It&#x27;s due to the decompression algorithm, gzip gets better file sizes and is a better general solution. lz4 is usually 10% worse but will get vastly better decompression speeds. The I&#x2F;O of an SSD is usually 300+MBps, lz4 will usually be around 270MBps, gzip will usually be &lt;80MBps.<p>lz4 will put less load on your cpu allowing you to get more throughput from your processing tasks. But I agree most people don&#x27;t reach these bottlenecks because most people use tools which are not optimized for performance like using jackson or jq instead of boon or rapidjson.<p>Look here for a reproducible test I ran on real data: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=10721645" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=10721645</a>