Comparison of file archivers

This article compares several notable file archiver utilities. Unless otherwise noted, comparisons are for full release versions (not prerelease) and for installations without extra aspects such as add-ons, extensions or external programs.

General information

Legend:

Notes:

1. ^ As a WinZip translation.
2. ^ v0.36
3. ^ A separate 64-bit Windows x64 Edition version is also available.
4. ^ The Unix-like system port is known as p7zip. p7zip also is provided by FreeDOS.
5. ^ Bundled with Windows 10 since insider build 17063
6. ^ Also Acorn RISC OS, Atari, MVS, OS/2, VM/CMS, VMS and others.
7. ^ General Windows CE version.
8. ^ This program also has a POSIX version available.
9. ^ The programs for other platforms are called Unace, do not have the same GUI, and can only perform decompression.
10. ^ WinRAR is for Windows, RAR for other platforms.
11. ^ Extracting/adding file and/or directory names into archive in either UTF-7, UTF-8 or UTF-16/UCS-2 encoding to support single file/directory name which contains characters from different languages. More recent versions of the zip file format have support for Unicode filenames.
12. ^ Commandline batch compression is available only for ZIP and ALZ formats.
13. ^ Traditionally, tar, cpio, or pax calls the external programs gzip and bzip2 to perform compression; these external programs usually come with systems that contain the archiver. This is the case for GNU tar. BSD tar uses its own implementation, since it also has to deal with archive formats that do their own compression.
14. ^ Many shells have built-in zip file support. Windows Explorer has "Send To"->"ZIP-compressed folder".
15. ^ Unicode and volumes since version 3.0 (2008). AES since 3.1 (in beta).
16. ^ UTF-8 file/path-names support was completed in release 3.0.1 on Unix systems, and in release 5.8.0 on Windows systems. GUI UTF-8 support for full internationalization of the application was completed in release 2.2.0. Optionally, extended characters can be set to be replaced by jolly "?" character for exporting scripts to legacy systems; scripts creation screen informs if commands are ANSI-safe, OEM-codepage-safe (on Windows), or requires UTF-8 compliant environment to run (system, command interpreter, etc).^[8]
17. ^ Command-line batch compression and expansion requires free add-on software downloaded from the WinZip website.
18. ^ Does support Unicode names, but not under the default (initial) option settings: the user must tick "Use OEM conversion for filenames" under "General" on the "Miscellaneous" tab in the Configuration dialog to enable Unicode name support. Full support for Unicode files names by default is supported only for 7-Zip and RAR archive formats.
19. ^ Application is only for decompression.
20. ^ Allows for a variable amount of error correction. See also RAR (file format).
21. ^ In WinRAR 3.60, when opening 7-Zip archives which contains Unicode file/directory names, they will not be displayed correctly. There will be no problem extracting them, however.
22. ^ Used to, but no longer does, due to technical and legal issues.
23. ^ Archive Utility itself is unable to open ISO files, but Disk Utility, which also comes with macOS, is able to mount them as virtual disks.
24. ^ B1 Free Archiver for Android and B1 Online Archiver support ARJ format.
25. ^ Supports these formats as compression stream of other archive formats like tar.bz2 or iso.xz but does not support the format as an archive itself, as they are not archive formats. See the above explanation for tar.
26. ^ libarchive has issues reading RAR formats, some partial reads are unsupported hence broken for generic usage.^[9]
27. ^ FreeARC uses .arc as its filename extension, but this format is not the same as the traditional ARC file.
28. ^ Only partial support for reading proprietary SITX format.^[10]
29. ^ Starting from version 11.
30. ^ Requires external program.^[11]
31. ^ ZipGenius-external
32. ^ The Extractor and XAD are not included in this list because they only expand archives.
33. ^ If there are more than one, files must be grouped in a .tar before being compressed.
34. ^ ALZip can also write to the following formats: BH, JAR, and LZH
35. ^ Archive Manager (previously known as "File Roller") is a front-end only and requires appropriate command-line programs be installed. Programs like bzip2, gzip, tar, zip usually come with systems that contain Archive Manager. writing in .rar format requires a commercial program.^[12]
36. ^ Ark is a front-end only and requires appropriate command-line programs be installed. Programs like bzip2, gzip, tar, zip usually come with systems that contain Ark; writing in .rar format requires a commercial program.^[13]
37. ^ supports the formats as stream compression of other archive format and can create compressed format like tar.bz2 or iso.xz but cannot create an archive in these formats
38. ^ Tar implementations call the external programs gzip and bzip2, 7z, xz, ... to perform compression; these external programs usually come with systems that contain tar.
39. ^ it require console rar.exe, and the path to it -- specified in Options . it can be taken from WinRAR software . PowerArchiever also doesn't support separate definition of the Dictionary Size and Compression Method .
40. ^ Stuffit supported file formats^[14]
41. ^ Requires rar.exe from WinRAR.
42. ^ Requires Ace32.exe from WinAce.
43. ^ Requires external program(if you are using WinZip 11.1 or earlier).^[15]
44. ^ Xarchiver is a front-end only and requires appropriate command-line programs be installed. Programs like bzip2, gzip, tar, zip usually come with systems that contain Xarchiver; writing in .rar format requires a commercial program.^[16][17]
45. ^ Updating archives is not supported.^[18]
46. ^ Requires external program.^[18]

