Measured - byte-exact - 2026

Pedulli vs gzip

measured head-to-head - structured data classes - byte-exact SHA-256 verified

TL;DR - honest
Pedulli is a best-of-N racer: it runs several internal coders and keeps the smallest output, always byte-exact (SHA-256 roundtrip) with a +1 byte never-worse floor. Against gzip -9 it wins on every structured class measured (logs, JSON, HTML, periodic, MP4) and adds +1 byte where gzip adds 192 on incompressible data. gzip is preinstalled everywhere and has near-zero per-call overhead on tiny inputs - keep it there.

The measured table

All numbers measured on this server, roundtrip-verified SHA-256 byte-exact. Proofs available on request.

Input	gzip -9	Pedulli (best-of-N)	Δ
1 MiB of zeros	1,041 B	13 B	much smaller (redundant input)
1 MiB periodic binary	3,140 B	436 B	much smaller (redundant input)
Apache logs 3.5 MB	318 KB	217 KB	-31.7%
JSON 31 KB	4,820 B	1,265 B	-73.7%
HTML 161 KB	52,103 B	38,757 B	-25.6%
MP4 master 10 MB	9,742,892 B	9,430,108 B	-312 KB
Random bytes 1 MB	1,048,768 B (+192 B)	1,048,577 B (+1 B)	191 B less overhead
Random bytes 4 KB	4,237 B (+141 B)	4,097 B (+1 B)	140 B less overhead

What gzip does better (honest)

Preinstalled everywhere. Every Unix box since 1992. Pedulli requires the API or web service.
Tiny per-call overhead. For sub-KB strings inside a single process, gzip wins on wall-clock - no service call to make.
Decades of stability. gzip is over 30 years old and battle-tested.

What Pedulli does that gzip does not

+1 byte never-worse floor. Pedulli's own output is never more than 1 byte over the input. gzip adds 18-192 bytes on incompressible data - that compounds across millions of files.
Best-of-N racing. Several internal coders run; the smallest byte-exact result wins, so log, JSON and MP4 classes come out tighter than one general LZ77 pass.
Web-native + API. In-browser for small inputs, REST API for backup / log pipelines. gzip is a CLI / library.
Zero data retention. GDPR by design, EU-sovereign.

When to switch

Switch to Pedulli for log archives, JSON/XML telemetry, HTML/CSS/JS bundles, periodic sensor data, video masters and the per-file +1 byte never-worse floor. Keep gzip when you are piping sub-KB strings inside a single process.

Run the free trial Pricing / API All benchmarks

More comparisons: zstd - xz - 7-Zip - brotli - zip