AV1 vs H264: 50% Smaller Files, One Catch
AV1 vs H.264: 50% Smaller Files, One Catch
AV1 makes files about 30–50% smaller than H.264 at the same quality. The catch is compatibility and speed: H.264 plays on essentially every device made since the mid-2000s and encodes in hardware. AV1 does not, unless the player is modern and you can wait on a software encode.
That is the whole AV1 vs H264 (and H.264 vs AV1) decision. Almost every video you have shared was probably H.264. AV1 is the codec that cuts that file nearly in half — if the other end can play it.
H.264 (also called AVC — Advanced Video Coding) has been the universal baseline since 2003. AV1, released by the Alliance for Open Media in 2018, was built to be roughly 50% more efficient — and to do it without any royalty fees. They sit at opposite ends of the codec timeline, and they make almost opposite tradeoffs.
This guide breaks down every meaningful dimension of the AV1 vs H264 comparison: compression efficiency, encoding speed, hardware support, browser compatibility, licensing, and practical use cases. We'll also cover how macOS handles both codecs and which one actually makes sense for Mac workflows.
If you're coming from the basics, see our guide on what a video codec is before diving in.
What Is H.264 (AVC)?
H.264, officially named AVC (Advanced Video Coding), was standardized in 2003 by the ITU-T and ISO/IEC joint committee. It's the most widely deployed video codec in history — the format behind Blu-ray, broadcast TV, video conferencing, social media uploads, and the default recording format on countless cameras and phones.
The reason for that ubiquity is simple: H.264 has had over two decades to embed itself into hardware and software everywhere. Its core design divides each frame into fixed 16×16 pixel macroblocks, then uses motion prediction, transform coding, and entropy coding to compress the video efficiently for its era. Compared to the codecs before it, H.264 was a huge leap — and crucially, dedicated H.264 encode and decode hardware ships in virtually every chip made since the mid-2000s.
That maturity is its superpower. H.264 plays on essentially every device, every browser, and every editor without a second thought, and it encodes in hardware at near-instant speeds. Its weakness is efficiency: by modern standards, H.264 needs significantly more bits to reach the same visual quality as newer codecs. That's the gap AV1 was designed to close.
What Is AV1?
AV1 is an open-source, royalty-free video codec developed by the Alliance for Open Media (AOM) — a consortium founded in 2015 by Google, Mozilla, Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, Meta, and Intel, among others. Version 1.0 was released in 2018.
The founding motivation was partly technical and partly economic. The licensing landscape around H.264's successor, HEVC, was fragmented and expensive (multiple patent pools with conflicting terms), which created real friction for browser vendors and streaming services. AV1 offered an escape: a next-generation codec that no one would need to pay licensing fees to use.
Technically, AV1 builds on research from Google's VP9 codec and incorporates innovations from the Daala and Thor open-source codec projects. The result is a codec with a dramatically larger toolbox than H.264:
- Compound prediction modes that blend multiple reference frames
- Palette coding for screen content and animation
- Constrained directional enhancement filtering that suppresses ringing artifacts with greater precision
- Tile-based parallelism for multi-threaded encoding and decoding
These tools let AV1 squeeze out roughly 50% better compression than H.264 — but they also make encoding computationally demanding, which is the crux of the entire comparison.
AV1 vs H.264: Full Comparison
| Feature | AV1 | H.264 (AVC) |
|---|---|---|
| Compression efficiency | 30–50% better than H.264 | The baseline standard |
| Encoding speed | Slow (software); improving with SVT-AV1 | Instant; near-universal hardware encode |
| Decoding speed | Good on hardware-supported devices | Excellent everywhere |
| Hardware encode support | Limited (newest chips only) | Universal (essentially all devices) |
| Hardware decode support | Growing (2020+ devices) | Universal |
| Browser support | Chrome, Firefox, Edge, Safari (partial) | Every browser, no exceptions |
| Licensing | Royalty-free (open source) | Paid (patent pool) |
| Max resolution | 8K+ | 4K (practical); 8K (spec) |
| HDR support | Yes (HDR10, Dolby Vision) | Limited |
| Streaming adoption | YouTube, Netflix, Vimeo | Universal fallback / legacy |
| macOS hardware encode | No (Apple Silicon has decode only, M3 and later) | Yes (all Macs via VideoToolbox) |
| File size at same quality | 30–50% smaller | Larger baseline |
Compression Efficiency: AV1 Wins Decisively
This is the headline advantage of AV1, and against H.264 it's enormous. Independent testing from Netflix, Meta, and academic researchers consistently shows AV1 delivering 30–50% better compression efficiency than H.264 at equivalent visual quality — the same content, the same perceived quality, in a much smaller file.
