AV1 vs HEVC vs H.264: The Next-Gen Codec Showdown

YouTube and Netflix already stream a big slice of their catalogs in AV1 — the newest of the three codecs that matter today — because it shrinks video further than anything else in wide use. So why isn’t AV1 the obvious default for your own exports? Because the same three-way trade-off that governs H.264 vs H.265 extends one step further: every gain in compression efficiency costs you in encode time and playback support. This guide ranks AV1, HEVC, and H.264 honestly on both axes and gives you a “which to pick when” framework. We verified the efficiency figures, the royalty status, and the current browser/hardware-decode state against AOMedia, MDN, and caniuse — and hedged the numbers that are genuinely content-dependent.

Quick answer: On efficiency, the ranking is AV1 > HEVC (H.265) > H.264 — AV1 needs roughly 30% less data than HEVC and about 50% less than H.264 at the same quality. On compatibility, it flips: H.264 > HEVC ≈ AV1 — H.264 plays on essentially everything, while AV1 and HEVC are newer and hardware-gated. Pick H.264 to play anywhere, HEVC for the Apple/modern-device sweet spot, and AV1 when you want the smallest file for a modern web audience and can absorb a much slower encode.

Jump to a section

• The three codecs at a glance
• Efficiency ranking: AV1 > HEVC > H.264
• Compatibility ranking: H.264 > HEVC ≈ AV1
• The catch with AV1: encode speed and royalties
• Which codec to pick when
• Convert to AV1 (or H.264/HEVC) on xconvert
• FAQ

The three codecs at a glance

All three are video compression codecs — algorithms that shrink raw video into a playable file. None of them is a container format: an .mp4 or .webm file can carry any of them. They sit on a clear timeline, each newer one trading compatibility for efficiency.

• H.264 / AVC — standardized by the ITU-T and ISO/IEC in 2003. The de-facto default for web video, Blu-ray, broadcast, and recording on nearly every camera and phone. Its defining trait is ubiquity: if a device plays video at all, it almost certainly plays H.264.
• H.265 / HEVC — ratified in 2013, designed to deliver roughly the same quality as H.264 at about half the bitrate. Strong on Apple platforms and modern phones, but patent-licensed and patchy in web browsers.
• AV1 — developed by the Alliance for Open Media (AOMedia), a Joint Development Foundation project, founded in 2015 and counting Google, Amazon, Netflix, Microsoft, Apple, Intel, and others among its members. AV1 was published in 2018 as a royalty-free codec under the Open Media Patent License 1.0, explicitly built for video on the web. It is the most efficient of the three — and the slowest to encode.

The pattern is consistent: each newer codec does more analysis per frame, so it produces a smaller file but costs more compute to create, and arrives with narrower playback support until hardware catches up.

Efficiency ranking: AV1 > HEVC > H.264

On pure compression efficiency, the order is unambiguous. Per Bitmovin’s encoding analysis, AV1 reaches the same visual quality using roughly 50% less data than H.264/AVC and about 30% less than H.265/HEVC (and VP9). MDN states the same upper bound from the other direction: AV1 “achieves higher data compression rates than VP9 and H.265/HEVC, and as much as 50% higher rates than AVC.” HEVC, in turn, “can achieve compressed file sizes half that of AVC” at comparable quality.

Stacked up, the design targets look like this:

Two honesty caveats. First, these are ranges, not constants — real-world savings depend heavily on the content, resolution, and encoder settings. The AV1-over-HEVC advantage is commonly cited around 30%, and grows toward 40%+ at higher resolutions where there is more redundancy to exploit; it can be smaller on simple low-resolution footage. Treat any single percentage as a favourable-case figure, not a guarantee. Second, “smaller file at equal quality” and “better quality at equal size” are the same fact viewed two ways — AV1’s edge is most visible at low bitrates, where H.264 shows blocky artifacts first.

That efficiency is exactly why YouTube and Netflix encode much of their most-streamed HD and 4K content in AV1: at their scale, ~30% less data is an enormous CDN and bandwidth saving.

Compatibility ranking: H.264 > HEVC ≈ AV1

Flip to playback support and the order reverses. H.264 plays essentially everywhere — every modern browser, OS, phone, and smart TV, with hardware decoders in chips going back well over a decade. There is no meaningful 2026 device that can’t play H.264.

