AV1 vs H.265 (HEVC): Compression, Quality, and Compatibility

AV1 compresses video 20-30% smaller than H.265 at the same visual quality and is completely royalty-free. H.265 (also called HEVC) has wider device support and encodes 5-10x faster. For streaming platforms, AV1 saves bandwidth and licensing fees. For local recording and editing, H.265 is faster and more practical.

Compression Efficiency

AV1 consistently beats H.265 on compression ratio. A 4K video that takes 10 GB in H.265 would be around 7-8 GB in AV1 at equivalent visual quality. The advantage grows with higher resolutions: at 1080p the gap is around 20%, but at 4K and 8K it can reach 30% or more. AV1 uses more advanced prediction techniques and partition structures that H.265 cannot match. For services delivering millions of streams (YouTube, Netflix), this compression advantage translates to massive bandwidth savings.

Encoding Speed

This is H.265's strongest advantage. Encoding a video to H.265 takes a fraction of the time compared to AV1. Software AV1 encoding can be 5-10x slower than H.265 for equivalent quality settings. Hardware AV1 encoding (available on recent GPUs from NVIDIA, AMD, and Intel) narrows this gap significantly, but hardware H.265 encoding is still faster. For live streaming, video calls, or workflows where turnaround time matters, H.265 remains the practical choice.

Device Support

H.265 works on nearly every device made after 2015: smartphones, TVs, streaming boxes, cameras, and game consoles all have hardware H.265 decoders. AV1 hardware decoding started appearing in 2020-2021 chips. As of 2026, most new phones, laptops, and smart TVs support AV1 playback, but older devices (pre-2020) generally do not. All modern browsers support AV1. If your audience uses a mix of old and new devices, H.265 has broader reach.

Licensing

AV1 is royalty-free, developed by the Alliance for Open Media (Google, Mozilla, Netflix, Amazon, and others). Anyone can use it without paying licensing fees. H.265 has a complicated licensing situation with multiple patent pools (MPEG LA, HEVC Advance, Velos Media) that charge fees for commercial use. This licensing complexity is the main reason AV1 was created and why YouTube and Netflix have invested heavily in adopting it.

Which Should You Use?

For web video and streaming, AV1 is the future. Better compression, no licensing fees, and growing device support make it the clear direction. For camera recording, video editing, and situations where encoding speed is critical, H.265 is the practical choice today. Many workflows encode in H.265 for editing and then re-encode to AV1 for final delivery.

Working with video files? Our video compressor reduces file sizes using H.264 encoding, and the video to MP4 converter handles format conversion for maximum compatibility.

Related reading: H.264 vs H.265 covers the previous generation codec comparison, H.265 vs H.266 looks at the next-generation VVC codec, MP4 vs WebM compares the container formats these codecs typically use, and AV1 vs VP9 compares AV1 against its royalty-free predecessor.