To put that in concrete terms: a 10-minute 1080p video that compresses to 1 GB in H.264 might compress to 500–700 MB in AV1. For streaming services delivering billions of minutes of video per day, that efficiency gap translates directly into reduced CDN costs and lower bandwidth consumption for viewers.
The efficiency gap varies by content type:
- Live action footage: AV1 typically 30–40% smaller than H.264
- Animation and screen content: AV1 can achieve 50%+ smaller (the palette coding tools shine here)
- High-motion sports content: AV1's advantage narrows toward 25–35%
H.264 was designed in an era of standard-definition and early HD video, so it simply wasn't built for the efficiency demands of 4K streaming. AV1's larger toolbox closes that gap and then some. If raw file size at a given quality is your only metric, AV1 wins this category without question.
For practical tools to estimate file sizes across different codecs, see our video file size calculator.
Encoding Speed: H.264 Is in a Different League
This is where H.264 has a decisive, almost unfair advantage — and where many people who've tried AV1 encoding have hit a wall.
H.264 encoding is everywhere in hardware. Apple's VideoToolbox on every Mac includes a dedicated H.264 encoder block that runs faster than real time. The same is true of practically every GPU, phone SoC, and capture device on the market. A clip that takes hours to encode in software AV1 can encode in H.264 in seconds to minutes, with zero CPU strain.
AV1 encoding in software is brutally slow by comparison. In Facebook's 2018 test, the early AV1 reference encoder delivered about 50% better compression than x264 but took thousands of times longer to run. Encoders have sped up enormously since then, but a high-quality software AV1 encode is still many times slower than H.264. This is the single biggest practical barrier to AV1 adoption in everyday creation workflows.
The situation is improving, primarily through SVT-AV1 (Scalable Video Technology for AV1), Intel's open-source AV1 encoder that achieves far better throughput through parallelism. FFmpeg integrated SVT-AV1, and at speed presets 4–6 (on a 0–13 scale) it produces AV1 files at more usable speeds while still beating H.264 on quality per byte. But even SVT-AV1 doesn't approach the instant, zero-effort speed of hardware H.264.
Hardware AV1 encoding is finally appearing in silicon, but coverage is still narrow:
- NVIDIA RTX 40-series and newer GPUs: hardware AV1 encode
- Intel Arc GPUs and Core Ultra (Meteor Lake) and newer: hardware AV1 encode
- AMD Radeon RX 7000 (RDNA 3) and newer: hardware AV1 encode
- Apple Silicon: hardware AV1 decode only, from the M3 onward (no hardware AV1 encode as of the M5)
Once a hardware AV1 encoder is available, the picture flips. NVIDIA reports its Ada (RTX 40) AV1 encoder runs at about 500 fps, almost 9x faster than the x264 software encoder, and saves around 40% bitrate versus NVENC H.264 at 1080p60 for similar quality (NVIDIA developer blog). Those are vendor numbers from NVIDIA's own tests, but they show the slowness is a software problem, not something inherent to the format.
