB as MP4 — around five per cent, playing identically. The gap is that large because GIF stores every frame as a complete picture while video stores one frame and then only what changed. On footage with a static background the difference is even greater.
Will it still autoplay and loop like a GIF?: Yes, if you tell it to. In HTML that means `autoplay`, `loop`, `muted` and `playsinline` on the video element — the muted attribute is the one people forget, and browsers refuse to autoplay without it. Chat platforms and social networks handle this themselves; most of them already convert your GIF to video behind the scenes.
Does the animation lose quality?: It usually gains some. A GIF has already been crushed to 256 colours per frame, and the video encoder is working from that — it cannot restore what was lost, but it also does not impose a palette of its own, so the banding does not get worse. What you may notice is a little softening on very hard edges, which the quality setting under the result addresses.
Is there sound?: No. A GIF has no audio to carry over, so the MP4 is silent. That is worth knowing if you are uploading somewhere that expects video with sound, and it is not something a converter can invent.
MP4 or WebM?: MP4 if it is going anywhere general — every device, browser and platform made in twenty years plays it. WebM if it is going onto a web page you control and you want the smallest possible file; in our testing it was about twenty per cent smaller again. Serving both and letting the browser choose is the ideal, and MP4 alone is the safe answer.
Is the GIF uploaded?: No. The frames are read with the browser’s own image decoder and encoded with its own video encoder, so the file stays on your device. There is no account and no limit on how many you convert.