Online Tool Store
· 4 min read
How to Choose a Video Codec for Delivery
Manesh Jayawardhana
CIO & Co-founder
A newer codec produces a smaller file at the same quality. That’s the entire pitch, it’s true, and it’s why the obvious answer — use the newest one — is wrong often enough to be worth thinking about.
The thing the file size comparison leaves out is who can play it, and on what.
The four you’ll actually consider
H.264 (AVC) is the universal one. Every device made in the last fifteen years decodes it in hardware. Files are the largest of the four and it plays absolutely everywhere, which is why it remains the default for anything where compatibility matters more than bandwidth.
HEVC (H.265) roughly halves the bitrate for equivalent quality. Hardware support is broad on modern devices and absent on older ones. Its patent licensing situation is famously fragmented across multiple pools, which is a business consideration as much as a technical one and a large part of why AV1 exists.
VP9 is royalty-free, widely supported in browsers, and used heavily for web streaming. Encoding is slower than H.264 and hardware decode support is good but not universal.
AV1 is royalty-free and the most efficient of the four, with the slowest encoding by a considerable margin. Hardware decode is present in recent devices and absent in everything older — and software decoding AV1 on a phone drains the battery noticeably.
Hardware decode is the deciding factor
This is the part that gets skipped. A codec without hardware decode support falls back to the CPU, which works and costs power.
On a laptop that means fan noise and a shorter battery life. On a phone it can mean the video plays warm and drains the battery fast enough that a viewer notices. Neither shows up in a file size comparison, and both affect whether people finish watching.
So the question isn’t which codec is most efficient — it’s which codec your audience’s devices decode in hardware.
| Codec | File size | Compatibility | Encode speed |
|---|---|---|---|
| H.264 | Largest | Universal | Fast |
| HEVC | ~50% of H.264 | Modern devices; licensing complexity | Moderate |
| VP9 | ~50% of H.264 | Good in browsers | Slow |
| AV1 | Smallest | Recent devices only | Slowest |
Choosing by destination
A website you control — offer AV1 or VP9 with an H.264 fallback, if your pipeline supports multiple encodes. The browser picks what it can play.
A social platform — upload the highest-quality H.264 you can. They re-encode everything anyway, so the codec you choose only affects what their encoder receives.
Archive — a high-bitrate, widely supported format. Archives are read years later on unknown software, and exotic efficiency is a liability.
Email or direct sharing — H.264 in MP4, always. It’s the format that opens without a conversation.
Common mistakes to avoid
- Choosing AV1 for a small site where the encoding time costs more than the bandwidth saves.
- Uploading a heavily compressed file to a platform that re-encodes it, which compounds the loss.
- Ignoring hardware decode and shipping a codec that drains phone batteries.
- Using HEVC in a commercial product without checking the licensing position.
- Archiving in whatever was most efficient at the time, rather than what will still be readable.
How to do it with Video Codec Comparison
The Video Codec Comparison weighs the four against your actual delivery target.
- Choose where the video is going — website, social, archive, or direct.
- Set your priority: compatibility, smallest file, or fastest encode.
- Read the trade-offs, particularly hardware decode support.
- Where you can serve multiple encodes, do — a modern codec with an H.264 fallback covers everyone.
Other video tools are in the tools directory.
Frequently asked questions
Why is H.264 still the default?
Because it plays on essentially everything, including old devices, and hardware decoders are universal. Newer codecs produce smaller files but narrow your audience or push decoding onto the CPU.
Is AV1 worth it yet?
For large-scale streaming where bandwidth cost dominates, yes. For a small site, encoding time and the devices lacking hardware decode usually outweigh the savings.
What about HEVC licensing?
HEVC’s patent situation is complicated, with multiple licensing pools, which is a large part of why AV1 exists as a royalty-free alternative. It’s a business question as much as a technical one.
Final thought
Pick the codec your audience’s devices decode in hardware. Efficiency you pay for in battery life isn’t efficiency.