What Is VP9? The VP9 Codec Explained (vs H.264, H.265 & AV1)
What Is VP9? The VP9 Codec Explained
If you've ever streamed an HD or 4K video on YouTube, there's a good chance you watched it in VP9. It's one of the most widely deployed video codecs on the web, yet most people have never heard of it — it works silently in the background, shrinking billions of hours of video to a fraction of their original size.
VP9 is an open, royalty-free video codec developed by Google. It was built to deliver high-efficiency compression comparable to H.265 (HEVC) without the licensing fees, and to power web video at scale. Today VP9 sits in an interesting position: more efficient than the ubiquitous H.264, roughly on par with H.265, and now succeeded by AV1 — the codec it directly inspired.
This guide explains what VP9 is, how the VP9 codec works, and how it compares against H.264, H.265, and AV1. We'll also cover browser and hardware support, how macOS handles VP9, and where it fits in a modern compression workflow.
If you're new to the topic, start with our primers on what a video codec is and what video encoding actually does.
Where VP9 Came From
VP9 is the successor to VP8, a codec Google acquired when it bought On2 Technologies in 2010. Google released VP8 as part of the WebM project — an open, royalty-free media format intended as a free alternative to the patent-encumbered H.264.
VP9 followed in 2013, the same year HEVC was standardized. The timing wasn't a coincidence. Google needed a next-generation codec that could handle the explosion of HD and 4K content on YouTube without paying per-stream royalties to HEVC's patent pools. VP9 was the answer: a codec roughly as efficient as HEVC, but completely free to use.
The strategy worked. YouTube began serving VP9 widely, browser vendors implemented decoding, and chipmakers added hardware support. By the late 2010s, VP9 had become one of the most-decoded codecs on the planet — even if its name stayed obscure.
How the VP9 Codec Works
Like all modern codecs, VP9 reduces file size by exploiting redundancy within and between video frames. Its design borrows the same fundamental concepts as HEVC but implements them with its own toolset.
The key building block is the superblock. Where the older H.264 used fixed 16×16 macroblocks, VP9 starts with 64×64 superblocks that the encoder can recursively split into smaller partitions — down to 4×4 — depending on how much detail a region contains. Smooth areas like a clear sky use large blocks; complex textures use small ones. This adaptive partitioning is the single biggest source of VP9's efficiency gain over H.264.
VP9 layers several other techniques on top:
- Improved motion prediction with more reference frames and sub-pixel precision, so movement between frames is described more compactly.
- Larger transform sizes (up to 32×32) that capture broad patterns efficiently.
- A loop filter that smooths blocking artifacts at compression boundaries before frames are used as references.
- Tile-based encoding that splits frames into independent regions for parallel processing.
The net result: VP9 achieves roughly the same visual quality as HEVC, and about half the bitrate of H.264, for most content.
VP9 vs H.264: The Efficiency Jump
H.264 (AVC) is the most compatible video codec ever made — it plays on essentially every device, browser, and player built in the last 15 years. But it's also aging, and its compression can't keep up with modern resolutions.
This is where the VP9 vs H.264 comparison gets decisive. VP9 delivers roughly 50% better compression efficiency than H.264. A 4K stream that needs, say, 16 Mbps in H.264 might look equivalent at 8 Mbps in VP9. For YouTube, serving 4K and 8K at H.264 bitrates would be ruinously expensive in bandwidth — VP9 makes high-resolution streaming economically viable.
The tradeoffs run in H.264's favor on two fronts:
- Encoding speed: H.264 encodes far faster, with mature hardware encoders everywhere. VP9 software encoding is slower.
- Universal compatibility: H.264 plays on truly everything. VP9 needs a reasonably modern browser or device.
So VP9 wins clearly on file size, while H.264 wins on speed and reach. For a deeper look at the older codec hierarchy, see HEVC vs H.264.
VP9 vs H.265 (HEVC): Comparable Tech, Different Licensing
The VP9 vs H.265 matchup is closer than it looks, because the two codecs were designed to do the same job at the same time. In compression efficiency, they're broadly comparable — depending on content and encoder settings, HEVC often holds a slight edge (commonly cited around 5–20% at the high end), but the gap is small enough that licensing and ecosystem usually matter more than raw efficiency.
The real difference is philosophy:
- VP9 is royalty-free. Google released it with no licensing fees for encoding or decoding. Anyone can implement it freely.
