UnderscoreJS 0.2.0 - as small as it gets (near-perfect GZIP compression)

Choose a version:

The original file has 15304 bytes (14.9k) and is available from the project website.
There you can find the official minified version, too, which brings down the size to 5633 bytes (5.5k, 37%).

After GZIP compression these minified files vary in size:

Boot	2096 bytes (2.0k)	CDN
gzip -6 (default)	1910 bytes (1.9k)	local copy
gzip -9	1909 bytes (1.9k)	local copy
Baidu	1896 bytes (1.9k)	CDN
cdnjs	1896 bytes (1.9k)	CDN
libdeflate -12	1855 bytes (1.8k)	local copy
pigz -11 -n	1854 bytes (1.8k)	local copy
zultra	1854 bytes (1.8k)	local copy
kzip -s0 -rn -b0	1853 bytes (1.8k)	local copy
7zip -mx=9 -tgzip	1851 bytes (1.8k)	local copy
Zopfli	1850 bytes (1.8k)	local copy

perma-link to the smallest file on my server:
http://minime.stephan-brumme.com/files/underscorejs/underscore-0.2.0.min.js (or via HTTPS)

You will automatically get the smallest UnderscoreJS 0.2.0 file, ETag caching is available and
if your browser doesn't support GZIP decompression then the uncompressed version will be sent.

Currently best Zopfli settings

Save 46 bytes by using my UnderscoreJS 0.2.0 Zopfli version instead of the best available CDN (2.49% smaller than cdnjs, 1850 vs. 1896 bytes):

Download

You can use my super-compressed files for whatever purpose you like as long as you respect the library's original license agreement.
There are no restrictions from my side - but please avoid hot-linking if you run a high-traffic website.

These command-line settings yielded the best compression ratio so far (Linux version of zopfli-krzymod):
zopfli --i100000 --mb8 --mls8 --bsr10 --lazy --ohh

(found February 9, 2019)

Description	Value	Parameter
iterations	100000	--i100000
maximum blocks	8	--mb8
maximum length score	8	--mls8
block splitting recursion	10	--bsr10
lazy matching in LZ77	yes	--lazy
optimized Huffman headers	yes	--ohh
initial random W for iterations	1	--rw1
initial random Z for iterations	2	--rz2

Verify file integrity

After decompression, my uncompressed files are identical to the original ones:

MD5:
curl --silent --compressed https://raw.githubusercontent.com/jashkenas/underscore/0.2.0/underscore-min.js --location | md5sum
dc33978fc14cc9dc4074e32a95bdad4e -
curl --silent --compressed https://minime.stephan-brumme.com/files/underscorejs/underscore-0.2.0.min.zopfli.js.gz | md5sum
dc33978fc14cc9dc4074e32a95bdad4e -

SHA1:
curl --silent --compressed https://raw.githubusercontent.com/jashkenas/underscore/0.2.0/underscore-min.js --location | sha1sum
e2175ab6d89def7f267558e74839a2d9728d0bc7 -
curl --silent --compressed https://minime.stephan-brumme.com/files/underscorejs/underscore-0.2.0.min.zopfli.js.gz | sha1sum
e2175ab6d89def7f267558e74839a2d9728d0bc7 -

All listed CDNs deliver identical contents:

CDN	Size (compressed)	MD5 (uncompressed)	Timestamp
Boot	2096 bytes	dc33978fc14cc9dc4074e32a95bdad4e	(invalid)
Baidu	1896 bytes	dc33978fc14cc9dc4074e32a95bdad4e	(invalid)
cdnjs	1896 bytes	dc33978fc14cc9dc4074e32a95bdad4e	(invalid)

Note: only the MD5 hashes are shown to keep things simple.

