Why Look Beyond PetaGene?
PetaGene has been the gold standard for genomic data compression. Their PetaSuite achieves roughly 5.3% compression on FASTQ — impressive compared to gzip's ~25%. But there are reasons to evaluate alternatives:
- Licensing costs — PetaGene is commercial software with per-TB pricing
- On-premise installation — requires local deployment and maintenance
- Compression ceiling — 5.3% is good, but there's room to go further
4BIN: 1.15x Better Compression
We benchmarked 4BIN against PetaGene on three DDBJ whole-genome FASTQ datasets:
| Dataset | PetaGene | 4BIN | Improvement |
|---|---|---|---|
| DRR000798 | ~5.3% | 4.56% | 1.16x |
| DRR000801 | ~5.3% | 4.77% | 1.11x |
| DRR000802 | ~5.3% | 4.47% | 1.19x |
| Average | ~5.3% | ~4.6% | 1.15x |
Both are fully lossless. The decompressed FASTQ is bit-identical to the original.
What 1.15x Means at Scale
That 0.7 percentage point difference doesn't sound like much — until you multiply by petabytes:
| Archive Size | PetaGene Storage | 4BIN Storage | Annual S3 Savings |
|---|---|---|---|
| 100 TB | 5.3 TB | 4.5 TB | $2,208 |
| 1 PB | 53 TB | 45 TB | $22,080 |
| 10 PB | 530 TB | 450 TB | $220,800 |
At 10 PB, switching from PetaGene to 4BIN saves $220,800/year in S3 costs alone — before accounting for PetaGene's licensing fees.
Feature Comparison
| Feature | PetaGene | 4BIN |
|---|---|---|
| FASTQ compression | ~5.3% | 4.5% |
| BAM/CRAM | Yes | Yes |
| VCF | Yes | Yes |
| Lossless | Yes | Yes |
| Deployment | On-premise | Cloud API |
| Installation | Required | None |
| Pricing | Per-TB license | Pay-per-use |
| Video/Image/Log | No | Yes |
4BIN is cloud-native — no software to install, no servers to maintain. Call our API, get compressed data back.
Migration Path
Already using PetaGene? Migration is straightforward:
- Decompress your PetaGene archives to original FASTQ
- Re-compress with 4BIN via API
- Store the 4BIN compressed files in S3
The net result: 15% smaller files, no ongoing licensing costs, and API-based access for your bioinformatics pipelines.
Try It Free
Sign up for free API access and benchmark 4BIN against PetaGene on your own data. Or read our detailed benchmarks for more comparisons.