Door 4 · Dual license · GPL-3.0-or-later or commercial · v2.5.0
Free proof on your machine.
pulsar is a free demo binary you run locally.
Dual license: GPL-3.0-or-later, or SKU pulsar-exception to ship it in a closed product. Release: github.com/ceedot-rock/pulsar-best v2.5.0.
To put pulsar inside a closed commercial product, pay $390/year (SKU pulsar-exception) for one product, one year. $199 support is help on top of that. Terms: COMMERCIAL-LICENSE.md.
On the public Silesia set (12 files, 211,938,580 bytes in), pulsar wrote 55,745,438 bytes out. Every file restored. That matches the published open-source table. gzip-9 wrote 67,631,990. bzip2-9 wrote 54,506,769. xz-6 wrote about 49.4M. PCC, a different codec, wrote 51,498,645 on the same files. Live board: /silesia.
Everyday files on our machines: PCC.
Download Source on GitHub Closed embed $390 PCC — the hosted door
What pulsar is
pulsar is the lab's compression ideas in a form you can hold: a free, open-source compressor you download and run on your own machine. No account, no hosted service, no meter — just a binary that makes files smaller and proves it by restoring every byte.
Here is why it exists. The lab's flagship compressor, PCC, runs as a hosted service. pulsar is the hands-on demo of the same thinking — a working example that shows the principles in action on your own files. If you want to see what the lab means by lossless compression before trusting a hosted service with your bytes, start here.
It is genuinely good at the job. On the public Silesia benchmark — twelve files, about 212 MB in — pulsar packed them to 55.7 MB with every file restored exactly. For comparison, gzip at maximum managed 67.6 MB and bzip2 54.5 MB on the same files. The numbers are published and the method is open.
It is free under GPL-3.0 — Linux binary and full source on GitHub, currently at version 2.5.0. If you want to ship it inside a closed commercial product, a $390-a-year exception covers one product.
Think of it as the demo disc: the real show is PCC, the hosted door — but pulsar lets you verify the ideas yourself, on your machine, for free.