GIF
Also known as: gif file, animated gif, gif vs mp4
GIF (.gif) is an old image format best known for short looping animations. It is limited to 256 colors and uses inefficient compression, so an animated GIF is often far larger than the same clip saved as an MP4 video.
- Limited to 256 colors per frame
- Often far larger than the same clip as MP4
- Best for tiny, simple looping graphics
Why GIFs are bigger than they look
A GIF stores animation as a series of full frames with only 256 colors per frame and no modern video compression. A few seconds of motion can therefore weigh more than a minute of MP4 video, which uses a real video codec to compress across frames.
For this reason, most apps and websites that appear to show "GIFs" actually serve MP4 or WebP behind the scenes and only keep the GIF name out of habit.
When a GIF is worth keeping
GIF still wins for tiny, low-color graphics that need to loop or play with no controls — simple icons or stickers. For anything photographic or longer than a moment, converting to MP4 cuts the file size dramatically while improving quality.