Enabling Brotli Compression for Web Servers

What is Brotli?

Brotli is a compression algorithm developed by Google that achieves 15-25% better compression ratios than Gzip. All modern browsers support it.

Install Brotli Module for Nginx

# On Ubuntu with nginx-extras
sudo apt install -y libnginx-mod-brotli

Configure Nginx

# In http block of nginx.conf
brotli on;
brotli_comp_level 6;
brotli_types
    text/plain
    text/css
    text/javascript
    application/json
    application/javascript
    application/xml
    image/svg+xml
    application/wasm;

Keep Gzip as Fallback

# Both can be enabled simultaneously
gzip on;
gzip_types text/plain text/css application/json application/javascript;

brotli on;
brotli_types text/plain text/css application/json application/javascript;

Browsers that support Brotli send Accept-Encoding: br in their request. Nginx serves Brotli to those clients and Gzip to older clients.

Verify

# Check for Brotli response
curl -H "Accept-Encoding: br" -I https://example.com
# Look for: Content-Encoding: br

Pre-Compressed Files

# Generate .br files for static assets
brotli -Z style.css  # Creates style.css.br

# Nginx serves pre-compressed files automatically
brotli_static on;