that's what the -C option to ssh is for

lzop if you gotta go fast :)

And through tac if you want it in reverse!

(...And my axe!)

Note that gpg compresses by default. Which is thy it's so slow. You may wish to use lzop or zstd but also disable gpg's compression.

I usually use ssh (e.g. ssh -L 3333:localhost:3333) and avoid gpg, though I may use lzop depending on link and CPU speed.