Encode Cost at a Glance
| Encoding path | Speed | CPU load | Where you get it |
|---|---|---|---|
| H.264, hardware | Faster than real time | Very low | Every Mac (VideoToolbox), NVENC, Quick Sync, AMD VCN, phones |
| H.264, software (x264) | Fast | Moderate to high | Any computer |
| AV1, hardware | Faster than real time | Very low | RTX 40+, Intel Arc / Core Ultra, Radeon RX 7000+ only |
| AV1, software (SVT-AV1) | Slow to moderate, depends on preset | Uses every core | Any computer |
| AV1, software (libaom) | Slowest | Uses every core | Any computer |
For anyone who needs a video encoded now — especially on a Mac — H.264 is the speed champion by a wide margin.
Hardware Support and Device Compatibility
This category is the whole reason H.264 refuses to die.
H.264 hardware support is effectively universal:
- Every Mac, ever: hardware encode and decode
- Every iPhone and iPad: hardware encode and decode
- Essentially all Android phones, going back well over a decade
- Every modern GPU from NVIDIA, AMD, and Intel
- Smart TVs, set-top boxes, game consoles, webcams, dash cams, drones — all of it
AV1 hardware support is growing but still uneven, and decode arrived years before encode. Here is the encode vs decode split by platform:
| Platform | H.264 encode | H.264 decode | AV1 encode | AV1 decode |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mac (Apple Silicon) | All M-series | All M-series | None, through M5 | M3 and later (not M1/M2) |
| iPhone / iPad (A-series) | Yes | Yes | None | A17 Pro (iPhone 15 Pro) and later |
| NVIDIA GeForce | Yes (NVENC) | Yes (NVDEC) | RTX 40-series and later | RTX 30-series and later |
| Intel | Yes (Quick Sync) | Yes | Arc GPUs; Core Ultra (Meteor Lake) and later | 11th-gen Core (Tiger Lake) and later |
| AMD Radeon | Yes (VCN) | Yes | RX 7000 (RDNA 3) and later | RX 6000 (RDNA 2) and later (most models) |
| Android | Yes | Yes (required) | Required from Android 14 (hardware or software varies by chip) | Android 10+; in hardware on Snapdragon 8 Gen 2+, Dimensity 1000+, Exynos 2100+ |
| Browsers | — | All | — | Chrome 70+, Firefox 67+, Edge 121+; Safari 17+ only on devices with an AV1 hardware decoder |
Sources: Apple M3 announcement, Apple A17 Pro announcement, MacBook Pro tech specs, NVIDIA encode/decode support matrix, Intel media-driver codec table, AMD VCN overview, Android supported media formats, caniuse AV1. Android chip support per MediaTek, AnandTech (Exynos 2100), and Pocket-lint (Snapdragon 8 Gen 2).
The two columns that matter most for a Mac user: AV1 decode needs an M3 or newer, and AV1 encode is not available in Apple hardware at all. An M1 or M2 Mac falls back to software AV1 decoding in apps that support it, and Safari will not play AV1 on those machines. If you need to check a specific file, our AV1 player guide covers which Mac players handle it.
The practical implication: if you send someone an H.264 file, you can be almost certain it will play. If you send AV1, an older phone, an older TV, or an older laptop may have to decode it in software — or may not play it at all. For broad compatibility, H.264 is still the safest bet on the planet.
Licensing: AV1 Is Royalty-Free, H.264 Is Not
This difference is invisible to end users but hugely consequential for the companies building products.
H.264 licensing runs through the MPEG LA patent pool (now part of Via LA). Device manufacturers and software vendors that implement H.264 pay royalties, though caps and free tiers for low-volume distribution have kept it tolerable. Apple, Microsoft, and most major vendors have licensed H.264 broadly, which is part of why it became so universal — the terms were predictable enough for everyone to adopt it.
AV1 is completely royalty-free. The Alliance for Open Media's member companies committed to not asserting patents against AV1 implementations. Any company, developer, or individual can implement AV1 encoding or decoding without paying licensing fees. This is exactly why Google (YouTube), Netflix, Meta, and Microsoft invested so heavily in AV1 — at their scale, eliminating per-stream codec costs while also reducing bandwidth is a double win.
For an individual Mac user, neither licensing model costs you anything directly. But the economics explain why AV1 exists and why the biggest streaming platforms are pushing it.
