Comparison of file archivers - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

The following tables compare general and technical information for a number of file archiver
File archiver
A file archiver is a computer program that combines a number of files together into one archive file, or a series of archive files, for easier transportation or storage...

s. Please see the individual products' articles for further information. They are neither all-inclusive nor are some entries necessarily up to date. Unless otherwise specified in the footnotes section, comparisons are based on the stable versions--without add-ons, extensions or external programs.

General information

Basic general information about the archivers: creator/company, licence/price etc.

	Creator(s)	First public release date	Latest stable version	Cost (USD United States dollar The United States dollar , also referred to as the American dollar, is the official currency of the United States of America. It is divided into 100 smaller units called cents or pennies.... )	Software licence
7-Zip 7-Zip 7-Zip is an open source file archiver. 7-Zip operates with the 7z archive format, but can read and write several other archive formats. The program can be used from a command line interface, graphical user interface, or with Microsoft Windows shell integration. 7-Zip began in 1999 and is actively...	Igor Pavlov Igor Pavlov (programmer) Igor Pavlov is a Russian freelance programmer and is the creator and the maintainer of the file archiver 7-Zip and its toolset. He is also the creator of the 7z archive format...
ALZip ALZip ALZip is an archive and compression utility from ESTsoft for Microsoft Windows.- History :Originally ALZip was developed in 1999 as an internal application at the South Korean software company ESTsoft in response to employee frustration with using the English interface in WinZip.The Korean...	ESTsoft ESTsoft Founded in 1992, ESTsoft is a South Korean application software development company. Its software ranges from desktop to business software for enterprises.-Products:...	(as a WinZip translation)
Archive Utility Archive utility * For archive utility applications in general see file archiver.* For the MAC OS Archive Utility service application see Archive Utility....	Apple Inc.		10.6
Ark Ark (computing) Ark is an archiving tool for the KDE Software Compilation, included into kdeutils package.- Features :*Ark does not intrinsically understand any archive format, but instead acts as a frontend to command-line archivers...	KDE KDE KDE is an international free software community producing an integrated set of cross-platform applications designed to run on Linux, FreeBSD, Microsoft Windows, Solaris and Mac OS X systems... team		2.14
Bandizip Bandizip Bandizip is a free file archiver and compressor for Microsoft Windows, developed by Bandisoft. Key features for Bandizip include the ability to preview archives from the right click context menu, selectively compress files based on high compressibility versus poor compressibility, and create...	Bandisoft		1.0.2
BetterZip BetterZip BetterZip is a trialware file archiver and data compression utility developed by Robert Rezabek, and first released in May 2006. It is developed solely for the Mac OS X platform...	BetterZip		1.8.3
Bitser	Bitser		1.0 Beta
Compressed Folders ZIP (file format) Zip is a file format used for data compression and archiving. A zip file contains one or more files that have been compressed, to reduce file size, or stored as is...	Microsoft Inc.		Windows Small Business Server 2011
Disk ARchiver DAR (Disk Archiver) DAR is a command-line archiving tool and a replacement for tar.It features:Support for slices, archives split over multiple files of a particular size.Option of deleting files from the system which are removed in the archive....	Denis Corbin		2.4.1
File Roller File Roller File Roller is the archive manager of the GNOME desktop environment.-Features:File Roller Archive Manager can:* Create and modify archives.* View the content of an archive.* View a file contained in the archive.* Extract files from the archive....	Paolo Bacchilega		3.0.0
Filzip Filzip Filzip is a freeware file archiver program for the Microsoft Windows platform.It was written by Philipp Engel. While free, the author does request donations to help the cost of development and reward him for his work...	Philipp Engel
FreeArc FreeArc FreeArc is a free and open source file archiver developed by Bulat Ziganshin.-Algorithms:FreeArc uses LZMA, PPMD, TrueAudio, Tornado and GRzip algorithms with automatic switching by file type, and also uses set of filters—for instance it can remove repetitions from text.-Archive size:In Tom's...	Bulat Ziganshin	v0.36	0.666
iArchiver IArchiver iArchiver is a software utility for handling file archives on the Apple Macintosh. It is now renamed Rucksack.iArchiver was designed as a universal tool for working with archives, and can be used to create, extract and convert a large number of common and legacy archive formats with a drag-and-drop...	Dare to be Creative Ltd.		1.4.1
Info-ZIP Info-ZIP Info-ZIP is a set of open-source software to handle ZIP archives. It has been in circulation since 1989. It consists of 4 separately-installable packages: the Zip and UnZip command-line utilities; and WiZ and MacZip, which are graphical user interfaces for archiving programs in Microsoft Windows... (Wzip)	Samuel Smith		6.0
