BMP to GIF Converter — Convert BMP to GIF Online
Drop a bitmap below and choose GIF as the output format. Free, private, and entirely in your browser with no upload required. Two things worth knowing before you do: the result is a static GIF — a BMP cannot become an animation — and GIF keeps only 256 colours, so if your bitmap is a photograph, BMP to PNG or BMP to JPG is almost certainly the conversion you want.
Drop images here or click to browse
Supports HEIC, WEBP, AVIF, BMP, TIFF, SVG, GIF, ICO, PDF, JPG, PNG
100% Private — Your files never leave your device
All conversion happens directly in your browser using JavaScript. Nothing is uploaded to any server. Your images stay on your computer the entire time.
What This Conversion Actually Does
A BMP spends three bytes on every single pixel and compresses none of them, so it is enormous by construction. A 1600 × 2000 photograph is always exactly 9,600,054 bytes as a 24-bit bitmap — the arithmetic has no room for anything else. Converting that bitmap through the tool above:
- As a GIF: 1.1 MB, or 87.8% smaller, measuring 40.1 dB PSNR
- As a 92%-quality JPG of the same pixels: 310.6 KB
Read those two lines together, because they are the whole story of this page. The GIF is about 3.7 times the size of the JPG, and it looks worse — it discarded every colour but 232 of the bitmap's 15,233 to get there. GIF compresses runs of identical pixels, and photographs do not have any. Shrinking a bitmap by 87.8% sounds impressive right up until you notice that nearly every other format shrinks it further and keeps more of the picture.
So convert BMP to GIF when something insists on a GIF — a legacy content system, an old email client, a forum that accepts nothing else, a piece of retro hardware. It is a compatibility format, not an efficiency one. Choose it because a GIF is what you have been asked for, never because you want a small file.
No, a BMP Cannot Become an Animated GIF
This is the single most common thing people expect from a BMP to GIF converter, and it is not possible — not here, and not anywhere else. GIF supports animation; BMP does not. A bitmap file holds one still image and has no way to express a second frame, a delay between frames, or a loop count. There is no motion inside your BMP to recover, so no converter can extract any.
What you get from this page is one static GIF per bitmap. Drop five BMPs and you will get five separate static GIFs, downloadable together as a ZIP — not a five-frame animation. Assembling separate stills into a timeline is a different job from converting a file format, and this converter does not do it.
If you are actually after an animation, you need a source that already contains one. An existing animated GIF keeps its frames when you convert it to WebP or MP4, and going the other way from a video needs a frame-assembly tool rather than a format converter.
The 256-Colour Ceiling
Everything GIF costs you comes from one limit: a GIF image carries a colour table of at most 256 entries, and every pixel must be one of them. A 24-bit BMP can hold about 16.7 million distinct colours. The converter reduces the image with median-cut quantisation, then applies Floyd–Steinberg dithering to disguise what it threw away.
Every number below was measured by pushing the bitmap through the converter on this page and decoding the GIF it produced, not estimated. PSNR is against the source bitmap's own pixels, and because a BMP is uncompressed, this is the first generation of loss these images have ever suffered.
| Source bitmap | Colours in | BMP size | GIF size | Smaller by | PSNR |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Photo, 1600×2000 | 15,233 | 9.2 MB | 1.1 MB | 87.8% | 40.1 dB |
| Photo, 1600×1067 | 151,129 | 4.9 MB | 777.4 KB | 84.5% | 29.0 dB |
| Photo, 1400×931 | 256,776 | 3.7 MB | 802.9 KB | 79.0% | 31.8 dB |
| Flat graphic, 800×600 | 464 | 1.4 MB | 11.6 KB | 99.2% | 61.1 dB |
The highlighted row is the conversion GIF was built for. A flat, logo-style graphic of solid shapes and anti-aliased text has only 464 distinct colours to begin with, so almost nothing is lost — 61.1 dB is a difference confined to the softened edges of the lettering — and the file collapses to 11.6 KB. Long runs of one palette index are exactly what GIF's compression eats.
