
misa77 Codec Review 2026: The Open-Source LZ4 Alternative That Decodes 2x Faster
What Is misa77? — The Open-Source Codec That Outruns LZ4 misa77 is a new open-source LZ-based compression codec written in C++20 by developer nonadhocproblem. Released under the MIT license at version 0.2.0, it targets a specific niche: write-once read-many workloads where decompression throughput is the critical bottleneck. On the standard Silesia compression corpus, misa77 at its fastest level decodes at 5,219 MB/s — more than double LZ4’s 2,505 MB/s — while simultaneously achieving a better compression ratio (42.64% vs 47.59%). This combination of faster decode and better ratio is rare in the compression landscape and has attracted significant attention from the developer community. ...