VP9 and AV1 are both royalty-free video codecs, but AV1 is the newer, more efficient successor: it compresses video roughly 30% better than VP9 at the same quality, so files are smaller and use less bandwidth. The trade-off is that AV1 is much heavier to encode and, until recently, had less hardware support for playback. VP9 is widely supported today; AV1 is the future, and adoption is accelerating as devices add AV1 decoding.
VP9 vs AV1 at a glance
| VP9 | AV1 | |
|---|---|---|
| Developed by | Alliance for Open Media (AOMedia) | |
| Released | 2013 | 2018 (VP9's successor) |
| Efficiency | Baseline | ~30% better compression than VP9 |
| Encoding cost | Moderate | High — much slower/heavier to encode |
| Hardware support | Broad and mature | Growing (newer chips, TVs, phones) |
| Licensing | Royalty-free | Royalty-free |
What is VP9?
VP9 is an open, royalty-free video codec developed by Google, released in 2013 as an alternative to H.265/HEVC without licensing fees. It's what powers a large share of YouTube streaming and is supported natively across modern browsers and devices. VP9 delivers strong compression — noticeably better than H.264 — and its maturity means near-universal playback support today.
What is AV1?
AV1 is the next-generation royalty-free codec from the Alliance for Open Media — a consortium including Google, Amazon, Netflix, Microsoft and others — released in 2018 as VP9's successor. On Android, players built on ExoPlayer (Media3) can decode AV1 in software or on supported hardware. It compresses video significantly more efficiently, so streamers can deliver the same quality at a lower bitrate (or better quality at the same bitrate). That efficiency is why the biggest streaming platforms are adopting it.
VP9 vs AV1: compression and quality
The headline difference is efficiency. At the same visual quality, AV1 files are roughly 30% smaller than VP9 (and far smaller than H.264). For a large streaming service, that translates into meaningful bandwidth and CDN savings, plus better quality for viewers on slow connections. The cost is on the encoding side: AV1 is computationally expensive to encode, so it takes more time and processing power to prepare content.
How they compare to H.264 and HEVC
In rough order of efficiency: H.264 (oldest, universal) → VP9 / HEVC (a big step up) → AV1 (most efficient). HEVC matches VP9 closely but carries licensing fees, which is exactly what the royalty-free VP9 and AV1 were built to avoid. See our guide to the HEVC video codec for the licensed side of the comparison.
Which should you use — VP9 or AV1?
- Need universal playback today — VP9 (or H.264 as a fallback) has the broadest support.
- Optimizing bandwidth at scale — AV1, where devices support it, cuts delivery costs.
- Best of both — serve AV1 to devices that can decode it and fall back to VP9/H.264 for the rest.
Let the platform handle codecs for you
You don't have to pick one codec for everyone. A streaming platform can encode multiple codecs and serve the most efficient one each device supports. Enveu's Content Manager transcodes your content and delivers adaptive-bitrate streams up to 4K across every device — and AV1 support is on the way, adding next-generation efficiency on top of the widely supported codecs it delivers today. So viewers get efficient playback without you managing codec compatibility by hand. It's part of Experience Cloud; see also streaming resolutions.
