NGINX Brotli Compression: Install, Configure and Pre-Compress Static Assets

Gzip has been compressing web content since 1992. It’s good. It’s everywhere. And it’s showing its age. Brotli is its modern replacement — developed by Google, standardised in 2016 (RFC 7932), and now supported by every browser that matters. On typical web content, Brotli achieves 15–26% better compression than gzip at comparable speeds. Smaller files mean faster page loads, lower bandwidth costs, and better Core Web Vitals scores.

The myguard APT repository ships a native Brotli dynamic module for both NGINX and Angie — install it with one apt command, load it with one config line, and your server starts serving Brotli to every browser that supports it.

Brotli vs Gzip: The Actual Numbers

Brotli uses a combination of LZ77, Huffman coding, and a 2nd-order context modeling that gzip doesn’t have. The practical result:

Brotli level 11 (maximum) achieves 20–26% better compression than gzip, but is extremely slow to encode — suitable only for pre-compressed static assets, not on-the-fly. Level 4–6 is the sweet spot for on-the-fly dynamic compression: better than gzip, fast enough for real-time use.

Step 1 — Install the Brotli Module

# Add the myguard repository if not already done
wget https://deb.myguard.nl/pool/myguard.deb
dpkg -i myguard.deb
apt-get update

# Install NGINX with the Brotli module
apt-get install nginx libnginx-mod-http-brotli

# Or for Angie:
apt-get install angie angie-module-http-brotli

New to the myguard repository? Follow the two-minute setup guide.

Step 2 — Load the Module

The myguard package installs a load snippet automatically. Verify it’s in place:

ls /etc/nginx/modules-enabled/ | grep brotli
# Should show: 50-mod-http-brotli-filter.conf and 50-mod-http-brotli-static.conf

If not present, add to the top of nginx.conf (before the http block):

load_module modules/ngx_http_brotli_filter_module.so;
load_module modules/ngx_http_brotli_static_module.so;

Step 3 — Configure Brotli

Add this inside your http block in nginx.conf:

http {
    # Brotli dynamic compression (on-the-fly)
    brotli             on;
    brotli_comp_level  6;        # 0-11, sweet spot is 4-6
    brotli_min_length  256;      # Don't compress tiny responses
    brotli_types
        text/plain
        text/css
        text/javascript
        text/xml
        text/x-component
        application/javascript
        application/json
        application/xml
        application/rss+xml
        application/atom+xml
        application/vnd.ms-fontobject
        image/svg+xml
        font/truetype
        font/opentype;

    # Brotli static files (serve pre-compressed .br files)
    brotli_static on;

    # Keep gzip as fallback for browsers that don't support Brotli
    gzip            on;
    gzip_comp_level 6;
    gzip_min_length 256;
    gzip_vary       on;
    gzip_types
        text/plain text/css text/javascript application/javascript
        application/json application/xml image/svg+xml font/opentype;
}

Step 4 — Test and Reload

nginx -t && systemctl reload nginx

Verify Brotli is working:

# curl with Brotli accept header
curl -H 'Accept-Encoding: br,gzip' -I https://example.com
# Look for: Content-Encoding: br

# Check Chrome DevTools: Network tab > select a request > Response Headers > Content-Encoding: br

Pre-Compressed Static Assets (Best Performance)

For static files that don’t change (CSS, JS, fonts), pre-compress them at build time with level 11 and let NGINX serve the .br files directly. This gives maximum compression with zero runtime CPU cost:

# Pre-compress all JS and CSS files in your web root
find /var/www/html -name '*.js' -o -name '*.css' | while read f; do
    brotli -Z -f "$f" -o "${f}.br"   # -Z = level 11
    gzip -9 -k -f "$f"               # -k = keep original, for fallback
done

With brotli_static on in your NGINX config, when a browser requests app.js with Accept-Encoding: br, NGINX automatically serves app.js.br without doing any runtime compression. Zero CPU, maximum compression.

# Install the brotli CLI tool
apt-get install brotli

Brotli for WordPress

WordPress sites benefit significantly from Brotli because WordPress generates a lot of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. The main caveat: PHP responses are compressed dynamically, so set a sane compression level (4–6) to avoid adding more than ~1ms of CPU time per request.

Typical page size reduction for a WordPress homepage:

• Uncompressed HTML: ~180KB
• Gzip level 6: ~28KB
• Brotli level 6: ~23KB
• Brotli level 11 (pre-compressed): ~19KB

The 5KB difference between gzip and Brotli level 6 saves ~40ms on a typical 4G connection. Across thousands of page views, that’s meaningful for Core Web Vitals.

Brotli + zstd: Running Both

The myguard repository also ships a zstd NGINX module. zstd excels at server-side API compression (faster decode, great for JSON) while Brotli excels at browser-facing content (better compression ratio). Run both:

apt-get install libnginx-mod-http-brotli libnginx-mod-http-zstd

# In http block:
brotli on;        # For browsers (HTML, CSS, JS)
brotli_types text/html text/css application/javascript image/svg+xml;

zstd on;          # For API clients that support it
zstd_types application/json application/x-ndjson;
zstd_comp_level 3;

Frequently Asked Questions

Related Posts

• zstd NGINX Module: What It Does and 22 Bug Fixes — the other modern compression option, great for API workloads
• NGINX Dynamic Modules Overview — Brotli is one of 50+ available modules
• NGINX Performance and Security Expert Guide — full performance tuning guide including compression strategy
• NGINX vs Apache Benchmark 2026 — performance comparison including compression overhead
• How to Add the myguard APT Repository — where the Brotli module comes from