Other Versions

Available UnderscoreJS versions at minime.stephan-brumme.com:

1.13.6, 1.13.5, 1.13.4, 1.13.3, 1.13.2, 1.13.1, 1.13.0,
1.12.1, 1.12.0,
1.11.0,
1.10.2, 1.10.1, 1.10.0,
1.9.2, 1.9.1, 1.9.0,
1.8.3, 1.8.2, 1.8.1,
1.7.0,
1.6.0,
1.5.2, 1.5.0,
1.4.4, 1.4.3, 1.4.2, 1.4.1, 1.4.0,
1.3.3, 1.3.2, 1.3.1, 1.3.0,
1.2.4, 1.2.3, 1.2.2, 1.2.1, 1.2.0,
1.1.7, 1.1.5, 1.1.4, 1.1.3, 1.1.2, 1.1.1, 1.1.0,
1.0.4, 1.0.3, 1.0.2, 1.0.1, 1.0.0,
0.6.0,
0.5.7, 0.5.6, 0.5.5, 0.5.4, 0.5.3, 0.5.2, 0.5.1, 0.5.0,
0.4.7, 0.4.6, 0.4.5, 0.4.4, 0.4.3, 0.4.2, 0.4.1, 0.4.0,
0.3.3, 0.3.2, 0.3.1, 0.3.0,
0.2.0,
0.1.1, 0.1.0

The project site contains an overview how well these versions were compressed.
Other interesting projects are AngularJS, BackboneJS, Bootstrap, D3, Dojo, Ember, jQuery, Knockout, lodash, React, Socket.IO, ThreeJS and Vue.

Changelog

Best Zopfli parameters so far:

Size	Improvement	Parameters	Found
1850 bytes	-1 byte	zopfli --i100000 --mls8 --bsr10 --lazy --ohh	February 9, 2019 @ 11:45
1851 bytes	-1 byte	zopfli --i10000 --mls2 --bsr8 --lazy --ohh	February 2, 2016 @ 23:37
1852 bytes	-1 byte	zopfli --i1000 --mls32 --bsr25 --lazy --ohh	February 2, 2016 @ 20:58
1853 bytes	–	zopfli --i100 --mls32 --bsr25 --lazy --ohh	February 2, 2016 @ 20:57

If there are multiple parameter sets yielding the same compressed size, only the first one found is shown.

Most recent activity on July 20, 2020 @ 12:53.

Heatmaps

This Zopfli heatmap visualizes how compression changes when modifying the --bsr and --mls parameter.
Cell's contents is the best filesize achieved (in bytes, hover with mouse over cells to see number of iterations).

Good parameters are green, bad are red. The best and worst are bold as well.
The brightness of the blue background color indicates how many iterations were processed:
100,000 or 1,000,000.

bsr \ mls	2	4	8	16	32	64	128	256	512	1024	2048	4096	8192	16384	32768
bsr \ mls	2	4	8	16	32	64	128	256	512	1024	2048	4096	8192	16384	32768
2	1851	1851	1850	1850	1851	1851	1851	1851	1851	1851	1851	1851	1851	1851	1851
4	1851	1851	1850	1850	1851	1851	1851	1851	1851	1851	1851	1851	1851	1851	1851
6	1851	1851	1850	1850	1851	1851	1851	1851	1851	1851	1851	1851	1851	1851	1851
7	1851	1851	1850	1850	1851	1851	1851	1851	1851	1851	1851	1851	1851	1851	1851
8	1851	1851	1850	1850	1851	1851	1851	1851	1851	1851	1851	1851	1851	1851	1851
9	1851	1851	1850	1850	1851	1851	1851	1851	1851	1851	1851	1851	1851	1851	1851
10	1851	1851	1850	1850	1851	1851	1851	1851	1851	1851	1851	1851	1851	1851	1851
11	1851	1851	1850	1850	1851	1851	1851	1851	1851	1851	1851	1851	1851	1851	1851
12	1851	1851	1850	1850	1851	1851	1851	1851	1851	1851	1851	1851	1851	1851	1851
13	1851	1851	1850	1850	1851	1851	1851	1851	1851	1851	1851	1851	1851	1851	1851
14	1851	1851	1850	1850	1851	1851	1851	1851	1851	1851	1851	1851	1851	1851	1851
15	1851	1851	1850	1850	1851	1851	1851	1851	1851	1851	1851	1851	1851	1851	1851
16	1851	1851	1850	1850	1851	1851	1851	1851	1851	1851	1851	1851	1851	1851	1851
17	1851	1851	1850	1850	1851	1851	1851	1851	1851	1851	1851	1851	1851	1851	1851
18	1851	1851	1850	1850	1851	1851	1851	1851	1851	1851	1851	1851	1851	1851	1851
19	1851	1851	1850	1850	1851	1851	1851	1851	1851	1851	1851	1851	1851	1851	1851
20	1851	1851	1850	1850	1851	1851	1851	1851	1851	1851	1851	1851	1851	1851	1851
21	1851	1851	1850	1850	1851	1851	1851	1851	1851	1851	1851	1851	1851	1851	1851
22	1851	1851	1850	1850	1851	1851	1851	1851	1851	1851	1851	1851	1851	1851	1851
23	1851	1851	1850	1850	1851	1851	1851	1851	1851	1851	1851	1851	1851	1851	1851
25	1851	1851	1850	1850	1851	1851	1851	1851	1851	1851	1851	1851	1851	1851	1851
30	1851	1851	1850	1850	1851	1851	1851	1851	1851	1851	1851	1851	1851	1851	1851
40	1851	1851	1850	1850	1851	1851	1851	1851	1851	1851	1851	1851	1851	1851	1851

