Content-Encoding

The HTTP Content-Encoding representation header lists the encodings and the order in which they have been applied to a resource. This lets the recipient know how to decode the data in order to obtain the original content format described in the Content-Type header. Content encoding is mainly used to compress content without losing information about the original media type.

Servers should compress data as much as possible, and should use content encoding where appropriate. Compressing already compressed media types, such as .zip or .jpeg, is usually not appropriate because it can increase the file size. If the original media is already encoded (e.g., as a .zip file), this information is not included in the Content-Encoding header.

When the Content-Encoding header is present, other metadata (e.g., Content-Length) refer to the encoded form of the data, not the original resource, unless explicitly stated. Content encoding differs to Transfer-Encoding in that Transfer-Encoding handles how HTTP messages themselves are delivered across the network on a hop-by-hop basis.

Header type Representation header
Forbidden header name No

Syntax

http
Content-Encoding: gzip
Content-Encoding: compress
Content-Encoding: deflate
Content-Encoding: br
Content-Encoding: zstd

// Multiple, in the order in which they were applied
Content-Encoding: deflate, gzip

Directives

gzip

A format using the Lempel-Ziv coding (LZ77), with a 32-bit CRC. This is the original format of the UNIX gzip program. The HTTP/1.1 standard also recommends that the servers supporting this content-encoding should recognize x-gzip as an alias, for compatibility purposes.

compress

A format using the Lempel-Ziv-Welch (LZW) algorithm. The value name was taken from the UNIX compress program, which implemented this algorithm. Like the compress program, which has disappeared from most UNIX distributions, this content-encoding is not used by many browsers today, partly because of a patent issue (it expired in 2003).

deflate

Using the zlib structure (defined in RFC 1950) with the deflate compression algorithm (defined in RFC 1951).

br

A format using the Brotli algorithm structure (defined in RFC 7932).

zstd

A format using the Zstandard algorithm structure (defined in RFC 8878).

Examples

Compressing with gzip

On the client side, you can advertise a list of compression schemes that will be sent along in an HTTP request. The Accept-Encoding header is used for negotiating content encoding.

http
Accept-Encoding: gzip, deflate

The server responds with the scheme used, indicated by the Content-Encoding response header.

http
Content-Encoding: gzip

Whether a server uses compression methods requested by the client depends on server configuration and capabilities.

Specifications

Specification
HTTP Semantics
# field.content-encoding

Browser compatibility

BCD tables only load in the browser

See also