HEIC vs JPG: Which One Should You Actually Use?

Updated: August 22, 2026

Keep HEIC while the photos live on your iPhone, and convert them to JPG the moment they need to go anywhere else. HEIC stores the same picture in roughly half the space, which is worth real money in phone storage. JPG is the only one of the two that opens on every device, website and print counter on earth. Neither is simply better - they win in different places, and the practical answer is to use both.

The difference in one line

HEIC is a newer, more efficient way of compressing the same photograph, and JPG is the format everything can already read. HEIC came out of the 2017 HEIF standard and uses HEVC compression; JPEG dates from 1992 and is decoded by literally every image viewer ever shipped. If you want the background on the format itself, see what a HEIC file is.

Head to head

Browser figures from caniuse.com, usage data July 2026. Everything above the browser row is a property of the formats themselves; everything below it is a property of the world they landed in.

Is HEIC actually better quality?

Per byte, yes - and that is the only comparison that means anything. Give both formats the same file size and HEIC holds more detail, because HEVC compression is two decades newer than JPEG's. HEIC also stores more colour depth: JPEG is capped at 8 bits per channel, which is what makes big skies band into visible stripes, while HEIF was built for high bit depth and wide colour gamut from the start.

In practice the gap is narrower than the specification suggests. A JPEG saved at 90-95% quality from a 12 MP phone photo looks the same as the HEIC original on a phone screen, a laptop, or a 10x15 print. You notice the difference when you push a photo hard in an editor - heavy exposure recovery on a bright sky is where JPEG's 8 bits run out first.

Does converting HEIC to JPG lose quality?

A little, and almost always less than people fear. Both formats are lossy, so converting decodes the HEIC and re-compresses the pixels as JPEG - one extra generation of loss. At a JPEG quality of 90% or above that generation is invisible in normal viewing and printing; below about 75% you start to see it in fine texture and around hard edges.

Two things worth knowing. First, it only happens once: the JPG you produce is a finished file, not a photo that keeps degrading every time you open it. Second, converting does not touch the original - PhotoAnvil's converter reads your HEIC and writes a new JPG beside it, leaving the HEIC on your device exactly as it was, so you can keep the higher-quality original and hand out the compatible copy.

Which one to use, by situation

The pattern is the same every time: HEIC for storage, JPG for delivery, and the iPhone-specific route is written up separately. Keeping both costs you nothing, because converting a HEIC to JPG leaves the original untouched.

Why HEIC never replaced JPG - and what did

HEIC lost the web to licensing, not to engineering. Decoding HEVC owes royalties to several patent pools, so browser makers who did not want to pay simply never implemented it, and HEIC sat at roughly 15% global browser support in mid-2026 - which is Safari, and nothing else. A format the web cannot display was never going to replace JPG.

The format that did break through is AVIF, built on the royalty-free AV1 codec, which reached about 95% global browser support by July 2026 (caniuse.com). It compresses better than both HEIC and JPG and costs nothing to implement, which is precisely why everyone implemented it. JPEG XL, the other contender, is still stuck at Safari-only support of around 15% - the same trap HEIC fell into. The lesson is not subtle: on the web, licence terms decide formats, not compression ratios.

None of this changes what to do with the photos already on your phone. AVIF is for images you publish; JPG is for photos you send to people. The third option, PNG, is for screenshots, transparency and files you will keep editing.