AV1 and HEVC are both newer and more conditional. Encouragingly, AV1 browser support is now broad on the desktop: per caniuse, AV1 has full support in Chrome (70+), Firefox (67+), and Edge (121+), putting global browser support around ~93%. The remaining gap is the one that bites: Safari supports AV1 only on devices with a hardware decoder — per MDN, that means Apple M3 Macs and later, iPhone 15 Pro, and iPhone 16 and later. Older iPhones and Intel Macs can’t decode AV1 in Safari.

The practical takeaway: AV1’s software decode reach is high (~93%), but smooth, battery-friendly playback depends on a hardware decoder, and AV1 hardware decode only became common on phones and GPUs released in the last few years. For a public web embed that must reach Linux desktops, older phones, and budget hardware, H.264 is still the safe default — exactly as it is in the H.264 vs H.265 decision. If you want an open web codec with a wide reach today, AV1-in-WebM is the modern choice; see MP4 vs WebM.

The catch with AV1: encode speed and royalties

AV1’s two defining practical traits cut in opposite directions.

Encode speed (the cost). AV1 is the slowest of the three to encode by a wide margin. Because the encoder examines far more spatial and temporal patterns to reach its smaller output, software AV1 encoding is commonly cited as around 3× slower than HEVC at comparable settings, and dramatically slower than H.264. (Newer encoders like Intel’s open-source SVT-AV1 have narrowed the gap substantially, and hardware AV1 encoders are appearing on recent GPUs, but the codec is still the most compute-hungry of the three.) This is why AV1 makes most sense for encode-once, stream-many content — on-demand video where you pay the encoding cost once and reap the bandwidth savings forever — and why H.264 still rules real-time use like video calls.

Royalties (the win). Here AV1 has a structural advantage HEVC can’t match. HEVC is covered by multiple patent pools with licensing widely regarded as complex and costly — the very reason browser vendors were slow to adopt it. AV1, by contrast, is royalty-free under AOMedia’s Open Media Patent License 1.0. That open status is precisely why the same companies that ship browsers (Google, Mozilla, Microsoft) embraced AV1, giving it broader browser support than HEVC despite being five years newer.

Which codec to pick when

Boil it down to two questions: do you control playback, and is encode time cheap?

Choose H.264 when:

• The video must play anywhere — public web embeds, email, unknown devices, older hardware, Linux.
• You need the fastest encode, or you’re doing real-time / live work.
• Compatibility outweighs file size.

Choose H.265 (HEVC) when:

• You’re inside the Apple ecosystem (iPhone, iPad, Mac) or sharing between known modern devices.
• You’re archiving your own media library and want roughly half the storage.
• You want strong efficiency and mature hardware support, and accept the licensing baggage.

Choose AV1 when:

• You want the smallest file at a given quality and your audience is on modern browsers/devices.
• The content is encode-once, stream-many (on-demand video, a media library you’ll keep), so a slow encode is a one-time cost.
• A royalty-free, open codec matters to you (web publishing, open platforms).
• You can tolerate that older phones, Intel Macs, and budget GPUs may fall back to software decode or can’t play it.

Rule of thumb: ship H.264, store HEVC, stream AV1. Distribute in the universally-playable codec; archive in the efficient mature one; serve AV1 to modern audiences where the extra ~30% saving over HEVC justifies the encode. For the full H.264-vs-HEVC half of this decision, see H.264 vs H.265: which to use.

Convert to AV1 (or H.264/HEVC) on xconvert

The xconvert MP4-to-AV1 converter lets you apply this framework directly — pick the output codec and how you want to control size:

1. Open xconvert.com/convert-mp4-to-av1 and click + Add Files to upload your video (from your computer, Google Drive, or Dropbox).
2. Open Advanced Options (the gear icon). The defaults are tuned for good results, so change them only if you have a specific need.
3. Set the Video Codec — AV1 for the smallest open-codec output, or switch to H.264 for maximum compatibility / H.265 (HEVC) for the Apple-friendly middle ground. The Audio Codec defaults to Opus for AV1.
4. Choose how to control size: a Quality Preset (default Very High (Recommended)), Constant Quality, Constant Bitrate, Variable Bitrate, or an exact Specific file size in MB.
5. Click to convert, then download. AV1 encodes slower than H.264 or HEVC, so allow extra time for the conversion.

