lz4-napi

August 30, 2025 · View on GitHub

Node.js NAPI Binding for LZ4 compression algorithm, powered by Rust napi-rs and lz4-flex.

Pros:

Fast! ⚡️
Memory Safe! 🔒
Uses libuv's threadpool! 🧵

Table of content

Installation
Usage
- Compress
- Uncompress
APIs
- Promises
  - compress
  - uncompress
- Sync
  - compressSync
  - uncompressSync
Benchmarks
Performance
- Hardware
- Results
Contributing
License

Installation

npm i lz4-napi
# OR
yarn add lz4-napi

Usage

Compress

const { readFile } = require('fs/promises');
const { compress } = require('lz4-napi');

// if you support top-level await
const buffer = await readFile("./bigFile.dat");
const compressedBuffer = await compress(buffer)
// Store compressed buffer somewhere

Uncompress

const { uncompress } = require('lz4-napi');

// if you support top-level await
const compressedBuffer = await getFromSomeStorage();
const uncompressedBuffer = await uncompress(compressedBuffer)
// Do something with compressedBuffer!

APIs

Promise

`compress`

(data: Buffer | string | ArrayBuffer | Uint8Array, dict?: string | Buffer) => Promise<Buffer>

`uncompress`

(data: Buffer | string | ArrayBuffer | Uint8Array, dict?: string | Buffer) => Promise<Buffer>

`compressFrame`

(data: Buffer | string | ArrayBuffer | Uint8Array) => Promise<Buffer>

`decompressFrame`

(data: Buffer | string | ArrayBuffer | Uint8Array) => Promise<Buffer>

Sync

`compressSync`

(data: Buffer | string | ArrayBuffer | Uint8Array, dict?: string | Buffer) => Buffer

`uncompressSync`

(data: Buffer | string | ArrayBuffer | Uint8Array, dict?: string | Buffer) => Buffer

`compressFrameSync`

(data: Buffer | string | ArrayBuffer | Uint8Array) => Buffer

`decompressFrameSync`

(data: Buffer | string | ArrayBuffer | Uint8Array) => Buffer

Performance

Hardware

Benchmarks runs on the following hardware:

Processor Name: M4 pro
Total Number of Cores: 12
Memory: 24GB

Benchmark

Running "Compress" suite...
Progress: 100%

  lz4:
    7 355 ops/s, ±1.73%   | 0.39% slower

  lz4 dict:
    6 375 ops/s, ±0.29%   | 13.66% slower

  snappy:
    7 384 ops/s, ±0.53%   | fastest

  gzip:
    444 ops/s, ±0.50%     | 93.99% slower

  deflate:
    442 ops/s, ±0.62%     | 94.01% slower

  brotli:
    6 ops/s, ±0.73%       | slowest, 99.92% slower

Finished 6 cases!
  Fastest: snappy
  Slowest: brotli
Running "Decompress" suite...
Progress: 100%

  lz4:
    19 095 ops/s, ±1.51%   | fastest

  lz4 dict:
    17 644 ops/s, ±1.51%   | 7.6% slower

  snappy:
    14 424 ops/s, ±0.50%   | 24.46% slower

  gzip:
    2 442 ops/s, ±0.60%    | 87.21% slower

  deflate:
    2 467 ops/s, ±0.61%    | 87.08% slower

  brotli:
    1 659 ops/s, ±0.43%    | slowest, 91.31% slower

Finished 6 cases!
  Fastest: lz4
  Slowest: brotli

Contributing

Project is pretty simple and straight forward for what is my needs, but if you have any idea you're welcome.

This projects uses conventional commit so be sure to use standard commit format or PR won't be accepted

Fork the Project
Create your Feature Branch (git checkout -b feature/AmazingFeature)
Commit your Changes (git commit -m 'feat(scope): some AmazingFeature')
Push to the Branch (git push origin feature/AmazingFeature)
Open a Pull Request

Acknowledgments

Brooooooklyn/snappy - Inspiration and project structure

License

Distributed under the MIT License. See LICENSE for more information.