The ngx_http_gzip_module module is a filter that compresses responses using the “gzip” method. This often allows to reduce the size of transmitted data by half or even more.

gzip            on;
gzip_min_length 1000;
gzip_proxied    expired no-cache no-store private auth;
gzip_types      text/plain application/xml;

The $gzip_ratio variable can be used to log the achieved compression ratio.

gzip off;

Enables or disables gzipping of responses.

gzip_buffers 32 4k|16 8k;

Sets the number and size of buffers used to compress a response. By default, the buffer size is equal to one memory page. This is either 4K or 8K, depending on a platform.

Until version 0.7.28, four 4K or 8K buffers were used by default.

gzip_comp_level 1;

Sets a gzip compression level of a response. Acceptable values are in the 1..9 range.

Disables gzipping of responses for requests with “User-Agent” header fields matching any of the specified regular expressions.

The special mask “msie6” (0.7.12) corresponds to the regular expression “MSIE [4-6]\.” but works faster. Starting from version 0.8.11, “MSIE 6.0; ... SV1” is excluded from this mask.

gzip_min_length 20;

Sets the minimum length of a response that will be gzipped. The length is determined only from the “Content-Length” response header field.

gzip_http_version 1.1;

Sets the minimum HTTP version of a request required to compress a response.

gzip_proxied off;

Enables or disables gzipping of responses for proxied requests depending on the request and response. The fact that the response is proxied is determined based on the presence of the “Via” request header field. A directive accepts multiple parameters:

off

disables compression for all proxied requests, ignoring other parameters;

expired

enables compression if a response header includes the field “Expires” with a value that disables caching;

no-cache

enables compression if a response header includes the field “Cache-Control” with the parameter “no-cache”;

no-store

enables compression if a response header includes the field “Cache-Control” with the parameter “no-store”;

private

enables compression if a response header includes the field “Cache-Control” with the parameter “private”;

no_last_modified

enables compression if a response header does not include the field “Last-Modified”;

no_etag

enables compression if a response header does not include the field “ETag”;

auth

enables compression if a request header includes the field “Authorization”;

any

enables compression for all proxied requests.

gzip_types text/html;

Enables gzipping of responses for the specified MIME types in addition to “text/html”. The special value “*” matches any MIME type (0.8.29). Responses with the type “text/html” are always compressed.

gzip_vary off;

Enables or disables emitting the “Vary: Accept-Encoding” response header field if the directives gzip or gzip_static are active.