Operating system support

The following table identifies the operating systems that archivers can run on directly – without emulation or a compatibility layer.

Notes:

Archiver features

The following table indicates which archivers implement various archiver features natively – without third-party add-ons.

Notes:

Archive format support

Reading

The following table identifies the archive formats that each archiver can read. Note that gzip, bzip2 and xz are compression formats rather than archive formats.

Notes:

Writing

The following table identifies the archive formats that each archiver^[af] can write and create. Note that gzip, bzip2 and xz are compression formats rather than archive formats.

Notes:

Uncommon archive format support

PeaZip has full support for Brotli, Zstandard, various LPAQ and PAQ formats, QUAD / BALZ / BCM (highly efficient ROLZ based compressors), FreeArc format, and for its native PEA format.

7-Zip includes read support for .msi, cpio and xar, plus Apple's dmg/HFS disk images and the deb/.rpm package distribution formats; beta versions (9.07 onwards) have full support for the LZMA2-compressed .xz format.^[7]

See also

• Comparison of archive formats
• Lossless compression benchmarks
• Comparison of file systems
• List of archive formats
• List of file systems

References

1. ^ "Latest Product Updates - Support Center - PKWARE Support Site". Archived from the original on 30 May 2010. Retrieved 2 July 2016.
2. ^ "StuffIt Updates". Smith Micro Software. Archived from the original on 2011-12-06. Retrieved 2015-03-15.
3. ^ "ZPAQ site". Retrieved 2020-08-04.
4. ^ "Command Line ZIP Interface - use scripts to automate zip tasks". Archived from the original on 27 February 2012. Retrieved 2 July 2016.
5. ^ "PeaZip for Darwin / macOS". Retrieved 15 December 2021.
6. ^ "RAR - Android Apps on Google Play". Retrieved 2 July 2016.
7. ^ "HISTORY of the 7-Zip". www.7-zip.org. 2010-04-15. Retrieved 2010-04-24.
8. ^ "Learn more - PeaZip free file archiver utility". Retrieved 2 July 2016.
9. ^ "Subfile in certain RAR cannot be read". GitHub
10. ^ "The Unarchiver". Wakaba and Kareha support board
11. ^ "Other Archive Support". Corel Knowledge Base. September 6, 2021.
12. ^ "File Roller". fileroller.sourceforge.net
13. ^ "Chapter 1. Introduction". The Ark Handbook. 16.12. 2016-09-10.
14. ^ "StuffIt File Formats". Archived from the original on 2008-12-27.
15. ^ "Where can I find the external programs required for ARC, ARJ, and LHA files?". Archived from the original on 2013-04-21.
16. ^ "Chapter 1. Introduction". Xarchiver 0.5. Archived from the original on 2009-06-29.
17. ^ "Chapter 3. Usage". Xarchiver 0.5. Archived from the original on 2009-06-29.
18. ^ "Supported File Types". ZipGenius. 16 May 2014. Archived from the original on 3 March 2023. Retrieved 3 March 2023.

Further reading

• Maximum Compression (last archive of site with test data available), site benchmarking compressors for several filetypes (text, executable, jpeg etc.).
• Kingsley G. Morse Jr., "Compression Tools Compared", Linux Journal, issue 137, September 2005
• Patrick Schmid, Achim Roos, (March 10, 2010) "Four Compression And Archiving Solutions Compared", Tom's Hardware