# VP9

12 Hacker News commenters recommended VP9 and 5 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 6 of 13 months. It meets the Hacker Approved badge rule.

**Verdict:** Royalty-free video codec that people use for uploads and calls, with wide hardware support. Critics say it trails H.265 and AV1 in quality.

## Why people recommend it

- Better than H.264 in quality (2 comments): "Even VP09 has often seemed better." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46174038)) "VP9 is somewhat better than H.264" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46378426))
- Good for uploads and calls (2 comments): "yeah I use vp9 with opus for uploads by choice, it's great!" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48759284)) "improve the quality of calls quite a lot when used right" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48382084))
- Widely hardware-supported (2 comments): "VP9 works well too and more supported" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47626989)) "almost universally hardware-supported" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47627062))

## What people warn about

- Falls short of H.265 and AV1 (2 comments): "VP9 could beat H.264 but not H.265 or AV1" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46004168)) "VP9 isn't H.265 level. That is the marketing spin of AOM." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46165687))
- Worse than x264-encoded H.264 (1 comments): "which was honestly worse than H264 done with a good encoder like x264" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48758387))
- Has its own patent pool (1 comments): "VP9 and AV1 have their own patent pool for that very reason" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47631812))

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "VP9", https://hackerapproved.com/p/vp9/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).