Browser and Platform Support
H.264 browser support is the one thing nothing else can match:
- Chrome, Firefox, Edge, Safari: full support, everywhere, for years
- It is the universal web video fallback — if all else fails, H.264 plays
AV1 browser support:
- Chrome: full support (since Chrome 70, 2018)
- Firefox: full support (since Firefox 67, 2019)
- Edge: supported from Edge 121
- Safari: partial — Safari 17+ plays AV1 only on devices with a hardware AV1 decoder (M3 or newer Macs, iPhone 15 Pro or newer)
AV1 has impressively broad browser support for a young codec, and YouTube now defaults to AV1 for capable devices. But "capable devices" is the key phrase — H.264 has no such qualifier. If you need a video that will play in any browser on any machine without checking compatibility tables, H.264 remains the guaranteed choice.
AV1 or H.264: Which Should You Use?
If you only read one table, read this one. It answers AV1 or H.264 by what you are actually doing with the file:
| Use case | Pick | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Sharing with anyone (clients, chat apps, email, old TVs) | H.264 | Plays on every device and browser; AV1 fails on M1/M2 Safari, older phones, and many TVs |
| Uploading to YouTube or Vimeo | H.264 (or HEVC) at high bitrate | The platform re-encodes to AV1 itself for viewers who can play it |
| Archiving your own library | AV1 if you can wait; otherwise HEVC | Smallest files for long-term storage, and you control the player |
| Streaming / video on your own site | AV1 with H.264 fallback | Serve AV1 to capable browsers, H.264 to the rest |
| Live streaming and video calls | H.264 | Real-time encode needs hardware, and H.264 hardware is everywhere |
| Editing | H.264 (or an intermediate like ProRes) | Scrubs smoothly on any machine; AV1 timelines stutter without hardware decode |
| Screen recordings and animation | AV1 | Palette and screen-content tools give the largest savings here |
The pattern: AV1 when you control playback and have time; H.264 when you don't. If you are on a Mac and want smaller files than H.264 without AV1's encode time, HEVC is the middle path — see HEVC vs H.264.
Use Cases: When to Choose AV1 vs H.264
Choose AV1 when:
- You're delivering video for web streaming at scale (YouTube, Vimeo, web players)
- Minimizing file size or bandwidth is the top priority
- You're encoding animation, screen recordings, or UI walkthroughs
- You have time for longer encodes (archival, overnight batch processing)
- You're encoding with SVT-AV1 or dedicated AV1 hardware
- Your viewers are on modern devices that decode AV1 in hardware
Choose H.264 when:
- You need the file to play everywhere, including older devices
- You need fast encoding — especially on a Mac with VideoToolbox
- You're sharing clips, uploading to social platforms, or sending files to clients
- You're working with editors, hardware, or workflows that expect H.264
- Encoding speed and universal compatibility matter more than the last 40% of file-size savings
- You're using Compresto or any app that leverages VideoToolbox for hardware-accelerated compression
The short version: AV1 is the efficiency choice; H.264 is the compatibility-and-speed choice. For modern web streaming where bandwidth dominates, lean AV1. For day-to-day creation, sharing, and Mac workflows, H.264 (and its more efficient sibling HEVC) is still the practical default.
For the codecs that sit between these two, see our comparisons of AV1 vs H.265, HEVC vs H.264, and H.264 vs H.265.
How Compresto Handles Codecs on macOS
Compresto is built specifically for the Mac compression workflow, and it leverages Apple's VideoToolbox framework for hardware-accelerated encoding. That means encoding is handled by the Mac's dedicated media engine — not the CPU grinding away — so encodes are fast and don't slow down the rest of your work.
For video output, Compresto uses H.264 and HEVC (H.265) via VideoToolbox. H.264 gives you maximum compatibility — a file that plays on virtually anything — while HEVC offers significantly smaller files for Apple-ecosystem playback. Both encode at near-real-time speeds on Apple Silicon thanks to hardware acceleration.
