diff --git a/extensions/netty/deployment/src/main/java/io/quarkus/netty/deployment/NettyProcessor.java b/extensions/netty/deployment/src/main/java/io/quarkus/netty/deployment/NettyProcessor.java
index 361033561c391..b807f875032aa 100644
--- a/extensions/netty/deployment/src/main/java/io/quarkus/netty/deployment/NettyProcessor.java
+++ b/extensions/netty/deployment/src/main/java/io/quarkus/netty/deployment/NettyProcessor.java
@@ -122,8 +122,11 @@ NativeImageConfigBuildItem build(
                     .addRuntimeInitializedClass("io.netty.handler.codec.http.websocketx.extensions.compression.DeflateDecoder")
                     .addRuntimeInitializedClass("io.netty.handler.codec.http.websocketx.WebSocket00FrameEncoder")
                     .addRuntimeInitializedClass("io.netty.handler.codec.compression.ZstdOptions")
-                    .addRuntimeInitializedClass("io.netty.handler.codec.compression.ZstdConstants")
-                    .addRuntimeInitializedClass("io.netty.handler.codec.compression.BrotliOptions");
+                    .addRuntimeInitializedClass("io.netty.handler.codec.compression.ZstdConstants");
+            // Brotli is an optional dependency
+            if (QuarkusClassLoader.isClassPresentAtRuntime("io.netty.handler.codec.compression.BrotliOptions")) {
+                builder.addRuntimeInitializedClass("io.netty.handler.codec.compression.BrotliOptions");
+            }
         } else {
             log.debug("Not registering Netty HTTP classes as they were not found");
         }
diff --git a/extensions/netty/runtime/pom.xml b/extensions/netty/runtime/pom.xml
index 96b924e0ada49..a0c59483ce243 100644
--- a/extensions/netty/runtime/pom.xml
+++ b/extensions/netty/runtime/pom.xml
@@ -61,15 +61,6 @@
             <classifier>osx-x86_64</classifier>
             <optional>true</optional>
         </dependency>
-
-        <!--
-        The recent version of Netty have a hard dependency on brotli,
-        without this dependency, it's not possible to compile to native
-        -->
-        <dependency>
-            <groupId>com.aayushatharva.brotli4j</groupId>
-            <artifactId>brotli4j</artifactId>
-        </dependency>
     </dependencies>
 
     <build>
diff --git a/extensions/vertx-http/runtime/pom.xml b/extensions/vertx-http/runtime/pom.xml
index b7073fd79dd1a..c25865639779a 100644
--- a/extensions/vertx-http/runtime/pom.xml
+++ b/extensions/vertx-http/runtime/pom.xml
@@ -69,6 +69,11 @@
             <groupId>io.github.crac</groupId>
             <artifactId>org-crac</artifactId>
         </dependency>
+        <!-- needed when quarkus.http.compressors contains "br" see https://github.com/quarkusio/quarkus/issues/43556 -->
+        <dependency>
+            <groupId>com.aayushatharva.brotli4j</groupId>
+            <artifactId>brotli4j</artifactId>
+        </dependency>
         <!-- Test dependencies -->
         <dependency>
             <groupId>org.junit.jupiter</groupId>