IZArc IZArc IZArc is a proprietary file archiver for Microsoft Windows developed by Bulgarian programmer Ivan Zahariev. The program is freeware and closed source. In addition to the most commonly used archive formats, like zip, rar, gzip, tar.gz, bzip2, and 7z, IZArc handles a large number of less common formats...	IZSoftware
Keka Keka Keka is a Mac OS X frontend GUI of p7zip, the UNIX port of 7-Zip. It allows users to compress files and folders into files that are usually of a smaller size that can be extracted afterwards for use again. 7-Zip, using the .7z format, is a very high compression format that in many cases beats ZIP...	aONe		0.1.4.2
KGB Archiver KGB Archiver KGB Archiver is a file archiver and data compression utility based on the PAQ6 compression algorithm.Written in Microsoft Visual C++ by Tomasz Pawlak, KGB Archiver is designed to achieve a very high compression ratio...	Tomasz Pawlak		1.2.1.24 2.0 Beta 2
PeaZip PeaZip PeaZip is a file manager and file archiver for Microsoft Windows and GNU/Linux. It supports its native PEA archive format and other mainstream formats, with special focus on handling open formats...	Giorgio Tani		4.2
PKZIP PKZIP PKZIP is an archiving tool originally written by Phil Katz and marketed by his company PKWARE, Inc. The common "PK" prefix used in both PKZIP and PKWARE stands for "Phil Katz".-History:...	Phil Katz Phil Katz Phillip Walter Katz was a computer programmer best known as the co-creator of the zip file format for data compression, and the author of PKZIP, a program for creating zip files which ran under DOS.- Career :...		12.4 (ca. )
PowerArchiver PowerArchiver PowerArchiver is a proprietary file archiver for Microsoft Windows, developed by ConeXware Inc. It supports full read-write access to several different archive formats, including ZIP, 7z and Tar. Additionally, read-only support includes RAR, ACE and various disk image formats. The evaluation...	ConexWare		11.71
StuffIt StuffIt StuffIt is a family of computer software utilities for archiving and compressing files on the Macintosh and Microsoft Windows platforms: it was originally produced for the Macintosh. An old version for Linux and Sun Solaris 2.7 or later is also available...	Allume Systems Allume Systems Allume Systems was a software developer, originally founded in 1988 by David Schargel and Jonathan Kahn in New York City as Aladdin Systems to develop, publish and distribute software for personal computers. Allume was incorporated in January 1989...		14.0
TAR Tar (file format) In computing, tar is both a file format and the name of a program used to handle such files...	AT&T AT&T AT&T Inc. is an American multinational telecommunications corporation headquartered in Whitacre Tower, Dallas, Texas, United States. It is the largest provider of mobile telephony and fixed telephony in the United States, and is also a provider of broadband and subscription television services...		GNU tar: ; star: 1.5.1; BSD tar: 2.6.0
The Unarchiver The Unarchiver The Unarchiver is a free data decompression frontend of libxad, which supports more formats than Archive Utility , the built-in archive unpacker program in Mac OS X. It can also handle filenames in foreign character sets, created with non-English versions of other operating systems. The latest...	Circlesoft		2.5
TUGZip TUGZip TUGZip is a freeware file archiver for Microsoft Windows. It handles a great variety of archive formats, including some of the commonly used ones like zip, rar, gzip, bzip2, sqx and 7z...	Christian Kindahl		3.5.0.0
WinAce WinAce WinAce is an archiving program for Windows with its own "ACE" compressed archive format and built-in support for other common archive formats types such as ZIP, RAR and MS-CAB...	e-merge GmbH		2.69
WinRAR WinRAR WinRAR is a shareware file archiver and data compression utility developed by Eugene Roshal, and first released in autumn of 1993. It is one of the few applications that is able to create RAR archives natively, because the encoding method is held to be proprietary.-Developer:The current developer...	Eugene Roshal Eugene Roshal Eugene Roshal is a Russian software engineer best known as developer of:* FAR file manager * RAR file format * WinRAR file archiver... / Alexander Roshal
WinZip WinZip WinZip is a proprietary file archiver and compressor for Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X, developed by WinZip Computing...	WinZip Computing, Inc
XAD a.k.a. XADMaster.library	Dirk Stoecker		13.1
Xarchiver Xarchiver Xarchiver is a front-end to various command line archiving tools for Linux and BSD operating systems, designed to be independent of the desktop environment. It is the default archiving application of Xfce and LXDE....	Giuseppe Torelli		0.5.2
ZipGenius ZipGenius ZipGenius is a freeware file archiver developed by Matteo Riso of M.Dev Software for Microsoft Windows. It is capable of handling nearly two dozen file formats, including all the most common formats, as well as password-protect archives and work directly with CD-R/RW drives. It is presented in two...	Matteo Riso of M.Dev Software		6.3.0.2400
	Creator(s)	First public release date	Latest stable version	Cost (USD United States dollar The United States dollar , also referred to as the American dollar, is the official currency of the United States of America. It is divided into 100 smaller units called cents or pennies.... )	Software license

