AV1 vs HEVC
Also known as: av1 vs h265, av1 compression, av1 vs hevc codec, av1 vs hevc
AV1 and HEVC (H.265) are next-gen video codecs that store the same quality in less space than H.264. AV1 is royalty-free and slightly more efficient; HEVC has broader hardware support, especially on Apple devices, but carries licensing costs.
- AV1 is royalty-free; HEVC requires patent licensing, which slowed its adoption.
- AV1 is usually slightly more efficient than HEVC, and both beat H.264 by a wide margin.
- HEVC has broader, more mature hardware support; AV1 decode is newer and encode is slow.
What each codec is
HEVC (H.265) is the successor to H.264/AVC, developed by MPEG and standardized in 2013. It typically delivers similar quality at roughly half the bitrate of H.264, and Apple adopted it for HEVC photos and video capture across iPhone and iPad.
AV1 is an open, royalty-free codec from the Alliance for Open Media (AOMedia), finalized in 2018. It targets even better efficiency than HEVC and avoids the patent-licensing complexity that slowed HEVC adoption. It is widely used for streaming by YouTube and Netflix.
Compression, hardware, and storage trade-offs
On compression, AV1 generally edges out HEVC at the same quality, with the gap most visible at lower bitrates and higher resolutions. Both far outperform older H.264, so re-encoding an H.264 library to either can meaningfully shrink it.
Hardware is the deciding factor in practice. HEVC has mature hardware decode (and encode) on Apple silicon and most modern phones; AV1 hardware decode is now common on recent flagships and newer Apple devices, but encoding still leans on software and is slow. For local storage, pick the codec your device decodes in hardware so playback stays power-efficient, and use it only where compatibility allows.