# gzip

23 Hacker News commenters recommended gzip and 13 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 8 of 13 months.

**Verdict:** Fast, universally supported and good enough, people reach for it when speed and compatibility matter more than ratio; critics say zstd compresses better.

## Why people recommend it

- Universally supported and widely used (3 comments): "I ended up using gzip because it's best supported by the software I use" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49599558)) "very fast, universally supported , and good enough" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48192282)) "a more widespread compression algorithm" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46722641))
- Fast and simple to implement (3 comments): "very fast, universally supported , and good enough" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48192282)) "very fast and super simple to implement" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49799074)) "Gzip is good enough and much faster." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47379044))
- Better when speed matters most (3 comments): "Even the ancient gzip is preferable in certain cases, when speed is more important than compression ratio" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47386524)) "If I want higher compatibility and fast speeds, I'd probably just reach for gzip." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47379244)) "gzip and parallel gzip are just better if speed is more important" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48191903))
- Low memory footprint (2 comments): "DEFLATE's simplicity and tiny memory footprint (~32KB window) make it hard to kill in constrained or streaming contexts." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47384328)) "its low memory requirements (~32 KB per stream)" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47380927))

## What people warn about

- zstd compresses better (3 comments): "Compression ratio is better than gzip but worse than zstd, compression/decompression speed better than zstd but worse than gzip" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49761173)) "swapping out gzip for other compression schemes -- usually zstd" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49543708)) "gzip and friends have worse ratios again" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47384413))
- Hard to read metadata (2 comments): "It's a little odd that gzip itself won't display (or sometimes even write) these values" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47210348)) "gzip has something similar but you have to do some hacky thing to get at it" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46982766))
- Outdated for modern use (3 comments): "The OCI users that I have seen are using gzip due to inertia" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46378299)) ".zip and .gz no longer need to be used here in 2026." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48191073)) "Neither has been good enough for years." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47381653))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [Zstandard (zstd)](https://hackerapproved.com/p/zstd.md): 111 recommend
- [Brotli](https://hackerapproved.com/p/brotli.md): 24 recommend
- [tar](https://hackerapproved.com/p/tar.md): 19 recommend
- [NNCP](https://hackerapproved.com/p/nncp.md): 15 recommend
- [xz](https://hackerapproved.com/p/xz.md): 14 recommend

## Cite as

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