Operating system support

The operating system

Operating system

An operating system is a set of programs that manage computer hardware resources and provide common services for application software. The operating system is the most important type of system software in a computer system...

s the archivers can run on without emulation or compatibility layer.

	Windows Microsoft Windows Microsoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...	DOS DOS DOS, short for "Disk Operating System", is an acronym for several closely related operating systems that dominated the IBM PC compatible market between 1981 and 1995, or until about 2000 if one includes the partially DOS-based Microsoft Windows versions 95, 98, and Millennium Edition.Related...	Mac OS X Mac OS X Mac OS X is a series of Unix-based operating systems and graphical user interfaces developed, marketed, and sold by Apple Inc. Since 2002, has been included with all new Macintosh computer systems...	Linux Linux Linux is a Unix-like computer operating system assembled under the model of free and open source software development and distribution. The defining component of any Linux system is the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released October 5, 1991 by Linus Torvalds...	BSD Berkeley Software Distribution Berkeley Software Distribution is a Unix operating system derivative developed and distributed by the Computer Systems Research Group of the University of California, Berkeley, from 1977 to 1995...	Other Unix Unix Unix is a multitasking, multi-user computer operating system originally developed in 1969 by a group of AT&T employees at Bell Labs, including Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, Brian Kernighan, Douglas McIlroy, and Joe Ossanna...	AmigaOS AmigaOS AmigaOS is the default native operating system of the Amiga personal computer. It was developed first by Commodore International, and initially introduced in 1985 with the Amiga 1000...	Windows Mobile Windows Mobile Windows Mobile is a mobile operating system developed by Microsoft that was used in smartphones and Pocket PCs, but by 2011 was rarely supplied on new phones. The last version is "Windows Mobile 6.5.5"; it is superseded by Windows Phone, which does not run Windows Mobile software.Windows Mobile is...
7-Zip 7-Zip 7-Zip is an open source file archiver. 7-Zip operates with the 7z archive format, but can read and write several other archive formats. The program can be used from a command line interface, graphical user interface, or with Microsoft Windows shell integration. 7-Zip began in 1999 and is actively...
ALZip ALZip ALZip is an archive and compression utility from ESTsoft for Microsoft Windows.- History :Originally ALZip was developed in 1999 as an internal application at the South Korean software company ESTsoft in response to employee frustration with using the English interface in WinZip.The Korean...
Archive Utility Archive utility * For archive utility applications in general see file archiver.* For the MAC OS Archive Utility service application see Archive Utility....
Ark Ark (computing) Ark is an archiving tool for the KDE Software Compilation, included into kdeutils package.- Features :*Ark does not intrinsically understand any archive format, but instead acts as a frontend to command-line archivers...
Bandizip Bandizip Bandizip is a free file archiver and compressor for Microsoft Windows, developed by Bandisoft. Key features for Bandizip include the ability to preview archives from the right click context menu, selectively compress files based on high compressibility versus poor compressibility, and create...
BetterZip BetterZip BetterZip is a trialware file archiver and data compression utility developed by Robert Rezabek, and first released in May 2006. It is developed solely for the Mac OS X platform...
Bitser
bsdtar/libarchive
Disk ARchiver DAR (Disk Archiver) DAR is a command-line archiving tool and a replacement for tar.It features:Support for slices, archives split over multiple files of a particular size.Option of deleting files from the system which are removed in the archive....
File Roller File Roller File Roller is the archive manager of the GNOME desktop environment.-Features:File Roller Archive Manager can:* Create and modify archives.* View the content of an archive.* View a file contained in the archive.* Extract files from the archive....
Filzip Filzip Filzip is a freeware file archiver program for the Microsoft Windows platform.It was written by Philipp Engel. While free, the author does request donations to help the cost of development and reward him for his work...
FreeArc FreeArc FreeArc is a free and open source file archiver developed by Bulat Ziganshin.-Algorithms:FreeArc uses LZMA, PPMD, TrueAudio, Tornado and GRzip algorithms with automatic switching by file type, and also uses set of filters—for instance it can remove repetitions from text.-Archive size:In Tom's...
GNU tar
iArchiver IArchiver iArchiver is a software utility for handling file archives on the Apple Macintosh. It is now renamed Rucksack.iArchiver was designed as a universal tool for working with archives, and can be used to create, extract and convert a large number of common and legacy archive formats with a drag-and-drop...
Info-ZIP Info-ZIP Info-ZIP is a set of open-source software to handle ZIP archives. It has been in circulation since 1989. It consists of 4 separately-installable packages: the Zip and UnZip command-line utilities; and WiZ and MacZip, which are graphical user interfaces for archiving programs in Microsoft Windows...