The photographs tell the other story. At 40.1 dB the first is acceptable at a glance; at 29.0 dB the second has visible banding across its smooth areas, and no setting on this page will fix that, because 256 colours is a property of the format rather than a choice the encoder made. Note also that the photograph with the most colours did not fare the worst — how the colours are spread through the image matters as much as how many there are, so treat the range as a range and check your own result rather than predicting it from this table.
GIF vs PNG vs JPG for a Bitmap
Here is the same 1600 × 2000 bitmap converted four ways, every figure measured through this site's own encoders:
| Format | Size | What it keeps |
|---|---|---|
| BMP (source) | 9.2 MB | Every pixel, uncompressed |
| GIF | 1.1 MB | 256 colours, binary transparency |
| PNG | 2.3 MB | Every pixel, plus alpha transparency |
| JPG, 92% quality | 310.6 KB | All colours, some fine detail |
| WebP, 92% quality | 245.5 KB | All colours, some fine detail |
GIF lands in the worst position on that table for a photograph: it is 3.7× the size of the JPG while keeping far less of the image. Its only measurable win is over PNG, where it is about 51% smaller — and PNG earns those bytes honestly by keeping all 15,233 colours instead of 232.
- Choose GIF when a system demands a GIF, or when the image is flat artwork with few colours and the 99.2% saving is real.
- Choose PNG for anything you want to keep exactly — screenshots, logos, artwork, or a bitmap you may edit again. It is lossless and it is the correct default.
- Choose JPG for photographs headed anywhere at all. Smallest widely-readable option, and universally supported.
- Choose WebP for photographs headed to a website, where another 21% off the JPG is worth having.
If keeping every pixel is the point, read how to convert images without quality loss — GIF is not on that list. For a broader look at which format suits print, email, or archival, see image format by use case.
How to Convert BMP to GIF
- Drag your BMP file into the drop zone, or click to browse and select it.
- Choose GIF from the Output Format menu.
- Notice that the Quality slider disappears. GIF has no quality setting — its compression is lossless, and all of its loss happens in the jump to 256 colours.
- Check the size readout next to the file — it shows exactly how much you saved.
- Download the GIF — it's saved straight to your device.
You can drop several bitmaps at once and take them away together as a ZIP, though they remain separate static GIFs. Nothing is uploaded: the GIF encoder is plain JavaScript running on your own machine, so even confidential bitmaps never leave your computer. There is no WebAssembly module to fetch, which means the first conversion is no slower than the rest — our 3.2-megapixel test bitmap took roughly 0.7 seconds.
One hard limit: GIF stores each dimension as a 16-bit number, so neither side of the image may exceed 65,535 pixels. The converter will refuse a larger bitmap rather than write a file no decoder can read.
What Happens to Transparency
Almost certainly nothing, because there is almost certainly none. The ordinary 24-bit BMP has no alpha channel at all, so your GIF comes out fully opaque and the question never arises. If your bitmap is one of the rarer 32-bit variants that does carry alpha, GIF can only record it as a single bit per pixel: each pixel is either completely transparent or completely opaque, with the converter drawing the line at roughly 50% opacity. Soft edges, feathered cutouts, and drop shadows come out hard and jagged. Partial transparency is one of the several things BMP to PNG preserves and this conversion cannot.
Going the Other Way
Received a GIF and need something a photo editor or a modern website will accept? Converting out of GIF is usually the more useful direction, since nothing is added by staying in a 1987 format: GIF to PNG keeps the palette losslessly and restores a real alpha channel, while GIF to JPG is the smaller choice for a still frame that came from a photograph. Both take the first frame of an animation.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I make an animated GIF from a BMP?
No, and no tool can. A BMP holds exactly one still image — the format has no concept of frames, delays, or looping. Animation has to come from somewhere, and a single bitmap has nowhere to get it. This converter turns each BMP you drop into one static GIF; drop five bitmaps and you get five separate static GIFs back, not a five-frame animation. If you want an animated GIF you need a source that already contains motion, such as an existing animated GIF or a video file, or a dedicated tool that assembles frames into a timeline.
