Convert MP4 to GIF

Turn a short MP4 clip into a looping GIF that autoplays anywhere. Frame rate and width are under your control, because they decide whether the GIF is shareable or enormous.

The converter is ffmpeg compiled to WebAssembly. It downloads once (30 MB) when you pick your first file, then stays in your browser cache.

Frame rate and width are the two levers on GIF size. 15 fps still reads as smooth motion, and 480 px suits chats and comments. GIFs grow fast, so a few seconds of video is the sweet spot.

Your file is processed by your own browser and never uploaded. The engine itself is a one-time 30 MB download the first time you use it, and after that it comes out of your browser cache.

How to use MP4 to GIF

  1. 1Drop your MP4 onto the box above, or click to pick one.
  2. 2Choose a frame rate and width below. The defaults, 15 fps at 480 pixels, suit most chat and comment use.
  3. 3Download the looping GIF, or adjust and apply again if the size is not right.

The right expectations for MP4 to GIF

Converting MP4 to GIF is a downgrade in every technical dimension, made for one excellent reason: a GIF plays by itself, silently, looping, in places where video needs a tap, a player or an unmuted state. Documentation, README files, issue trackers, chat reactions and comment sections all treat a GIF as an image, and that frictionlessness is the entire product.

So the job of a good converter is to manage the downgrade, and the two settings above are how. Frame rate controls smoothness: film-like 25 is rarely worth the bytes in a chat window, and 15 is the sweet spot where motion still reads as motion. Width controls clarity and dominates size. The row reports the output size immediately, so the adjust-and-apply loop takes seconds.

What the palette pass does

GIF limits each palette to 256 colours. The naive conversion picks a generic palette and dithers everything toward it, which is where the crawling static of bad GIFs comes from. This tool makes two passes: the first watches your actual clip and builds a palette weighted toward the colours that appear in changing regions, and the second maps frames onto that palette with ordered dithering, which compresses better and does not shimmer. The difference is visible on anything with skin tones or gradients.

When not to use a GIF

If the destination supports video, video wins: a fraction of the size, full colour, smooth motion. Our GIF to MP4 page exists precisely because platforms increasingly convert GIFs to video themselves. Reach for GIF when the destination demands an image that moves, keep the clip short, and this page will make the best GIF the format allows, without your clip leaving the browser.

Frequently asked questions

Why is the GIF bigger than my MP4?
Because GIF is a spectacularly inefficient video format, and honesty about that is the most useful thing this page can say. MP4 stores differences between frames using decades of compression research; GIF stores something much closer to every frame as its own image. A clip that is 2 MB as MP4 can be 8 MB as GIF. Use GIF because you need looping autoplay compatibility, never to save space.
How long a clip can I convert?
Technically minutes; practically, keep it under about ten seconds. GIF size grows roughly linearly with duration, and a thirty-second GIF is a file nobody can post anywhere. If you need the whole clip, you likely want a video with autoplay attributes rather than a GIF.
What do the frame rate and width settings trade away?
Size against smoothness and clarity. 15 fps keeps motion looking natural in a small loop; 10 makes it visibly steppy but much smaller. Width is quadratic, so dropping from 640 to 480 cuts nearly half the pixels. Start with the defaults, look at the size in the row, and adjust from there.
Does the GIF keep the audio?
No, and not because this tool dropped a feature. The GIF format has no audio at all. If the sound matters, what you want is a video, not a GIF. Our audio tools can also extract the soundtrack separately if you need it.
Is my video sent to a server?
No. The conversion, palette computation included, runs entirely in your browser with ffmpeg compiled to WebAssembly. The clip never leaves your device.

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