- HEVC is licensed. It's governed by multiple patent pools (MPEG LA, HEVC Advance, Velos Media) with inconsistent terms and real per-device costs.
That licensing divide shaped adoption. Google and Mozilla pushed VP9 on the web precisely to avoid HEVC's fragmented patent landscape, which is why VP9 plays in Chrome and Firefox while HEVC historically did not. HEVC, meanwhile, dominates the Apple ecosystem and device capture, where Apple has licensed it and built dedicated hardware encoders.
If you want the full HEVC breakdown, our HEVC vs H.264 guide covers how that codec works.
VP9 vs AV1: The Successor Arrives
To understand AV1, you have to understand VP9 — because AV1 is, quite literally, VP9's successor. When Google, Mozilla, Netflix, Amazon, Apple, Intel, and others formed the Alliance for Open Media in 2015, they used VP9 as the foundation and merged in ideas from Google's experimental "VP10," Mozilla's Daala, and Cisco's Thor.
The VP9 vs AV1 result: AV1 delivers roughly 30% better compression than VP9 while staying royalty-free. It adds a much larger toolbox — compound prediction, palette coding for screen content, and more sophisticated filtering. AV1 is the more efficient, forward-looking codec, and YouTube and Netflix now serve it to capable devices.
The catch is encoding cost. AV1 software encoding is dramatically slower than VP9, and hardware AV1 support is still spreading. VP9 remains faster to encode and more broadly supported in hardware today, which is why it hasn't disappeared. For the codec generation beyond VP9, read our AV1 vs H.265 and AV1 vs H.264 comparisons.
VP9 vs H.264 vs H.265 vs AV1: Full Comparison
| Feature | H.264 (AVC) | VP9 | H.265 (HEVC) | AV1 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Developer | ITU-T / ISO (MPEG) | ITU-T / ISO (MPEG) | Alliance for Open Media | |
| Released | 2003 | 2013 | 2013 | 2018 |
| Compression vs H.264 | baseline | ~50% better | ~50% better | ~50–70% better |
| Compression vs VP9 | worse | baseline | comparable | ~30% better |
| Licensing | Paid (patent pools) | Royalty-free | Paid (patent pools) | Royalty-free |
| Primary container | MP4 | WebM | MP4 | MP4 / WebM |
| Browser support | Universal | Chrome, Firefox, Edge, Safari | Safari (natively) | Chrome, Firefox, Edge, Safari (partial) |
| macOS hardware decode | Yes | Yes (M1+) | Yes (M1+) | Yes (M1+) |
| macOS hardware encode | Yes | No | Yes (VideoToolbox) | No |
| Main use | Universal compatibility | YouTube / web streaming | Apple ecosystem, capture | Modern web streaming |
Browser and Hardware Support for VP9
One of VP9's biggest practical strengths is that it plays in nearly every modern browser:
- Chrome: full support since Chrome 29 (2013)
- Firefox: full support since Firefox 28 (2014)
- Edge: full support (Chromium-based)
- Safari: VP9 playback support, hardware-accelerated on Apple Silicon
On the hardware side, VP9 decode is now common:
- Apple Silicon (M1 and later): hardware VP9 decode
- Most Android phones since ~2015: hardware VP9 decode
- Intel CPUs (Kaby Lake, 2016+), NVIDIA and AMD GPUs from the mid-2010s: hardware VP9 decode
- Smart TVs and streaming sticks: broad VP9 decode support, since YouTube requires it for high resolutions
The asymmetry to remember: hardware decoding of VP9 is widespread, but hardware encoding is rare. Most VP9 encoding happens in software, which is why it's slower than H.264 or HEVC encoding.
How macOS Handles VP9
macOS has solid VP9 playback. Safari plays VP9 video, and on Apple Silicon (M1 and later) decoding is hardware-accelerated through the media engine, so 4K VP9 streams on YouTube play smoothly without draining the battery. Chrome and Firefox have decoded VP9 on the Mac for years.
What macOS does not offer is VP9 hardware encoding. Apple's VideoToolbox framework — the system layer that gives apps hardware-accelerated video encoding — supports H.264 and HEVC encode, but not VP9 or AV1. To produce a VP9 file on a Mac, you have to encode in software, typically with FFmpeg.
That distinction matters for any compression app: VP9 is great for playing web video on a Mac, but it's not the format you'd reach for when you need fast, hardware-accelerated encoding.
