Compress Any Text, See How It Works
Type or paste text below and watch three classic compression algorithms reduce it — with full visual breakdowns of every step.
Enter some text and click Compress to see how each algorithm works.
Type or paste text below and watch three classic compression algorithms reduce it — with full visual breakdowns of every step.
Enter some text and click Compress to see how each algorithm works.
Data compression is one of the most important algorithms in computing, yet it's invisible. Every time you download a ZIP file, stream a video, or save a PNG image, compression algorithms are working behind the scenes. David Huffman's 1952 paper at MIT gave us optimal prefix codes. Abraham Lempel and Jacob Ziv created LZ77 in 1977, which became the basis for GIF, PNG, and gzip. Run-Length Encoding is so simple a child could explain it, yet it's inside every BMP, PCX, and RLE file format. This tool pulls back the curtain and shows exactly what happens to your text.
Compression Lab lets you type any text and immediately see how three classic lossless compression algorithms reduce it. Each algorithm comes with a step-by-step visual breakdown — you can see which characters are run-length grouped, which Huffman codes are assigned based on frequency, and which LZ77 back-references are found. The side-by-side comparison shows which algorithm works best for your specific input.