brotli

Compress a file, creating a compressed version next to the file

$ brotli [path/to/file]

$ brotli [[-d|--decompress]] [path/to/file.br]

$ brotli [path/to/file] [[-o|--output]] [path/to/compressed_output_file.br]

$ brotli [[-d|--decompress]] [path/to/compressed_file.br] [[-o|--output]] [path/to/output_file]

$ brotli [[-q|--quality]] [11] [path/to/file] [[-o|--output]] [path/to/compressed_output_file.br]

brotli [OPTION]... [files]...

-c, --stdout
    write to standard output, don't delete input files

-d, --decompress
    decompress input files

-f, --force
    overwrite existing output files

-h, --help
    display this help and exit

-k, --keep
    keep input files (default for -d)

-l, --small-window
    use small sliding window (20-24 bits)

-m, --large-window
    use large sliding window (24-30 bits)

-n, --no-copy-stat
    don't copy input file(s) stat to output file(s)

-o, --output=FILE
    output to FILE (only 1 input file allowed)

-q N, --quality=N
    compression level from 0 to 11 (default 11)

-v, --verbose
    verbose mode (show extra information)

-Z, --best
    alias for -q 11 (highest compression)

-z, --compress
    alias for no -d (compress)

Brotli is a generic-purpose lossless compression algorithm and tool developed by Google, optimized for speed and compression density, particularly for web content over HTTP. It surpasses gzip and deflate in compression ratio while maintaining competitive decompression speeds.

The brotli command compresses or decompresses files using quality levels from 0 (fastest, lowest ratio) to 11 (slowest, highest ratio). It supports streaming output to stdout, dictionary files for better compression on similar data sets, and advanced features like large-window modes for huge files. Output files typically use .br extension.

Ideal for archiving, reducing bandwidth in web serving, and storage optimization. Decompression is very fast, making it suitable for latency-sensitive applications. The tool preserves file permissions and timestamps by default (unless overridden).

High quality levels (9-11) are CPU-intensive and slow on large files.
Does not support multi-threading natively; use pbrotli for parallel compression.
Limited window sizes may underperform on very repetitive or huge data.

brotli file.txt → creates file.txt.br
brotli -d -c file.txt.br → decompress to stdout
brotli -q 6 -o out.br input.txt → compress at quality 6

0-2: fast, poor ratio.
3-5: balanced speed/ratio.
6-8: good for web.
9-11: max ratio, slow.

Developed by Google engineers starting 2013, publicly released June 2016 as open-source (MIT license). Command-line tool from official C reference implementation, widely adopted in browsers (Chrome, Firefox) and servers (nginx, Apache) for .br content encoding.

gzip(1), zstd(1), xz(1), pigz(1)