IZArc IZArc IZArc is a proprietary file archiver for Microsoft Windows developed by Bulgarian programmer Ivan Zahariev. The program is freeware and closed source. In addition to the most commonly used archive formats, like zip, rar, gzip, tar.gz, bzip2, and 7z, IZArc handles a large number of less common formats...
Keka Keka Keka is a Mac OS X frontend GUI of p7zip, the UNIX port of 7-Zip. It allows users to compress files and folders into files that are usually of a smaller size that can be extracted afterwards for use again. 7-Zip, using the .7z format, is a very high compression format that in many cases beats ZIP...
KGB Archiver KGB Archiver KGB Archiver is a file archiver and data compression utility based on the PAQ6 compression algorithm.Written in Microsoft Visual C++ by Tomasz Pawlak, KGB Archiver is designed to achieve a very high compression ratio...
PeaZip PeaZip PeaZip is a file manager and file archiver for Microsoft Windows and GNU/Linux. It supports its native PEA archive format and other mainstream formats, with special focus on handling open formats...
PKZIP PKZIP PKZIP is an archiving tool originally written by Phil Katz and marketed by his company PKWARE, Inc. The common "PK" prefix used in both PKZIP and PKWARE stands for "Phil Katz".-History:...
PowerArchiver PowerArchiver PowerArchiver is a proprietary file archiver for Microsoft Windows, developed by ConeXware Inc. It supports full read-write access to several different archive formats, including ZIP, 7z and Tar. Additionally, read-only support includes RAR, ACE and various disk image formats. The evaluation...
StuffIt StuffIt StuffIt is a family of computer software utilities for archiving and compressing files on the Macintosh and Microsoft Windows platforms: it was originally produced for the Macintosh. An old version for Linux and Sun Solaris 2.7 or later is also available...
The Unarchiver The Unarchiver The Unarchiver is a free data decompression frontend of libxad, which supports more formats than Archive Utility , the built-in archive unpacker program in Mac OS X. It can also handle filenames in foreign character sets, created with non-English versions of other operating systems. The latest...
TUGZip TUGZip TUGZip is a freeware file archiver for Microsoft Windows. It handles a great variety of archive formats, including some of the commonly used ones like zip, rar, gzip, bzip2, sqx and 7z...
WinAce WinAce WinAce is an archiving program for Windows with its own "ACE" compressed archive format and built-in support for other common archive formats types such as ZIP, RAR and MS-CAB...
WinRAR WinRAR WinRAR is a shareware file archiver and data compression utility developed by Eugene Roshal, and first released in autumn of 1993. It is one of the few applications that is able to create RAR archives natively, because the encoding method is held to be proprietary.-Developer:The current developer...
WinZip WinZip WinZip is a proprietary file archiver and compressor for Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X, developed by WinZip Computing...
XAD
Xarchiver Xarchiver Xarchiver is a front-end to various command line archiving tools for Linux and BSD operating systems, designed to be independent of the desktop environment. It is the default archiving application of Xfce and LXDE....
ZipGenius ZipGenius ZipGenius is a freeware file archiver developed by Matteo Riso of M.Dev Software for Microsoft Windows. It is capable of handling nearly two dozen file formats, including all the most common formats, as well as password-protect archives and work directly with CD-R/RW drives. It is presented in two...
	Windows Microsoft Windows Microsoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...	DOS DOS DOS, short for "Disk Operating System", is an acronym for several closely related operating systems that dominated the IBM PC compatible market between 1981 and 1995, or until about 2000 if one includes the partially DOS-based Microsoft Windows versions 95, 98, and Millennium Edition.Related...	Mac OS X Mac OS X Mac OS X is a series of Unix-based operating systems and graphical user interfaces developed, marketed, and sold by Apple Inc. Since 2002, has been included with all new Macintosh computer systems...	Linux Linux Linux is a Unix-like computer operating system assembled under the model of free and open source software development and distribution. The defining component of any Linux system is the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released October 5, 1991 by Linus Torvalds...	BSD Berkeley Software Distribution Berkeley Software Distribution is a Unix operating system derivative developed and distributed by the Computer Systems Research Group of the University of California, Berkeley, from 1977 to 1995...	Unix Unix Unix is a multitasking, multi-user computer operating system originally developed in 1969 by a group of AT&T employees at Bell Labs, including Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, Brian Kernighan, Douglas McIlroy, and Joe Ossanna...	AmigaOS AmigaOS AmigaOS is the default native operating system of the Amiga personal computer. It was developed first by Commodore International, and initially introduced in 1985 with the Amiga 1000...	Windows Mobile Windows Mobile Windows Mobile is a mobile operating system developed by Microsoft that was used in smartphones and Pocket PCs, but by 2011 was rarely supplied on new phones. The last version is "Windows Mobile 6.5.5"; it is superseded by Windows Phone, which does not run Windows Mobile software.Windows Mobile is...

