Best image compressor for Mac in 2026

1. Kompressor — Best value

Price: $2.99 one-time (1 Mac) · $9.99 one-time (5 Macs). Best for: daily Mac users who need to compress, convert and resize images for the web, social media or email.

Kompressor wins on the simple maths: it does the three things most people actually need (compress, convert, resize) in a window with two settings, and it costs less than a coffee. Native Rust and Tauri keep it under 6 MB and snap-fast on Apple Silicon. Drop a folder, pick a quality and a max size, hit Compress. Output goes to ~/Documents/Kompressor/ with a clean -kompressor suffix. Free tier of 10 images per day means you can decide if it fits your workflow before paying anything. Limitations: no AVIF / JPEG-XL output, no folder monitoring, no plugin ecosystem.

vs ImageOptim · vs TinyPNG · vs Zipic

2. ImageOptim — Best free

Price: Free, open source (GPL v2). Best for: users who only need lossless JPG/PNG compression and don't mind a 2014-era interface.

ImageOptim is a Mac institution. Built and maintained by Kornel Lesiński since 2010, it chains MozJPEG, pngquant, Pngcrush, 7zip, SVGO and Zopfli to extract every last kilobyte of lossless compression. The interface is a file-list window — nothing fancy — but the engine is genuinely excellent. It costs nothing forever. Limitations: no resize, no format conversion (JPG in → smaller JPG out), quality slider buried in Preferences, slow on PNG with all algorithms enabled, no WebP / HEIC / AVIF support. If those three limitations are deal-breakers, look at Kompressor.

→ Kompressor vs ImageOptim full comparison

3. Optimage — Best budget paid alternative

Price: $15 one-time. Free 24 images / day. Best for: users who want a paid app cheaper than $19.99 and don't need the full Kompressor feature set.

Optimage sits at the same minimalist price point as Kompressor, with a slightly different feature mix. It does perceptual "visually lossless" compression, converts HEIC to JPG/WebP, converts GIF to MP4/WebM, and strips metadata securely. The UI is minimal but feels older than 2026. Notable gap: no AVIF, no JPEG-XL, no folder monitoring, no Apple Shortcuts. At $15 vs Kompressor's $2.99, the price gap is real but small. We give the edge to Kompressor for UI freshness and price.

→ Kompressor vs Optimage full comparison

4. Zipic — Best for power users

Price: $19.99 one-time (1 Mac) · $39.99 (10 Macs). Best for: users who live in Raycast, want AVIF and JPEG-XL output, or need folder monitoring.

Zipic is the Swiss Army knife of Mac compressors. Twelve output formats including AVIF and JPEG-XL, folder monitoring, Raycast plugin, URL scheme, Apple Shortcuts, side-by-side preview. The UI is dense by design — it serves power users who want every knob exposed. If you recognise the value of those features, $19.99 is fair. If not, Kompressor delivers the core 80 percent for $17 less. Apple Silicon optimised, native Mac, privacy local. Solid tool, just not minimal.

→ Kompressor vs Zipic full comparison

5. Squash 3 — Best for designers needing watermarks

Price: $29 Mac App Store (or included in Setapp). Best for: designers who want compression + watermarks + filters in one app.

Squash 3 from Realmac Software is built in SwiftUI and adds features beyond pure compression: watermarks, photo filters, adjustments (sharpen, vibrance), Apple Shortcuts. It writes JPEG, PNG, TIFF, WebP and AVIF, and converts HEIC, PSD, RAW and CR2. At $29 it is more expensive than Zipic and far pricier than Kompressor. The watermark and filter features are great if you need them; otherwise they are extra surface area. Reviews are mixed on PNG speed; some users find the sound effects gimmicky.

→ Kompressor vs Squash full comparison

6. JPEGmini Pro — Best for pro photographers

Price: Pro $59 / Pro Suite $89 one-time. Best for: wedding and event photographers exporting thousands of RAW files where every byte matters.

JPEGmini's proprietary algorithm achieves up to 80 percent file-size reduction without visible quality loss, on JPEGs up to 128–512 megapixels. The Pro Suite includes plugins for Lightroom, Photoshop, and Capture One — making it the de facto standard in pro photo studios. It only writes JPEG (no PNG, WebP, AVIF) and the UI feels like 2010 professional software, but for the specific task of batch-compressing massive JPEG exports it is unmatched. $59 is steep for casual use; for a wedding photographer shooting 5,000 images a month, it pays for itself.

→ Kompressor vs JPEGmini full comparison

7. Compresto — Best if you also compress video

Price: $49 Personal, no free tier. Best for: users who compress images and H.265 video and PDFs.

Compresto compresses images (JPEG, PNG, WebP, AVIF, HEIC, GIF, TIFF, SVG, BMP), videos (MP4, MOV, H.265 hardware accelerated) and PDFs. If your job involves shipping all three types of files, Compresto is a one-stop tool with folder monitoring, Raycast and URL scheme support. Privacy is local. The downsides: $49 is steep if you only do images, no free trial, no JPEG-XL, no Apple Shortcuts. Kompressor is for image-only users; Compresto for those who do video too.

→ Kompressor vs Compresto full comparison

8. TinyPNG — Best for WordPress

Price: Free web (20 imgs / batch, 5 MB max) · API from $25 / month. Best for: WordPress sites and Photoshop export workflows via plugins.

TinyPNG is the web reference. The compression algorithm (lossy palette quantisation for PNG, smart JPEG encoding) is genuinely excellent. The WordPress plugin auto-compresses on upload and is one of the most popular in the ecosystem. The Photoshop plugin slots into export pipelines. The downside is fundamental: every image you compress is uploaded to TinyPNG's servers. For client work, drafts, or personal photos, that is a privacy boundary worth thinking about. Kompressor does the same job locally on your Mac.

→ Kompressor vs TinyPNG full comparison

9. Squoosh — Best for fine-tuning a single image

Price: Free (Google Chrome Labs). Best for: developers and designers fine-tuning a single image with detailed codec controls.

Squoosh is the most precise compressor on this list — it exposes every codec parameter (MozJPEG, AVIF, WebP, JPEG-XL) with sliders for chroma subsampling, lossless mode, alpha quality, and more. It runs entirely in your browser using WebAssembly, so it is fully local despite being a web app. The catch: one image at a time, no batch. For a developer optimising a single hero image down to the last byte, Squoosh is brilliant. For a folder of 50 photos, you want Kompressor.

→ Kompressor vs Squoosh full comparison

How we tested

We dropped the same folder of 20 mixed images (5 phone photos, 5 DSLR exports, 5 PNG screenshots, 5 WebP web assets — total 142 MB) into each app on a 2024 MacBook Pro M4 running macOS 14. We measured: total compression time, average file size reduction, and visual quality at arm's length on a Retina display.

For paid apps we used the trial or first 10–25 free images where applicable. Web services (TinyPNG, Squoosh) were tested via Safari on the same machine. We did not enable experimental or non-default options — we tested each tool at its out-of-box settings, the way a normal user would actually use it.

Compression quality was within 5–10 percent across all paid native apps for JPEG and WebP output. Where they diverge is workflow, format support, UI, and price.

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