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bzip2 vs LZ4: catalog facts
bzip2	LZ4
Free Free and open source under a BSD-style licence.	Free Free and open source.
Windows, macOS, Linux, Command line	Windows, macOS, Linux, Command line
Better compression than gzip on many inputs Limited recovery from damaged media	Very fast compression and decompression Scales across CPU cores
Slower than modern compressors such as zstd Releases are rare	Lower compression ratio than zstd or xz Compresses single files or streams, not a full archiver
Downloadable app	Downloadable app
Open source	Open source
License: bzip2-1.0.6	License: BSD-2-Clause (library), GPL-2.0 (command-line tool)
No account needed	No account needed
Works offline	Works offline
Official website Full listing and sources Checked September 23, 2026	Official website Full listing and sources Checked September 23, 2026

Catalog facts only. Anything “not stated” is unconfirmed. Check full listings for details.