Notes:

A separate 64-bit Windows x64 Edition version is also available.
The Unix-like
Unix-like
A Unix-like operating system is one that behaves in a manner similar to a Unix system, while not necessarily conforming to or being certified to any version of the Single UNIX Specification....

system port is known as p7zip
P7zip
p7zip is a port of the command line version of the 7-Zip file archiver to POSIX-conforming operating systems, such as Unix, Linux, FreeBSD, Windows NT and Mac OS X. It is free software, available under the GNU Lesser General Public License....

. p7zip also is provided by FreeDOS.
A Windows Mobile
Windows Mobile
Windows Mobile is a mobile operating system developed by Microsoft that was used in smartphones and Pocket PCs, but by 2011 was rarely supplied on new phones. The last version is "Windows Mobile 6.5.5"; it is superseded by Windows Phone, which does not run Windows Mobile software.Windows Mobile is...

release (version 9.05-alpha onward) is available.
Aminet contains several solution for 7zip under both classic and newage Amiga OS. http://aminet.net/search?query=7z
The programs for other platforms are called Unace, do not have the same GUI
Gui
Gui or guee is a generic term to refer to grilled dishes in Korean cuisine. These most commonly have meat or fish as their primary ingredient, but may in some cases also comprise grilled vegetables or other vegetarian ingredients. The term derives from the verb, "gupda" in Korean, which literally...

, and can only perform decompression.
The programs for other platforms are called RAR.
This program also has a POSIX
POSIX
POSIX , an acronym for "Portable Operating System Interface", is a family of standards specified by the IEEE for maintaining compatibility between operating systems...

version available.
Beezer works on BeOS
BeOS
BeOS is an operating system for personal computers which began development by Be Inc. in 1991. It was first written to run on BeBox hardware. BeOS was optimized for digital media work and was written to take advantage of modern hardware facilities such as symmetric multiprocessing by utilizing...

and ZETA platforms only.
General Windows CE
Windows CE
Microsoft Windows CE is an operating system developed by Microsoft for embedded systems. Windows CE is a distinct operating system and kernel, rather than a trimmed-down version of desktop Windows...

version.

Archiver features

Information about what common archiver features are implemented natively (without third-party add-ons).