Does converting BMP to GIF lose quality?
Yes, and for photographs the loss is visible. GIF stores at most 256 distinct colours, while a 24-bit BMP can hold about 16.7 million. Our 1600×2000 test bitmap contains 15,233 distinct colours; the GIF this converter produced from it holds 232, and measured 40.1 dB PSNR against the original bitmap. A harder photograph in the same test set — 151,129 distinct colours — fell to 29.0 dB, which is banding you can see without looking for it. Flat graphics with few colours survive nearly intact: our logo-style test image measured 61.1 dB.
How much smaller is GIF than BMP?
A lot, because BMP compresses nothing at all. Across the three photographs we tested, GIF removed between 79.0% and 87.8% of the bytes — a 9.2 MB bitmap became a 1.1 MB GIF. A flat 800×600 graphic dropped by 99.2%, from 1.4 MB to 11.6 KB. Almost any format beats an uncompressed bitmap on size, though, so this is a low bar and not a good reason to choose GIF.
Why is my GIF bigger than a JPG of the same photo?
Because GIF was never designed to compress photographs. Taking the same 9.2 MB test bitmap: the GIF came out at 1.1 MB, while a 92%-quality JPG of the identical pixels was 310.6 KB and a WebP was 245.5 KB. The GIF is roughly 3.7 times the size of the JPG and it looks worse, because it has thrown away all but 256 colours to get there. GIF compresses runs of identical palette indices, which photographs simply do not contain. If the file is a photograph and nothing is forcing you to use GIF, convert BMP to JPG or WebP instead.
Should I convert my BMP to GIF or PNG?
PNG, unless something downstream specifically demands a GIF. PNG is lossless — every pixel of your bitmap survives exactly — and it supports real alpha transparency. GIF is lossy by construction and its transparency is a single on/off bit. The one thing PNG costs you is size: our test bitmap became a 2.3 MB PNG against a 1.1 MB GIF, so the GIF is about 51% smaller. That is the trade in full. You are paying 232 colours instead of 15,233 to halve the file, and if size is what you care about, a JPG at 310.6 KB beats both.
Why is there no quality slider when I choose GIF?
Because GIF has no quality setting to control. Formats like JPG, WebP, and AVIF let you dial how aggressively the encoder discards detail, so the converter shows a slider for them. GIF's compression stage is LZW, which is lossless — every byte of the palette-index stream is recovered exactly. All of GIF's loss happens earlier, when the image is reduced to 256 colours, and that step has no dial. The slider disappears because there is nothing behind it.
Will transparency in my BMP survive the conversion?
Usually there is none to survive: the overwhelmingly common 24-bit BMP has no alpha channel, so your GIF comes out fully opaque. If your bitmap is one of the rarer 32-bit variants that does carry alpha, GIF records transparency as a single bit per pixel — a pixel is either fully transparent or fully opaque, with nothing in between. This converter puts the threshold at roughly 50% opacity. Soft edges and drop shadows will turn hard and jagged. PNG is the format that preserves partial transparency properly.
Why does my GIF look speckled or grainy?
That is dithering, and it is deliberate. Once the image is cut to 256 colours, smooth gradients would otherwise collapse into flat bands. The converter applies Floyd–Steinberg dithering, which scatters the quantisation error into neighbouring pixels so that a fine stipple of two palette colours reads as the intermediate colour your eye expected. At normal viewing size it looks like a gradient. Zoomed in, it looks like grain. The alternative — visible banding — is worse.
Is there a size limit on BMP to GIF conversion?
The GIF format stores each dimension as a 16-bit number, so neither side can exceed 65,535 pixels; the converter refuses anything larger rather than producing a corrupt file. Nothing else is capped. Encoding is pure JavaScript running in your browser with no WebAssembly module to download, so the first conversion is no slower than the rest — our 3.2-megapixel test bitmap took about 0.7 seconds.