Can optimized JPG images outperform WebP on Shopify?

Technical Q&A

Topic summary

Issue: Shopify is automatically converting uploaded JPG images to WebP, resulting in larger file sizes than the original optimized JPGs.

Examples:

  • Optimized JPG: 53 KB → Shopify WebP: 83 KB (+30 KB)
  • Uploaded JPG: 250 KB → Shopify-generated version: 378 KB

Requests:

  • Whether it’s possible to bypass Shopify’s conversion and serve the original JPG instead of WebP.
  • Users are seeking a practical solution or setting to prevent the size increase.

Context: WebP is an image format that Shopify serves automatically, but in these cases it is larger than the optimized JPG.

Status: No solution or workaround has been provided in the discussion. The key question—how to load the original JPG instead of WebP on Shopify—remains unanswered and the thread is open.

Summarized with AI on January 6. AI used: gpt-5.
1

We do have a very optimized JPG image with about 53kb - when shopify converts it to WebP it’s about 83kb (+30kb increase)
I heard that sometimes optimized JPG’s outperform WebP - is there any way we can load the JPG instead of the WebP image?

2

Hi Marc,

Did you ever find a solution to this? I’m also having this exact same issue. My uploaded jpeg is 250 kb and Shopify is delivering a 378 kb version that it created automatically.