	Data compression Data compression In computer science and information theory, data compression, source coding or bit-rate reduction is the process of encoding information using fewer bits than the original representation would use....	Shell Shell (computing) A shell is a piece of software that provides an interface for users of an operating system which provides access to the services of a kernel. However, the term is also applied very loosely to applications and may include any software that is "built around" a particular component, such as web... integration	Password protection	Multiple volumes	Self extraction	File repairing	Batch conversion	Unicode Unicode Unicode is a computing industry standard for the consistent encoding, representation and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems... file / directory names	Encryption	Filename Encryption
7-Zip 7-Zip 7-Zip is an open source file archiver. 7-Zip operates with the 7z archive format, but can read and write several other archive formats. The program can be used from a command line interface, graphical user interface, or with Microsoft Windows shell integration. 7-Zip began in 1999 and is actively...
ALZip ALZip ALZip is an archive and compression utility from ESTsoft for Microsoft Windows.- History :Originally ALZip was developed in 1999 as an internal application at the South Korean software company ESTsoft in response to employee frustration with using the English interface in WinZip.The Korean...
Archive Utility Archive utility * For archive utility applications in general see file archiver.* For the MAC OS Archive Utility service application see Archive Utility....
ARJ ARJ ARJ is a software tool designed by Robert K. Jung for creating high-efficiency compressed file archives. ARJ is currently on version 2.85 for DOS and 3.15 for Windows and supports 16-bit and 32-bit Intel architectures.ARJ was one of two mainstream archivers for DOS and Windows during early and...
Ark Ark (computing) Ark is an archiving tool for the KDE Software Compilation, included into kdeutils package.- Features :*Ark does not intrinsically understand any archive format, but instead acts as a frontend to command-line archivers...
Bandizip Bandizip Bandizip is a free file archiver and compressor for Microsoft Windows, developed by Bandisoft. Key features for Bandizip include the ability to preview archives from the right click context menu, selectively compress files based on high compressibility versus poor compressibility, and create...
BetterZip BetterZip BetterZip is a trialware file archiver and data compression utility developed by Robert Rezabek, and first released in May 2006. It is developed solely for the Mac OS X platform...
Bitser
bsdtar/libarchive
Disk ARchiver DAR (Disk Archiver) DAR is a command-line archiving tool and a replacement for tar.It features:Support for slices, archives split over multiple files of a particular size.Option of deleting files from the system which are removed in the archive....
File Roller File Roller File Roller is the archive manager of the GNOME desktop environment.-Features:File Roller Archive Manager can:* Create and modify archives.* View the content of an archive.* View a file contained in the archive.* Extract files from the archive....
Filzip Filzip Filzip is a freeware file archiver program for the Microsoft Windows platform.It was written by Philipp Engel. While free, the author does request donations to help the cost of development and reward him for his work...
FreeArc FreeArc FreeArc is a free and open source file archiver developed by Bulat Ziganshin.-Algorithms:FreeArc uses LZMA, PPMD, TrueAudio, Tornado and GRzip algorithms with automatic switching by file type, and also uses set of filters—for instance it can remove repetitions from text.-Archive size:In Tom's...
GNU tar

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IArchiver

iArchiver is a software utility for handling file archives on the Apple Macintosh. It is now renamed Rucksack.iArchiver was designed as a universal tool for working with archives, and can be used to create, extract and convert a large number of common and legacy archive formats with a drag-and-drop...

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Info-ZIP

Info-ZIP is a set of open-source software to handle ZIP archives. It has been in circulation since 1989. It consists of 4 separately-installable packages: the Zip and UnZip command-line utilities; and WiZ and MacZip, which are graphical user interfaces for archiving programs in Microsoft Windows...

IZArc

IZArc is a proprietary file archiver for Microsoft Windows developed by Bulgarian programmer Ivan Zahariev. The program is freeware and closed source. In addition to the most commonly used archive formats, like zip, rar, gzip, tar.gz, bzip2, and 7z, IZArc handles a large number of less common formats...

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Keka

Keka is a Mac OS X frontend GUI of p7zip, the UNIX port of 7-Zip. It allows users to compress files and folders into files that are usually of a smaller size that can be extracted afterwards for use again. 7-Zip, using the .7z format, is a very high compression format that in many cases beats ZIP...

KGB Archiver

KGB Archiver is a file archiver and data compression utility based on the PAQ6 compression algorithm.Written in Microsoft Visual C++ by Tomasz Pawlak, KGB Archiver is designed to achieve a very high compression ratio...

