Fast, Affordable AV1 Encoding with Chunkify

What is the state of AV1 encoding in 2026?

AV1 is an open, next generation video codec designed to replace legacy formats like H.264. Its purpose is clear: deliver the same perceived visual quality at a much lower bitrate, which reduces both delivery and storage costs.

AV1 was developed by the Alliance for Open Media AOMedia.

It is backed by a large group of major industry members, which is a strong signal that AV1 is not a niche experiment but a long term direction for video infrastructure.

A practical proof point is Netflix. Netflix reports that AV1 now powers 30% of its streaming traffic in production.

And when you look at real Netflix streams, AV1's gains show up clearly in the numbers. This deep dive is useful because it is based on streams shipped to real devices, not synthetic benchmarks.

What are the advantages of AV1?

AV1 is primarily a cost and efficiency upgrade.

It can deliver roughly 45% to 55% lower bitrate for the same perceived visual quality, depending on content and encoding settings. That means:

  • Lower CDN streaming costs
  • Storage costs dramatically reduced by storing smaller files across renditions

This is why AV1 is more than just a codec upgrade. It is a direct way to reduce two costs that scale with your business: streaming and storage.

What kept AV1 from becoming mainstream?

Device support

Device support for AV1 was limited at first but has expanded greatly in the last few years. For example, Apple added AV1 hardware decoding support to the iPhone 15 Pro and M3 Macs in 2023, and Android 12+ gained a software decoder in 2024, so most modern phones can play AV1 even without dedicated hardware. On larger screens, Netflix and YouTube now require AV1 support for new smart TV certification, and according to Netflix, 88% of devices certified between 2021 and 2025 support AV1.

AV1 is no longer a niche codec. A reasonable estimation is that, today, well over half of devices used for video can play AV1, with browser support in the 80%+ range and growing.

Encoding costs

AV1 encoding used to be too slow and too expensive for many teams. Not because the codec was bad, but because, as a much younger codec than H.264, it was less optimized in software and required high compute to encode, and encoding usually ran as a single, sequential process per video, so high compute and long wait times.

That created predictable problems:

  • High compute cost per asset
  • Longer processing queues for large catalogs
  • Still compatibility issues with some older devices

So even if AV1 reduced bandwidth and storage costs, the compute bill often erased the ROI.

For many platforms, the rational decision was simple: wait.

Fast, affordable AV1 encoding with Chunkify

Now that more and more devices support it, the remaining barrier is no longer playback: it is encoding economics. That's where Chunkify comes into the equation.

Chunkify is built to make AV1 encoding fast and affordable by redesigning the transcoding workflow around parallelism.

Instead of running one long sequential job, Chunkify:

  • Splits the video into many segments
  • Transcodes segments in parallel across dedicated vCPUs
  • Reassembles outputs into a final streamable result

This changes throughput dramatically. Jobs that used to take hours can complete in minutes.

It also changes cost dynamics. Chunkify pricing is based on compute time, so speed directly translates into lower cost. Compared to AWS Elemental MediaConvert, Chunkify is 22x faster and 66% cheaper at 4K resolution.

See our Chunkify vs AWS MediaConvert benchmarks for more details.

AV1 is ready for mainstream usage

AV1 is already running at scale in real production environments. The ecosystem is mature, the industry is aligned behind it, and the compression gains are measurable.

Until now, the trade off between transcoding speed and cost efficiency was fundamentally broken without Netflix level infrastructure.

Chunkify is the answer to this structural shift, making AV1 transcoding both fast and affordable for any company that relies on video. Start transcoding to AV1 and start saving storage and streaming costs today. You can signup for a free trial here.