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WebRTC Codecs Guide

A comprehensive guide to video codecs in WebRTC

There‘s limited information available about video codecs used in WebRTC, their performance, and compatibility with various clients. This guide is intended to clarify these aspects of WebRTC codecs and to help you make an informed decision.

CodecH.264VP8VP9H.265/HEVCAV1

Codec Efficiency

BaselineBaseline23-33% more efficient40-60% more efficient24-52% more efficient

Encoding Performance

High (HW accelerated)

High

High

High (HW accelerated)

Low

Bitrate Adaptation
Simulcast (spatial-only)SimulcastSVC / SimulcastSimulcast (spatial-only)SVC / Simulcast
Compatibility
chrome logoChrome (Edge, Brave, etc)
107+
safari logoSafari
12.2+15.0+11.0+
firefox logoFireFox
35+

Partial

137+
ios logoiOS / MacOS
android logoAndroid

Device-dependent

Device-dependent

windows logoWindows
linux logoLinux

*Native support using WebRTC fork webrtc-sdk