Encoding VP9: libvpx and FFmpeg
The reference encoder for VP9 is libvpx, Google's open-source implementation. In practice, most people encode VP9 through FFmpeg, which bundles libvpx. A typical command targeting good quality looks like this:
ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -c:v libvpx-vp9 -crf 31 -b:v 0 -c:a libopus output.webm
A few notes for real-world VP9 encoding:
- CRF mode (
-crfwith-b:v 0) gives constant-quality output; lower CRF means higher quality and bigger files. - Two-pass encoding improves quality at a target bitrate but doubles encode time.
- Opus audio pairs naturally with VP9 inside a WebM container.
- VP9 encoding is CPU-bound and slow because there's no hardware encoder on most machines, including Macs — expect long encodes for high-resolution footage.
VP9 lives most often inside the WebM container. If you're weighing container choices, our WebM vs MP4 guide explains when each makes sense.
When VP9 Is the Right Choice
VP9 makes the most sense when you're delivering video to the open web and want efficient compression without licensing costs:
- Web streaming where you control the player and target modern browsers
- YouTube and similar platforms that ingest and serve VP9 automatically
- Royalty-free distribution at scale, where avoiding patent fees matters
- WebM workflows that need an open container plus open codec
VP9 is a weaker choice when:
- You need the broadest possible device compatibility — H.264 still wins there
- You need fast, hardware-accelerated encoding on a Mac — HEVC via VideoToolbox is far faster
- You want the best possible compression today — AV1 edges out VP9 by about 30%
How Compresto Handles Video on macOS
Compresto is built for the Mac compression workflow, and it leans on Apple's VideoToolbox framework for hardware-accelerated encoding. On M1 and later Macs, that means HEVC encoding runs on the dedicated media engine — not the CPU — producing fast encodes that don't bog down the rest of your machine.
Here's the honest, accurate part about VP9 and Compresto: because Apple Silicon provides hardware VP9 decode but no VP9 encode, Compresto does not output VP9. The same applies to AV1. Encoding either of those codecs would mean falling back to slow software encoding, which defeats the purpose of a fast, hardware-accelerated Mac app. Instead, Compresto uses HEVC as its primary video output — the codec Apple's hardware encodes natively and quickly.
The result for a typical 10-minute 4K clip: an HEVC encode that finishes in a few minutes on Apple Silicon and lands roughly 40–50% smaller than the original, with no visible quality loss. VP9 might compress similarly, but it would take far longer to produce on a Mac.
Compresto also handles batch jobs, processing whole folders automatically — and it compresses videos, images, PDFs, and GIFs in one app. If you've got source files in older formats, see our convert 3GP to MP4 guide for getting legacy footage into a modern, Compresto-friendly format.
FAQ: VP9 Codec
Q: What is VP9 used for?
VP9 is mainly used for web video streaming. YouTube relies on VP9 heavily for HD and 4K playback, and it's the standard video codec inside the WebM container. Because VP9 is royalty-free, browsers and streaming services adopted it as an open alternative to the licensed HEVC codec.
Q: Is VP9 better than H.264?
For compression, yes — VP9 is roughly 50% more efficient than H.264, delivering the same quality at about half the file size. H.264 still wins on encoding speed and universal device compatibility, but VP9 is the clear choice when minimizing file size for web delivery matters more than reach.
Q: Can I play VP9 videos on a Mac?
Yes. Safari supports VP9, and Apple Silicon Macs (M1 and later) decode VP9 in hardware for smooth, efficient playback. Chrome, Firefox, and Edge have supported VP9 on macOS for years. Apple offers VP9 hardware decode but not encode.
Q: What is the difference between VP9 and AV1?
AV1 is VP9's direct successor, built on VP9's design by the Alliance for Open Media. AV1 delivers about 30% better compression than VP9 while staying royalty-free. VP9 encodes faster and has broader hardware support today, but AV1 is the more efficient, forward-looking codec.
Q: Is VP9 royalty-free?
Yes. Google developed VP9 and released it royalty-free, with no licensing fees for encoding or decoding. That's the central reason it spread across the web — it avoided the fragmented, costly patent pools that slowed HEVC adoption.
Want to understand the codec generation that came after VP9? Read our AV1 vs H.265 comparison to see how the open-codec lineage continues.
Download Compresto for Mac and compress your video library with hardware-accelerated HEVC encoding — fast encodes, dramatically smaller files, no quality loss.