Your file uploads over an encrypted connection, is processed on our servers, and is automatically deleted a few hours later. Nothing stays around.

For related workflows: H.264 vs H.265 (the compatibility-vs-size half of this decision) and MP4 vs WebM (the right container to pair with an open codec on the web).

FAQ

Is AV1 better than HEVC?

On compression efficiency, yes — AV1 reaches the same quality with roughly 30% less data than HEVC (more at higher resolutions), and it’s royalty-free where HEVC is patent-licensed. The trade-offs are that AV1 encodes far slower (commonly ~3× slower than HEVC in software) and its hardware-decode support, while growing fast, is still newer than HEVC’s. For an Apple-centric or encode-fast workflow HEVC can be the more practical pick; for smallest-file web delivery to modern devices, AV1 wins.

Which codec produces the smallest file?

AV1, at equal visual quality — about 50% smaller than H.264 and ~30% smaller than HEVC as a design target, with the exact saving depending on content and encoder settings. HEVC is the middle (~50% smaller than H.264), and H.264 produces the largest files of the three.

Is AV1 royalty-free?

Yes. AV1 is published by the Alliance for Open Media under the Open Media Patent License 1.0, making it royalty-free — a deliberate contrast with H.264 and HEVC, which are covered by patent pools. That open status is the main reason Google, Mozilla, and Microsoft added AV1 support to their browsers.

Does AV1 play in all browsers?

Almost. Per caniuse, AV1 has full support in Chrome (70+), Firefox (67+), and Edge (121+) — about 93% of users globally. The exception is Safari, which decodes AV1 only on devices with a hardware decoder (Apple M3 Macs and later, iPhone 15 Pro, iPhone 16 and later). Older iPhones and Intel Macs can’t play AV1 in Safari, so for a truly universal embed, H.264 is still safest.

Why is AV1 encoding so slow?

Because the encoder does far more analysis per frame to reach its smaller output. Software AV1 encoding is commonly around 3× slower than HEVC and much slower than H.264. This is why AV1 suits encode-once, stream-many content (on-demand, archives) rather than real-time use — you pay the encode cost once and bank the bandwidth savings. Newer encoders (SVT-AV1) and hardware AV1 encoders are closing the gap. xconvert encodes on the server, so it doesn’t tax your own device.

What is the best video codec overall?

There isn’t one “best” — it’s a trade-off. H.264 is best for universal compatibility and fast/real-time encoding; HEVC (H.265) is best for efficient storage on Apple and modern devices with mature hardware support; AV1 is best for the smallest royalty-free files served to modern web audiences. Match the codec to your playback environment and how much encode time you can spend.

Should I convert my H.264 videos to AV1?

Only if you’ll benefit from the smaller size and your audience can play it. Converting to AV1 cuts size substantially at equal quality, but the encode is slow and re-encoding always loses a little quality. It’s most worthwhile for content you’ll keep or stream repeatedly to modern devices. If broad compatibility matters more, stay on H.264; if you want efficiency with wider device support today, HEVC is the middle path.

Sources

Last verified 2026-06-25.

• Alliance for Open Media — AOMedia story — AV1 founded 2015, published 2018, royalty-free under the Open Media Patent License 1.0; member list.
• MDN — Web video codec guide — AV1 “as much as 50% higher rates than AVC,” higher than HEVC/VP9; HEVC ~half of AVC; Safari AV1 hardware-decode requirement (M3 Macs, iPhone 15 Pro, iPhone 16+); licensing notes.
• caniuse — AV1 video format — full support in Chrome 70+, Firefox 67+, Edge 121+ (~93% global); Safari partial/hardware-gated.
• caniuse — HEVC / H.265 video format — HEVC browser support: Safari full, Chrome/Edge/Firefox partial and hardware/OS-dependent.
• Bitmovin — Guide to adopting AV1 encoding — AV1 “~50% less data than H.264/AVC and ~30% less than H.265/HEVC and VP9”; higher encode complexity; YouTube/Netflix adoption; iPhone 15 Pro / M3 hardware decode.