How much smaller is HEIC than JPG, really?
It's one of the most common questions about HEIC: since it's the format your iPhone has saved photos in by default since 2017, does it weigh more or less than a plain old JPG? With Apple's own official figures on the table, the answer is clear: quite a bit less. And yet half the internet converts its HEIC photos to JPG every day — for reasons that have nothing to do with file size.
The official number: half the size, same quality
When Apple introduced HEIF/HEIC at WWDC 2017 alongside iOS 11, the figure it gave was explicit: a HEIC file is roughly half the size of a JPEG at equivalent visual quality. That's not a third-party estimate or an unsupported marketing claim — it's the comparison Apple itself used to justify switching the default photo format on hundreds of millions of iPhones.
In practice the exact percentage varies with the photo's content (a highly detailed image compresses differently than a flat background), but 50% remains the reference figure because the mechanism behind it — the codec — is the same in every case.
Why it weighs less: the codec, not magic
The size difference isn't an Apple trick — it's a technology gap of more than 25 years between the two formats.
JPEG: 1992-era compression
JPEG was standardized in 1992. It compresses by splitting the image into fixed 8×8 pixel blocks and applying a mathematical transform (DCT) to each one independently, without considering what's in the surrounding blocks. It's a solid, universal method, but relatively inefficient by today's standards.
HEIC: video compression applied to a single photo
HEIC uses the HEVC (H.265) codec — the same one used to efficiently compress 4K video — but applied to a single frame. HEVC analyzes the image in variable-sized blocks (not fixed like JPEG), predicts a region's content from its neighbors, and applies more advanced transforms. The result: the same perceived detail using considerably fewer bytes.
| JPEG | HEIC | |
|---|---|---|
| Year | 1992 | 2015 (container), 2017 on iOS |
| Codec | DCT, fixed 8×8 blocks | HEVC (H.265), variable blocks |
| Size | Twice as large | Half, at the same quality |
| Support | Universal, for over 30 years | Native on Apple; limited on Windows, Android and web |
So why do so many people convert HEIC to JPG?
If HEIC is smaller, converting it to JPG makes the photo bigger, not smaller. The reason millions of people do it anyway every day isn't about size — it's about compatibility:
- Windows doesn't open HEIC natively without installing an extra codec (and there's more than one similarly-named app in the Microsoft Store, not all of them trustworthy).
- Many websites, online stores, and upload forms only accept JPG or PNG.
- Older editing and design software, or tools that aren't updated often, don't recognize HEIC.
- Sending photos over WhatsApp or social media to someone on Android or Windows — avoiding HEIC sidesteps the classic "I can't open the photo you sent me" problem.
In short, it's the classic trade of "smaller but exclusive" for "bigger but opens anywhere" — and for everyday use, compatibility usually beats the megabytes saved.
Does converting HEIC to JPG reduce quality?
Technically yes, visibly almost never. JPG is a lossy format, so converting means a second compression pass on an image that was already compressed as HEIC. How much you lose depends almost entirely on the quality setting you choose:
| JPG quality | What you get |
|---|---|
| 100% | No visible difference. Largest file, best if you'll edit later |
| 90–95% | No visible difference at normal viewing sizes. The usual sweet spot |
| 80–85% | Fine for web and messaging; slight softness in fine detail if you zoom in |
| Below 75% | Visible artifacts around edges and in skies and gradients |
This converter uses 92% by default, which is inside the range where the difference can't be seen at normal sizes. The real cost of switching to JPG is file size, not visible quality.
How to avoid losing quality
- Convert once, from the original. Every time a JPG is opened, edited and saved as JPG again, it goes through another lossy pass. Keep the HEIC and convert from it whenever you need a new copy.
- For editing, use PNG or JPG at 100%. PNG is lossless, so nothing is lost no matter how many times you save it. More on this in how to open HEIC files in Photoshop.
- Don't resize unless you need to. Reducing the pixel dimensions discards real detail, far more than the JPG compression itself.
What else changes besides the pixels
Converting in the browser strips the photo's EXIF metadata, including the GPS location. That's good for privacy when sharing, but if you need the capture date or camera details for cataloguing, keep the original HEIC as well. For every other way to convert (iPhone settings, Mac, Windows), see how to convert HEIC to JPG on any device.
Convert them right in your browser, nothing uploaded to any server.
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Frequently asked questions
How much smaller is a HEIC file than a JPG?
According to Apple's own figures when it introduced the format in 2017 (WWDC, iOS 11), a HEIC file is roughly half the size of a JPEG at the same visual quality. The exact savings vary with the photo's content, but 50% is the official reference number.
Why does HEIC weigh less than JPG?
Because it uses a far more modern codec. JPEG was standardized in 1992 with block-based DCT compression. HEIC uses HEVC (H.265), the same codec behind efficient 4K video compression, which analyzes variable-sized blocks and predicts content from neighboring areas, squeezing more perceived detail out of fewer bytes.
If HEIC is smaller, why do people convert it to JPG?
For compatibility, not size. JPG has been openable by every program, website, and device for over 30 years. HEIC still causes problems on Windows without the extra codec installed, in many web apps, social platforms, and older editing software, so people convert to JPG to make it work everywhere, even though the file gets bigger.
Does converting HEIC to JPG reduce quality?
Very little if you export at a high quality setting (90-95%), though technically there is a second lossy compression pass since you're switching codecs. For nearly every real use case — sharing, uploading to a website, printing at normal sizes — it's imperceptible.
Is HEIC the same as HEIF?
HEIF (High Efficiency Image Format) is the generic container format; HEIC is, in practice, Apple's name for HEIF files encoded with HEVC, which is the variant iPhones generate. Day to day, the two terms are used interchangeably.