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pigz vs GNU Gzip: catalog facts
pigz	GNU Gzip
Free Free and open source with no paid tier.	Free Free software from the GNU Project.
Linux, Command line	Linux, Command line
Uses all CPU cores when compressing Output is standard gzip format	Available on nearly every Unix-like system The .gz format is read almost everywhere
Decompression gains little from multiple cores Distributed as source code; you may need to compile it	Compresses single files or streams, not multi-file archives Lower compression ratio than xz, zstd or lzip
Downloadable app	Downloadable app
Open source	Open source
License: Zlib	License: GPL-3.0-or-later
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

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