The comparison
| HEIC | JPG | |
|---|---|---|
| File size | About half a JPG at matched quality | Baseline |
| Colour depth | 16 bits per channel | 8 bits per channel |
| Transparency | Supported | Not supported |
| Published | 2015, adopted by Apple 2017 | 1992 |
| Opens on Apple devices | Yes | Yes |
| Opens on Windows | Needs a codec extension | Yes |
| Opens on Android | Varies by device | Yes |
| Web upload forms | Frequently rejected | Universally accepted |
| Print services | Frequently rejected | Universally accepted |
| Can a browser create one? | No — patent-encumbered | Yes |
Why there is no measured size table here
Every other comparison on this site quotes figures produced by the site’s own converters over a fixed corpus. This one cannot.
HEIC encoding is patent-encumbered, and no browser ships an encoder — including this one. There is no way to produce a HEIC input here without introducing a file from elsewhere, which would make the number unreproducible and therefore worth less than no number at all.
What can be said with confidence is the direction and rough magnitude: Apple’s own documentation and the HEIF specification both describe roughly half the size at equivalent quality, and that matches general experience. Where this site can measure, it does; where it cannot, it says so.
HEIC is the better format
This is not really contested. HEIC compresses far more efficiently, stores twice the colour depth, supports transparency, and can hold image sequences — which is how Live Photos work.
The reason is chronology. JPEG was standardised in 1992. HEIC arrived in 2015 and inherited two decades of video compression research, because it is structurally a video frame in a container.
If image formats were judged only on their merits, nobody would use JPG.
JPG is the format that works
But formats are not judged only on merit. They are judged on whether the recipient can open the file.
- Windows needs a codec extension for HEIC, and the HEVC component has historically carried a charge
- Many Android devices cannot open HEIC at all
- Upload forms reject it routinely
- Print services mostly reject it
- Older photo editors do not know what it is
JPG has none of these problems, anywhere, and has not for thirty years.
The rule that follows
Keep HEIC on the phone. Convert to JPG on the way out.
Your camera roll stays half the size it would otherwise be. Anything you hand to another person or system arrives in a format that cannot fail to open.
That means leaving your iPhone on High Efficiency and converting to JPG when you need to — rather than switching the camera to Most Compatible and paying double storage for every photograph you will never send anyone.
When to pick something else entirely
JPG is not always the right destination.
- Putting photos on a website you control → convert straight to WebP. Smaller than JPG, and every current browser reads it. Go directly rather than via JPG, because two lossy steps discard more than one.
- Editing the photo → convert to PNG for a lossless working copy, at a much larger file size.
- Maximum compression for the web → AVIF, which is technically HEIC’s sibling but royalty-free, and which browsers can actually create.