Key takeaways:
- AV1 delivers roughly 30% better compression than H265 at the same visual quality.
- H265 has wider hardware support, especially across Apple devices and older laptops, TVs, and phones.
- AV1 is fully royalty-free; H265 has a notoriously tangled licensing situation.
- Cloudinary can deliver AV1, H265, or other codecs automatically based on the requesting device, no manual juggling required.
4K Netflix at silky-smooth bitrates. A YouTube stream that doesn’t melt our data plan. Both are doing one thing well: squeezing high-quality video into tiny files. The two codecs making most of that magic happen right now are AV1 and H265, and picking between them shapes how fast our content loads, how good it looks, and how many people can actually play it.
In this AV1 vs H265 breakdown, we’ll dig into how each codec works, where each one wins, and how to decide which one fits our project. We’ll also look at how Cloudinary makes the whole codec question mostly go away.
In this article:
- What Is the AV1 Video Codec?
- What Is the H265 (HEVC) Codec?
- Strengths of AV1
- Strengths of H265
- When to Use Each Codec
- Cloudinary Video: Delivering the Right Codec Every Time
What Is the AV1 Video Codec?
AV1 (short for AOMedia Video 1) was released in 2018 by the Alliance for Open Media, a consortium that includes Google, Netflix, Amazon, Microsoft, Mozilla, and eventually Apple. It’s a modern, open-source, and royalty-free video coding format designed for high-efficiency streaming over the internet.
The whole point of starting AV1 was to replace expensive proprietary options without dragging anyone through patent court. Under the hood, AV1 uses smarter motion prediction, larger block sizes, and more sophisticated entropy coding to squeeze more visual quality out of every bit.
And as a result, AV1 can deliver the same picture quality as H265 at roughly 30% lower bitrates, or noticeably better quality at the same bitrate. For web delivery, where every saved kilobyte improves load times and trims bandwidth bills, that’s a big deal.
What Is the H265 (HEVC) Codec?
H265, also known as HEVC (High Efficiency Video Coding), was finalized in 2013 as the official successor to H.264. It was designed by the ITU and ISO and quickly became the default for high-resolution video, including 4K Blu-ray, broadcast TV, and a massive slice of mobile video recording.
Comparing H264 vs H265, H265 cuts file size roughly in half at the same visual quality. That efficiency, combined with widespread hardware decoding, made it the standard choice for premium streaming and mobile capture. If you’ve recorded a video on an iPhone since 2017, there’s a good chance it’s HEVC by default.
Strengths of AV1
AV1’s appeal comes down to three things: better compression, free licensing, and hardware that’s finally caught up.
- Better compression: AV1 produces sharper video than HEVC at the same bitrate, especially at lower bitrates, where both codecs struggle. For Netflix or YouTube, that means lower CDN bills and better quality on slow connections.
- Royalty-free: AV1 is free to use under the Alliance for Open Media’s patent license. No license fees, no patent pool, no legal review before shipping. That’s why every major browser and most streaming giants backed it.
- Growing hardware support: Netflix, YouTube, Twitch, Meta, and Vimeo all stream AV1 today. On the hardware side, Intel 11th gen and later, AMD RX 6000+, NVIDIA RTX 30+, recent Apple Silicon, and iPhone 15 Pro and newer decode AV1 natively. Current GPUs can even encode AV1 in real time.
Strengths of H265
H265’s strength isn’t pushing limits, it’s reliability. After a decade in production, the hardware, encoders, and platform support are all settled.
- Universal hardware support: Nearly every phone, TV, set-top box, and laptop from the last decade decodes HEVC in hardware. That means smoother playback, lower battery drain, and fewer “this video can’t be played” surprises.
- Apple-native: iOS, iPadOS, macOS, and tvOS all support HEVC out of the box. Safari plays it without fuss, and iPhones have recorded HEVC by default since 2017. If your audience is Apple-heavy, HEVC is the path of least resistance.
- Faster encoding: H265 encodes faster than AV1 in most pipelines. Encoders like x265 have had a decade of tuning, and hardware HEVC encoders are everywhere. When time-to-publish matters more than the last 30% of compression, H265 still wins.
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When to Use Each Codec
The AV1 vs H265 decision usually comes down to who’s watching and what you’re optimizing for. Here’s the practical breakdown:
Reach for AV1 when:
- You’re delivering high volumes of video and want to slash bandwidth costs.