On the AV1 side: because Apple Silicon currently provides hardware AV1 decode but not encode, Compresto doesn't use AV1 as an output format. Encoding AV1 in software would be far slower and would defeat the whole point of hardware acceleration. So your Mac can play the AV1 videos it receives smoothly and efficiently, while Compresto produces H.264 and HEVC for fast, compatible compression. As hardware AV1 encoding matures on Apple platforms, that may change.
Compresto also handles batch video compression, processing entire folders automatically — far faster than running FFmpeg manually for each file.
Future Outlook: Where H.264 and AV1 Are Headed
H.264 isn't going anywhere soon. Its universal hardware support and guaranteed playback make it the permanent safe default for compatibility, much like JPEG never disappeared from images. For sharing, conferencing, and broad distribution, expect H.264 to remain a fixture for years.
AV1, meanwhile, is on a clear upward trajectory. As more phones, TVs, and GPUs ship with hardware AV1 encode and decode, the encoding-speed barrier will fall, and AV1 will increasingly displace H.264 for web streaming where bandwidth costs dominate. The Alliance for Open Media has also begun work on AV2, which early research suggests could deliver another 20–30% efficiency gain on top of AV1.
The most likely scenario for 2027–2030: AV1 becomes the dominant web streaming codec, H.264 remains the universal compatibility fallback and a common capture format, and HEVC holds its place in Apple-ecosystem creation workflows. For practical compression work today, the AV1 vs H264 choice still comes down to one question: do you need maximum efficiency, or do you need it to play everywhere and encode now?
FAQ: AV1 vs H.264
Q: Is AV1 better than H264?
For compression, yes — AV1 is roughly 30–50% more efficient than H.264, delivering the same visual quality in a much smaller file. But "better" depends on your goal. H.264 wins decisively on universal compatibility and encoding speed. AV1 software encoding is dramatically slower, and not every device can decode AV1 yet, while H.264 plays on essentially everything made in the last 20 years.
Q: Should I use AV1 or H264 for uploading to YouTube?
Upload in whatever your machine encodes fastest at high quality — usually H.264 or HEVC on a Mac. YouTube re-encodes every upload anyway and generates its own AV1 versions for capable viewers. Spending hours on a slow software AV1 encode just to upload it provides no benefit.
Q: Can a Mac encode AV1?
Not in hardware. Apple added hardware AV1 decode with the M3 (M1 and M2 Macs have none), but no Apple chip has a hardware AV1 encoder as of the M5. You can encode AV1 in software with libaom or SVT-AV1, but it's slow. For fast Mac encodes, H.264 and HEVC via VideoToolbox are the practical choices.
Q: Why is H.264 still so widely used in 2026?
Universal compatibility and instant hardware encoding. H.264 plays on virtually every browser, phone, TV, editor, and old device on the planet, and almost all silicon has had hardware H.264 encode and decode for over a decade. Nothing else matches that reach, which keeps it the safe default for sharing.
Q: How much smaller is AV1 compared to H264?
At equivalent visual quality, AV1 files are typically 30–50% smaller than H.264 — and for animation or screen recordings the gap can exceed 50%. So a 1 GB H.264 clip might land around 500–700 MB in AV1. The catch is that producing that AV1 file takes far longer unless you have dedicated AV1 encoding hardware.
Q: What is the difference between AV1 and H.264?
H.264 (2003) is a licensed codec with hardware encode and decode in almost every device. AV1 (2018) is royalty-free and needs roughly 30–50% fewer bits for the same quality, but hardware AV1 decode only arrived around 2020–2023 and hardware AV1 encode is limited to recent GPUs. In short: AV1 is smaller, H.264 is faster and plays everywhere.
Q: Why does AV1 take so long to encode?
AV1 tests far more prediction modes, block shapes, and filters per frame than H.264, and a software encoder has to try them on the CPU. Without a hardware AV1 encoder (NVIDIA RTX 40-series, Intel Arc, AMD RX 7000 or newer), that search is slow. Faster SVT-AV1 presets cut the time at the cost of some efficiency.
New to codecs? Our what is a video codec guide covers how codecs work, hardware support, and why the format you choose matters.
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