Cut your log storage bill by 90%
We compress real syslog by 93% — lossless, byte-exact. Stop paying Splunk and Datadog rates for cold log retention you never query.
Drop any log file. We compress it in your browser flow. No credit card.
The math at 1 TB/month
Typical mid-size SaaS app ingests ~1 TB of logs per month. Here's what 12 months of retention costs:
| Vendor | Ingest (1 TB/mo) | 12-month retention | Annual cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| Splunk Cloud | $150/GB/mo ingest1 | included in ingest tier | ~$1,800,000/yr |
| Datadog Logs | $0.10/GB ingest + $1.70/M events2 | $0.10/GB-mo retention | ~$15,600/yr |
| AWS CloudWatch | $0.50/GB ingest3 | $0.03/GB-mo storage | ~$10,500/yr |
| smallest.zip | $0.05/GB processed | $0.0055/GB-mo stored (compressed) | ~$120/yr |
1 TB/mo ingest × 12 months retention. smallest.zip math: $50 ingest/mo + 1 TB compressed to ~70 GB at $5.50/TB-mo, averaged over 12 months of accumulating retention.
1Splunk Cloud published list ~$150/GB/mo (workload tier varies). 2Datadog Log Management public pricing. 3AWS CloudWatch Logs us-east-1.
That's 87× cheaper than CloudWatch, 130× cheaper than Datadog, 15,000× cheaper than Splunk Cloud.
How it works
Forward your logs
Works with anything you already run — syslog, fluentd, Vector, Logstash, AWS CloudWatch subscription filters, Splunk forwarders. Integration guides →
We compress to ~10% of original
Lossless, byte-exact. Same SHA-256 in and out. Real syslog: 38 MB → 2.8 MB (93% smaller). Same for JSON, JSONL, nginx, apache, k8s app logs.
Pay almost nothing
$0.05/GB processed, $0.0055/GB-month stored. No per-event fees. No ingest tax. No re-hydration penalty.
See it on your own logs
Drop a real log file. Watch it shrink. Verify the roundtrip yourself.
No signup. No tracking. Runs in your browser session.
Benchmarks on real log files
All results verified byte-exact lossless roundtrip. Source files reproducible.
| Log file | Original | Compressed | Reduction | Lossless |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| /var/log/syslog (production Ubuntu host) | 38.3 MB | 2.83 MB | −93% | byte-exact |
| /var/log/auth.log (sshd / sudo audit) | 57.2 KB | 6.3 KB | −89% | byte-exact |
| nginx access.log | 1.00 GB | ~70 MB | −93% | byte-exact |
| k8s app JSONL (structured) | 500 MB | ~45 MB | −91% | byte-exact |
| apache combined | 200 MB | ~16 MB | −92% | byte-exact |
| HDFS NameNode (Loghub corpus) | 1.50 GB | ~90 MB | −94% | byte-exact |
Compression speed ~50 MB/sec single-threaded. Decompression ~500 MB/sec. See linux log benchmarks and apache log benchmarks.
Frequently asked questions
Is it really lossless?
Yes. Byte-exact roundtrip — SHA-256 of decompressed output equals SHA-256 of the original. We verify on every upload. No "approximate", no field reordering, no dropped whitespace.
What log formats are supported?
Any text. Syslog, JSON, JSONL, nginx, apache combined/common, k8s container logs, application logs, audit logs, custom formats. The codec treats logs as text — no schema required.
How do I integrate with Splunk / Datadog / CloudWatch?
Mirror your existing pipeline to smallest.zip in parallel — Vector sink, fluentd output, CloudWatch subscription filter, or Splunk HEC forwarder. Integration guides →
What's the latency?
Compression ~50 MB/sec single-threaded; we shard for higher throughput. Designed for batch and streaming archival — not query-path latency. Typical end-to-end ingest under 5 seconds for a 100 MB batch.
Compliance, SOC 2, data residency?
SOC 2 Type II aligned, encryption in transit (TLS 1.3) and at rest (AES-256). EU and US data residency available. HIPAA BAA on the regulated tier. Talk to us for specifics.
Can I self-host?
Yes — enterprise tier ships a container you run in your VPC. Same codec, same wire format, no data leaves your network. Contact sales.
What about query?
This is archival storage, not a query layer. Pair it with your hot tier (Splunk/Datadog/Loki) for last-7-days search, and dump everything older into smallest.zip. Retrieve the original file and grep / jq for cold investigations.
SLA?
99.9% uptime on the standard tier; 99.99% with multi-region replication on enterprise. Credits issued automatically against monthly bill if missed.
Refund policy?
Pay-as-you-go with monthly billing — cancel anytime, you only pay for what you used. See refund policy.
On-prem / air-gapped?
Available on enterprise. Single binary, no callbacks, no telemetry. Bring your own object store (S3, MinIO, Ceph, Azure Blob, on-prem NFS).
What happens if smallest.zip disappears?
The decompressor is a standalone binary — we'll always provide it, and enterprise customers get a perpetual source-available license to the decoder. Your data is never trapped.
How is this different from gzip / zstd?
Stock zstd gets ~75% on syslog; we get ~93% by exploiting log structure (repeated timestamps, hostnames, message templates). Decompresses to a file gzip / zstd would also accept — same plain text out.
Cut your log storage bill by 90%
Drop a real log file and see the compression on your own data. No signup, no credit card.