# How to compress your responses

> Shrink everything your server sends over the wire — GZIP for universal support, Brotli for better ratios — and understand why your host may already be doing it for you.

- Category: Optimization
- Canonical: https://xspeedcache.com/docs/compression/

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Every byte your server sends has to cross a network. Compression shrinks HTML, CSS and JavaScript before they leave — often to a quarter of their original size — and every browser has supported it for decades. This panel controls which compression your site uses, and tells you whether your server is already handling it.

> **Where to find it**
>
> 1. In your WordPress admin, click **xSpeed Cache** in the left menu.
> 2. In the xSpeed Cache sidebar, open the **Optimization** group.
> 3. Click the **Compression** card.
>
> *Shortcut: open `wp-admin/admin.php?page=xspeed#/performance/gzip` directly.*
>
> ✅ This panel is part of **xSpeed Cache (Free)**. Its Brotli tab is ⭐ Pro.

![The Compression panel and its two tabs](https://xspeedcache.com/_astro/compression-tabs.BgveK2jn.png)

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## Tabs on this panel

| Tab | Feature | Tier | Guide |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| **GZIP** | Universal compression, supported everywhere | Free | [How to enable GZIP compression](https://xspeedcache.com/docs/gzip/) |
| **Brotli Compression** | Better ratios, needs a server module | ⭐ Pro | [How to enable Brotli compression](https://xspeedcache.com/docs/brotli/) |

Each tab has its own address, so you can link straight to one:

| Tab | URL |
| --- | --- |
| GZIP | `#/performance/gzip` |
| Brotli Compression | `#/performance/gzip/brotli` |

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## Which one should you use?

They aren't alternatives — you generally want **both**, because they cover different browsers and different situations.

| | [GZIP](https://xspeedcache.com/docs/gzip/) | [Brotli](https://xspeedcache.com/docs/brotli/) |
| --- | --- | --- |
| **Browser support** | Universal, for decades | All modern browsers |
| **Compression ratio** | Good | Better, typically 15–20% smaller |
| **Server requirement** | Essentially always available | Needs `mod_brotli`, `ngx_brotli`, or LiteSpeed |
| **Tier** | Free | ⭐ Pro |

Serve both and each visitor's browser negotiates the best one it supports, falling back to GZIP where Brotli isn't available. Brotli alone would leave older clients uncompressed.

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## Read the status notice first

Before changing anything, look at the notice at the top of the panel. On many hosts it will say something like **"GZIP is being served by nginx"** — and if it does, **the toggle below is largely beside the point**. Your server is already compressing everything, and xSpeed can't configure nginx from WordPress.

That's not a fault; it's the better arrangement. Compression at the server layer is faster than compression in PHP. The panel tells you when it's already handled so you don't go looking for a problem that doesn't exist.

Where your server *isn't* compressing — some Apache setups, some shared hosts — the toggle does real work.

> 💡 **On nginx, xSpeed cannot write your server config.** The necessary directives ship in the unified server-block snippet on the [Page Cache](https://xspeedcache.com/docs/page-cache/) panel instead. If you rebuild your server config, re-copy that snippet.

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## Related

- [How to enable Page Cache](https://xspeedcache.com/docs/page-cache/)
- [How to set browser cache headers](https://xspeedcache.com/docs/browser-cache/)
- [How to minify CSS and JavaScript](https://xspeedcache.com/docs/minify/)