H.264 dominated for 15 years. H.265 (HEVC) promised 50% better compression but tripped on licensing. AV1 is open and rivals HEVC in efficiency but is slower to encode. Choosing for production means balancing bitrate, encoder cost, decoder support, and licensing politics.
Compression efficiency
| Codec | Bitrate (1080p good quality) | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| H.264 (AVC) | ~4-6 Mbps | Universal baseline |
| H.265 (HEVC) | ~2-3 Mbps | ~50% smaller than H.264 |
| VP9 | ~2-3 Mbps | YouTube workhorse, open |
| AV1 | ~1.5-2 Mbps | ~30% smaller than HEVC |
Encoding complexity
Encoder speed (relative, x264 = 1×): H.264 baseline, HEVC ~5×, VP9 ~10×, AV1 reference ~50-100×. SVT-AV1 brings AV1 down to ~5×. For live encoding (real-time), use HEVC or SVT-AV1; for VOD, AV1 reference is fine offline.
Decoder support (2026)
H.264: every device since 2008. HEVC: most devices since 2015, but iOS-friendly only via FairPlay-paid path. VP9: Chrome, Android, modern smart TVs. AV1: Chrome 70+, Firefox, Safari 16+, Android 10+, most 2022+ TVs. For broadest reach, H.264 is still the safe fallback rung.
Licensing reality
H.264: pool royalties, capped, mostly painless. HEVC: three patent pools (MPEG-LA, HEVC Advance, Velos Media) — operational nightmare. VP9 and AV1: royalty-free by design via the Alliance for Open Media.
Production stack recommendation
Encode three ladders: H.264 (compatibility), HEVC (current premium), AV1 (future-premium). Serve based on user-agent. Most CDNs (Akamai, Cloudfront, Cloudflare Stream) automate this if you upload the source.