GIF and APNG side by side — the technical differences
Both formats store frame-by-frame animation but they were designed two decades apart and reflect different assumptions about available hardware, network bandwidth, and color display capabilities. Knowing the exact differences helps you judge whether converting from GIF to APNG makes sense for your target platform.
GIF (1987)
- 256 colors per frame via indexed palette
- Binary transparency only (on or off per pixel)
- LZW lossless compression on palette indices
- Universal: email, SMS, legacy apps, all browsers
- Loop count in Netscape 2.0 extension block
- 4 frame disposal methods
- Max canvas: 65,535 × 65,535 px
APNG (2008)
- 16.7 million colors per frame (24-bit RGB)
- Full 8-bit alpha channel (256 opacity levels)
- DEFLATE lossless compression (same as PNG)
- Chrome 59+, Firefox 3+, Safari 8+, Edge 79+
- Loop count in acTL chunk
- 3 disposal methods plus alpha blend modes
- No fixed size limit beyond PNG specification
When to choose APNG over keeping GIF
Use APNG when you control the display environment and know it supports the format. Typical cases: CSS <img> tags on a personal website, Discord server emotes (Discord renders APNG correctly), Figma prototypes, and Notion embeds. Keep the original GIF when the destination is an email newsletter, a customer SMS, Slack (which strips APNG back to a static PNG frame), or any upload form that explicitly accepts only GIF.
File size expectation after conversion
GIF-to-APNG conversion increases file size by 10–40% in most cases. The GIF LZW index stream compresses flat-color animations well. APNG DEFLATE compresses raw pixel RGB data, which handles varied pixel values efficiently but is less compact than LZW for large areas of repeating palette indices. Very complex photographic animations are the exception: DEFLATE may produce a smaller result there because it handles random pixel variation better than LZW on indexed data.