Zstandard (zstd) Compression — Enable It in Nginx, Vercel and Cloudflare

Updated April 2026

Brotli replaced gzip as the go-to web compression in 2020. Zstandard (zstd) is the next step — faster to compress and decompress, with better ratios on most web assets. Chrome and Firefox both support it now. Here is how to enable it.

Check what compression you are serving today

curl -H "Accept-Encoding: zstd, br, gzip" -I https://yoursite.com/ | grep -i content-encoding
# If you see: content-encoding: zstd — you already serve zstd
# If you see: content-encoding: br — you serve Brotli (good, step up to zstd)
# If you see: content-encoding: gzip — time to upgrade

Nginx — enable zstd

Nginx does not include zstd support by default. You need the ngx_http_zstd_module:

# Ubuntu/Debian — install the module
sudo apt install nginx-module-zstd  # if available in your repo
# or compile from source with --add-module=/path/to/ngx_http_zstd_filter_module

# nginx.conf — load the module
load_module modules/ngx_http_zstd_filter_module.so;

http { zstd on; zstd_comp_level 3; # 1-22, 3 is the sweet spot for speed/ratio zstd_types text/html text/css text/javascript application/javascript application/json application/xml text/plain;
}

# Your server still serves Brotli and gzip as fallbacks via content negotiation
brotli on;
brotli_comp_level 4;
gzip on;
gzip_comp_level 6;

Vercel — zstd status

Vercel's edge network handles compression automatically. If the client browser sends Accept-Encoding: zstd, Vercel serves zstd if available. You do not configure this — it happens at the edge layer. Check the actual response:

curl -H "Accept-Encoding: zstd" -I https://yourapp.vercel.app/ | grep content-encoding

Cloudflare — automatic zstd

Cloudflare enables zstd automatically for browsers that support it. No configuration needed. If you are behind Cloudflare, your users with Chrome 118+ and Firefox 126+ are already receiving zstd.

Apache — zstd compression

# Install mod_brotli and the zstd extension
# Ubuntu:
sudo apt install libapache2-mod-zstd  # if available

# .htaccess or httpd.conf
AddOutputFilterByType ZSTD_COMPRESS text/html text/css application/javascript application/json

How the browser negotiates

# Browser sends in request:
Accept-Encoding: zstd, br, gzip, deflate

# Server responds with the best it supports:
Content-Encoding: zstd # if server supports zstd
Content-Encoding: br # fallback to Brotli
Content-Encoding: gzip # fallback to gzip

# If no Accept-Encoding match, server sends uncompressed

Real-world compression comparison

Use EdgeFix to check what Content-Encoding your server is actually returning and whether your Vary header is set correctly to allow CDN caching of compressed variants.