- Your viewers are mostly on modern Chrome, Firefox, Edge, or Android.
- You need the best possible quality at low bitrates (think mobile users on spotty connections).
- You don’t want to mess with patent licensing.
Reach for H265 when:
- A big slice of our audience is on Apple devices, Safari, or older hardware.
- You need fast encoding turnaround for live or near-live workflows.
- You’re delivering through HLS to Apple platforms, where HEVC is deeply supported.
- Our existing encoding infrastructure already speaks HEVC fluently.
Reach for both when:
- You want every viewer to get the most efficient codec their device supports.
That last scenario is the realistic one for most production apps, and it’s where things get tedious if we’re doing it by hand.
Cloudinary Video: Delivering the Right Codec Every Time
Maintaining parallel AV1 vs H265 encoding pipelines is a great way to burn out an engineering team. Cloudinary is a media platform and API that turns codec management into a URL parameter, making transcoding and encoding a breeze.
To force a specific video codec, add vc_ (video codec) to the delivery URL. Here’s how AV1 and HEVC look side by side:
// AV1 delivery// H265 (HEVC) delivery https://res.cloudinary.com/demo/video/upload/vc_h265/sea_turtle.mp4
Cloudinary transcodes the source video on demand, caches the result on the CDN, and serves it from then on. The original asset stays untouched. If you’d rather work through an SDK, here’s a quick Node.js example:
const cloudinary = require('cloudinary').v2;
// AV1 stream for modern Chrome, Firefox, and Edge users
const av1Url = cloudinary.url('product-demo-2024', {
resource_type: 'video',
video_codec: 'av1',
format: 'mp4'
});
// HEVC stream for Safari and Apple platforms
const hevcUrl = cloudinary.url('product-demo-2024', {
resource_type: 'video',
video_codec: 'h265',
format: 'mp4'
});
console.log({ av1Url, hevcUrl });
The script generates two delivery URLs from the same source asset. You can route each one to the right client based on capability, but honestly the smarter move is to let Cloudinary handle the routing too.
That’s what f_auto does. With a single parameter, Cloudinary inspects the requesting client and picks the most efficient format and codec it can play:
https://res.cloudinary.com/demo/video/upload/f_auto,q_auto/sea_turtle.mp4
The same URL serves AV1 to Chrome on Android, HEVC to Safari on iPhone, and H.264 as a fallback when neither modern codec is available. No user-agent sniffing, no parallel pipelines, no late-night codec debugging.
Choose Smart, Deliver Faster
The AV1 vs H265 conversation isn’t really about declaring a winner. AV1 wins on compression and licensing. H265 wins on ecosystem maturity and Apple support. The right answer depends on who’s watching and what you care about most.
If you have to pick one codec today, pick AV1 if you control the playback environment, like a mobile app or a modern web audience on Chrome, Firefox, or Edge. Pick H265 if your audience leans Apple or you need fast encoding for live or near-live workflows. If you can serve both, do that, with the modern codec going to capable clients and HEVC or H.264 catching everyone else.
The shortcut is letting a media platform handle the negotiation for you. Cloudinary transcodes, optimizes, and delivers AV1, H265, and every other codec your viewers actually need, all from a single source asset.
Sign up for a free Cloudinary account and stop micromanaging codecs in your video pipeline.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is AV1 better than H265?
For pure compression efficiency, yes. AV1 typically delivers around 30% better compression than H265 at the same visual quality, especially at lower bitrates. But “better” depends on context. H265 still wins on encoding speed, hardware availability across older devices, and Safari support. AV1 is the future-leaning pick. H265 is the safer bet for the widest current playback compatibility.
Does Safari support AV1?
Sort of. Safari added AV1 support in macOS 14 Sonoma and iOS 17, but only on devices with a hardware AV1 decoder. In practice that means M3 Macs and iPhone 15 Pro and newer. On older Apple hardware, Safari falls back to HEVC or H.264. If your audience is heavily on Apple devices, plan for HEVC as the primary codec for the next few years.
Why is AV1 encoding so slow?
AV1’s compression gains come from much more complex algorithms than HEVC, which means more CPU work per frame. Software encoders like libaom can be 5 to 10 times slower than x265 at high quality settings. Newer encoders like SVT-AV1 have closed the gap significantly, and hardware AV1 encoders on Intel Arc, NVIDIA RTX 40 series, and AMD RX 7000 series can now encode AV1 in real time. Encoding speed is no longer the dealbreaker it used to be.