Due to the Monte Carlo design of my search algorithm, not all parameters have reached the same number of iterations yet:

Iterations	Min. Bytes	Reduction	Coverage
100	1852 bytes	–	100%
1,000	1852 bytes	–	100%
10,000	1851 bytes	-1 byte	100%
100,000	1850 bytes	-1 byte	100%
1,000,000	1850 bytes	–	0.29%
10,000,000	–	–	–

KZIP has far less options available for tuning/optimization. I only played around with the number of blocks (parameter -n):

Blocks	Min. Bytes	Compared To Best Zopfli	Compared To Best KZIP
(any)	1853 bytes	+3 bytes (+0.16%)	–
1	1853 bytes	+3 bytes (+0.16%)	–
2	1870 bytes	+20 bytes (+1.08%)	+17 bytes
3	1903 bytes	+53 bytes (+2.86%)	+50 bytes
4	1938 bytes	+88 bytes (+4.76%)	+85 bytes
5	1963 bytes	+113 bytes (+6.11%)	+110 bytes
6	1995 bytes	+145 bytes (+7.84%)	+142 bytes
7	2029 bytes	+179 bytes (+9.68%)	+176 bytes
8	2057 bytes	+207 bytes (+11.19%)	+204 bytes

Non-DEFLATE Algorithms

Archivers based on completely different compression algorithms often produce superior results.
Unfortunately, browsers only support gzip compression at the moment.
However, support for Brotli is constantly growing - for example, your browser actually supports it !

Algorithm	Program	Parameters	Size	Compared To Best Zopfli
Brotli (Wikipedia)	brotli	brotli -q 11	1683 bytes	-167 bytes (-9.03%)
RAR (proprietary)	RAR	rar a -m5 -md64m -mc63:128t -mt1	1684 bytes	-166 bytes (-8.97%)
Zstandard (Wikipedia)	zstd	zstd -19	1871 bytes	+21 bytes (+1.14%)
Burrows-Wheeler transform (Wikipedia)	bzip2	bzip2 -9	1922 bytes	+72 bytes (+3.89%)
LZMA2 (Wikipedia)	xz	xz -9	1936 bytes	+86 bytes (+4.65%)
PPMd (Wikipedia)	7zip	7za a -mx=9 -m0=ppmd	1961 bytes	+111 bytes (+6.00%)
ZPAQ (Wikipedia)	zpaq	zpaq -method 69	2602 bytes	+752 bytes (+40.65%)

Detailled Analysis

I wrote a DEFLATE decoder in Javascript. Click the button below to start a client-side analysis of the smallest gzipped files (may take a second):

Load and Parse Data

Notes: pigz is a fast open source multi-threaded implementation of gzip written by one of the original authors of gzip.
However, when using compression level 11, pigz actually switches to the slower Zopfli algorithm and isn't multi-threaded anymore.
KrzyMOD's extensions to Zopfli offer the highest level of configuration and is therefore used for my brute-force search.
Ken Silverman wrote the closed-source KZIP compression program and Jonathon Fowler ported it to Linux.
Defluff was created by Joachim Henke; DeflOpt is a tool by Ben Jos Walbeehm.

website made by Stephan Brumme in 2015 and still improving in 2026.
all timestamps are displayed in central european time. see my changelog.
no flash, not even images or external css files - and everything squeezed into a single html file.
which was handsomely compressed before releasing it into the wild internet - obviously.

please visit my homepage and my blog, too.
email: minime (at) stephan-brumme.com

All trademarks are property of their respective owners. You know, the boring legal stuff.