VP9 vs H.264: The Short Answer
- Efficiency: VP9 is newer and needs fewer bits for the same picture, often around 30–50% fewer. So yes, VP9 is more efficient than H.264, at the cost of slower encoding.
- Compatibility: H.264 plays on practically every phone, TV, browser and editor. VP9 plays in current browsers and on Android, but not everywhere.
- Licensing: VP9 is royalty-free; H.264 is licensed through a patent pool (Via LA).
- Use: VP9 (in WebM) for video on your own website, H.264 (in MP4) for uploads, sharing and editing.
What Are VP9 and H.264?
H.264 (also called AVC or MPEG-4 Part 10) is the most widely deployed video codec in history. Released in 2003 by the ITU/MPEG consortium, it powers everything from Blu-ray discs to YouTube uploads to smartphone cameras. It is the default codec inside MP4 containers.
VP9 is Google's open-source video codec, released in 2013 as the successor to VP8. It was designed to match H.265/HEVC quality while remaining completely royalty-free. YouTube encodes most uploaded videos to VP9 for delivery (alongside H.264 and AV1), and VP9 is the primary codec inside WebM containers.
Quality Comparison
At equivalent visual quality (measured by SSIM or VMAF metrics), VP9 achieves 30–50% smaller file sizes than H.264. The improvement is most noticeable at lower bitrates, where VP9 maintains sharper detail and fewer artifacts.
Rough CRF (Constant Rate Factor) equivalence between the two codecs (VP9 uses a 0–63 scale, H.264 0–51):
| H.264 CRF | VP9 CRF (equivalent) | Quality Level |
|---|---|---|
| 18 | 20–25 | Visually lossless |
| 23 | 30–33 | Default / excellent |
| 28 | 35–40 | Good / smaller files |
Encoding Speed
VP9 is significantly slower to encode than H.264 — typically several times slower, depending on the cpu-used setting and thread count. This is the major tradeoff for its superior compression.
The cpu-used parameter controls the speed/quality tradeoff for VP9:
| cpu-used | Speed | Quality Impact |
|---|---|---|
| 0 | Extremely slow | Best compression |
| 1–2 | Very slow | Minimal loss |
| 3 | Moderate (our setting) | Small efficiency loss |
| 4–5 | Fast | Noticeable loss |
| 6–8 | Very fast | Significant loss |
Our converter uses cpu-used 3 with row-mt 1 (row-based multithreading) for an acceptable balance of speed and quality in an online conversion service. Our VP9 encoding guide explains the FFmpeg settings for CRF, cpu-used and row-mt.
File Size Comparison
Illustrative example for a 1-minute 1080p clip at similar visual quality (real sizes depend on the content):
| Codec | Settings | File Size | Savings |
|---|---|---|---|
| H.264 | CRF 23, medium preset | ~10 MB | Baseline |
| VP9 | CRF 30, cpu-used 3 | ~6 MB | ~40% smaller |
Browser & Hardware Support
Both codecs have excellent support in 2026:
- H.264: universally hardware-decoded on every device manufactured in the last 15 years. Every browser, every phone, every TV, every gaming console.
- VP9: decoded natively in Chrome, Firefox, Edge, and recent Safari versions. Hardware decoding is common on GPUs and phone chips from the last several years.
Licensing & Cost
- VP9: completely royalty-free under the WebM Project license. No licensing fees ever.
- H.264: is licensed through the Via LA patent pool (formerly MPEG LA). The costs are typically covered by device and software manufacturers, so end users do not pay directly.
Which Should You Choose?
| Use Case | Recommendation | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Web delivery (bandwidth matters) | VP9/WebM | 30–50% smaller files |
| Universal device playback | H.264/MP4 | Works on everything |
| YouTube upload | Either | YouTube re-encodes every upload anyway |
| Social media upload | H.264/MP4 | Required by most platforms |
| Royalty-free requirement | VP9/WebM | No licensing fees |
| Real-time encoding | H.264 | Much faster encoding, wide hardware support |
VP9 vs H.265 vs AV1
| H.264 | VP9 | H.265 (HEVC) | AV1 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Released | 2003 | 2013 | 2013 | 2018 |
| Efficiency | Baseline | Better than H.264 | Similar to VP9 | Best of the four |
| Royalties | Patent pool | Royalty-free | Several patent pools | Royalty-free |
| Browser playback | All | All current major browsers | Limited; depends on browser and hardware | Chrome, Firefox, Edge; Safari on devices with AV1 hardware |
| Usual container | MP4 | WebM | MP4, MOV | MP4, WebM |
| Encoding speed | Fast | Slow | Slow | Slowest |
Is VP9 better than H.265? They are close in efficiency. VP9 is royalty-free and plays in more browsers; H.265 has wider hardware support in cameras, phones and TVs. AV1 is not everywhere yet because encoding is slow and older devices lack hardware decoding.