Brotli Compression: How Does It Work and Why Your Website Needs It

In today’s competitive digital landscape, optimizing your website’s performance is crucial to attract and retain users. One of the most effective ways to achieve this is by improving your site's loading speed. Slow-loading websites drive users away, reducing engagement and conversion rates. Among modern technologies designed to tackle this issue, Brotli compression stands out as a game-changer for website performance.

In this article, we’ll explore what Brotli is, how it works, and why it surpasses other compression algorithms like gzip. Let’s dive in and see how integrating Brotli can significantly enhance your website’s efficiency.

If you want to see Brotli in action, you can use this online Brotli compression tool to test and compare its efficiency. This tool allows you to compress files quickly and evaluate the results in real time. Whether you’re optimizing website code or testing file transfers, Brotli compression online is a convenient way to experience the benefits of this algorithm firsthand.

Brotli is a modern, web-oriented lossless compression algorithm developed by Google in 2013. Its primary goal is to reduce the size of files sent from a server to a browser, ensuring faster loading times without compromising quality or user experience. Unlike lossy compression techniques, Brotli preserves the integrity of your website’s data, making it ideal for HTML, CSS, and JavaScript files.

While Brotli initially struggled to gain traction compared to its long-standing competitor, gzip, it has grown rapidly in popularity due to its superior compression ratios and performance. Today, Brotli compression is supported by all major web browsers, including Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and Edge, making it an essential tool for web developers and hosting providers.

Brotli compression is not just a tool—it’s a necessity for modern web development. With its superior performance, smaller file sizes, and seamless browser compatibility, Brotli is the ideal solution for any website owner looking to optimize their site for speed and efficiency.
Take the first step toward a faster website today—test Brotli compression online or switch to a hosting provider that prioritizes performance. Your users (and your SEO rankings) will thank you!

When detecting that you’re sending plain-text content to a browser (aka a code), the server compresses it beforehand and creates a bundle of files. After receiving that bundle, the browser decompresses it and only then displays it. This makes it much faster to run the files from one place to another and consequently decreases website loading time. Both gzip and Brotli work this way. But what makes the latter the best option for most cases? Let’s see.

Static Dictionary

Brotli’s static dictionary contains over 13,500 commonly used words, phrases, and commands from multiple languages and programming syntaxes. These pre-defined references allow Brotli to compress files more quickly by replacing long strings with shorter codes.

Dynamic Sliding Window

Brotli’s dynamic dictionary stores recently transmitted data, which it references during future transfers. This “sliding window” approach can cache up to 16 MB of information, further reducing file sizes and boosting performance.

While both Brotli and gzip share similar technologies like LZ77 compression and Huffman encoding, Brotli offers several distinct advantages that make it the better choice for most websites:

1. Smaller File Sizes
Brotli achieves significantly smaller compression ratios than gzip, reducing file sizes by up to 20–30% more. This is especially beneficial for high-traffic websites, where even minor speed improvements can have a significant impact.

2. Dictionaries for Faster Compression
Brotli uses two types of dictionaries—static and dynamic—to enhance performance. These dictionaries store frequently used terms, phrases, and commands, enabling Brotli to compress and decompress files more efficiently than gzip.

3. Optimized for Web Use
Unlike gzip, which was initially designed for general file compression, Brotli was specifically built for web optimization. It prioritizes web-specific data types, such as HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, making it an ideal solution for modern websites.

4. Better Performance Across Browsers
Thanks to its advanced algorithm, Brotli delivers better performance across all major browsers, ensuring a smoother experience for your users regardless of their preferred platform.

The superior performance of Brotli has not gone unnoticed by hosting providers. Many companies, including Scalesta, have adopted Brotli to enhance their managed hosting solutions. By integrating Brotli with regular image compression and advanced caching techniques, Scalesta ensures lightning-fast website performance for its clients.

In today’s fast-paced digital world, every second matters. By adopting Brotli compression, you:

1. Enhance User Experience: Faster load times lead to higher user satisfaction and lower bounce rates.
2. Boost SEO Rankings: Search engines like Google favor websites with quick loading speeds.
3. Save Bandwidth: Smaller file sizes reduce server costs, especially for high-traffic sites.

At Scalesta, we’ve witnessed firsthand how Brotli improves website performance. That’s why we’ve made it a core feature of our hosting services, ensuring our clients benefit from cutting-edge technologies.