Zstandard Compression Comparisons

Discussions center on recommending Zstandard (zstd) over alternatives like gzip, zlib, lz4, xz, and bzip2, highlighting its superior speed in compression and especially decompression while maintaining good ratios.

📉 Falling 0.5x Open Source
3,265
Comments
19
Years Active
5
Top Authors
#4676
Topic ID

Activity Over Time

2008
1
2009
18
2010
53
2011
23
2012
68
2013
82
2014
40
2015
174
2016
224
2017
108
2018
187
2019
125
2020
264
2021
307
2022
506
2023
352
2024
327
2025
354
2026
62

Keywords

GCM CPU DEFLATE AEAD GB LZMA2 mattmahoney.net MB gregoryszorc.com erofs.html compression gzip ratio faster speed slow fast disk memory zfs

Sample Comments

jakozaur Jan 6, 2017 View on HN

Try ZDtandard. You can spend as tune compression speed vs. compression ratio. Decompressing is always fast.It was recently released: https://github.com/facebook/zstd

namibj Sep 25, 2019 View on HN

Please consider zstd instead. It is superior in every way except memory usage and compatibility with old systems.

glandium Jan 8, 2021 View on HN

How does it compare with zstandard these days?

nine_k Jul 31, 2023 View on HN

Have you tried zstd, now widely supported?

Alifatisk Oct 2, 2023 View on HN

What benefit do I have with using zstd over the rest? Is there any?

monocasa Sep 20, 2024 View on HN

Zstd is generally known for markedly faster decompression (as well as compression) than zlib.https://gregoryszorc.com/blog/2017/03/07/better-compression-...

cldellow Dec 28, 2016 View on HN

Depending on your needs, consider trying out lz4!vs gzip, we found that lz4 decompresses 5x as quickly while maintaining comparable compression ratios and times.

tutfbhuf Mar 30, 2024 View on HN

I wonder why no one mentioned Zstandard yet. It is 10x faster to decompress than most other formats and offers comparable compression ratios.

fmela Feb 11, 2017 View on HN

Facebook's ZStandard compression library appears to be both faster and better at compressing than zlib. Is there any reason to continue using zlib for new projects that don't need backward compatibility?

out_of_protocol Apr 26, 2022 View on HN

So, zstd is gzip replacement? lower compression ratio than bzip2 and much much faster. Also better in both compression and speed than gzip