PeaZip

PeaZip is a file manager and file archiver for Microsoft Windows and GNU/Linux. It supports its native PEA archive format and other mainstream formats, with special focus on handling open formats...

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PKZIP

PKZIP is an archiving tool originally written by Phil Katz and marketed by his company PKWARE, Inc. The common "PK" prefix used in both PKZIP and PKWARE stands for "Phil Katz".-History:...

PowerArchiver

PowerArchiver is a proprietary file archiver for Microsoft Windows, developed by ConeXware Inc. It supports full read-write access to several different archive formats, including ZIP, 7z and Tar. Additionally, read-only support includes RAR, ACE and various disk image formats. The evaluation...

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StuffIt

StuffIt is a family of computer software utilities for archiving and compressing files on the Macintosh and Microsoft Windows platforms: it was originally produced for the Macintosh. An old version for Linux and Sun Solaris 2.7 or later is also available...

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The Unarchiver

The Unarchiver is a free data decompression frontend of libxad, which supports more formats than Archive Utility , the built-in archive unpacker program in Mac OS X. It can also handle filenames in foreign character sets, created with non-English versions of other operating systems. The latest...

TUGZip

TUGZip is a freeware file archiver for Microsoft Windows. It handles a great variety of archive formats, including some of the commonly used ones like zip, rar, gzip, bzip2, sqx and 7z...

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WinAce

WinAce is an archiving program for Windows with its own "ACE" compressed archive format and built-in support for other common archive formats types such as ZIP, RAR and MS-CAB...

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WinRAR

WinRAR is a shareware file archiver and data compression utility developed by Eugene Roshal, and first released in autumn of 1993. It is one of the few applications that is able to create RAR archives natively, because the encoding method is held to be proprietary.-Developer:The current developer...

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WinZip

WinZip is a proprietary file archiver and compressor for Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X, developed by WinZip Computing...

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Xarchiver

Xarchiver is a front-end to various command line archiving tools for Linux and BSD operating systems, designed to be independent of the desktop environment. It is the default archiving application of Xfce and LXDE....

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ZipGenius

ZipGenius is a freeware file archiver developed by Matteo Riso of M.Dev Software for Microsoft Windows. It is capable of handling nearly two dozen file formats, including all the most common formats, as well as password-protect archives and work directly with CD-R/RW drives. It is presented in two...

Data compression

In computer science and information theory, data compression, source coding or bit-rate reduction is the process of encoding information using fewer bits than the original representation would use....

! Shell integration
! Password protection
! Multiple volumes
! Self extraction
! File repairing
! Batch conversion
! Unicode

Unicode

Unicode is a computing industry standard for the consistent encoding, representation and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems...

file /
directory names
! Encryption
! Filename Encryption
|}

Notes:

Application is only for decompression.
GNU
GNU
GNU is a Unix-like computer operating system developed by the GNU project, ultimately aiming to be a "complete Unix-compatible software system"...

tar calls the external programs gzip and bzip2 to perform compression; these external programs usually come with systems that contain GNU tar.
Allows adding a variable amount of redundancy
Redundancy (information theory)
Redundancy in information theory is the number of bits used to transmit a message minus the number of bits of actual information in the message. Informally, it is the amount of wasted "space" used to transmit certain data...

for much better error recovery. See also RAR (file format)
RAR (file format)
RAR stands for Roshal ARchive. It is a proprietary archive file format that supports data compression, error recovery, and file spanning...

.
Extracting/adding file and/or directory names into archive in either UTF-7
UTF-7
UTF-7 is a variable-length character encoding that was proposed for representing Unicode text using a stream of ASCII characters...

, UTF-8
UTF-8
UTF-8 is a multibyte character encoding for Unicode. Like UTF-16 and UTF-32, UTF-8 can represent every character in the Unicode character set. Unlike them, it is backward-compatible with ASCII and avoids the complications of endianness and byte order marks...

or UTF-16/UCS-2
UTF-16/UCS-2
UTF-16 is a character encoding for Unicode capable of encoding 1,112,064 numbers in the Unicode code space from 0 to 0x10FFFF...

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.
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.
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.
Commandline batch compression is available only for ZIP and ALZ formats.
UTF-8 support was completed in release 2.5. On Unix systems the support is full, while on Windows systems, due to limitation of the Windows shell environment, double-character encoded characters cannot currently be displayed in filenames of archived objects, and those chars are replaced by a corrupted
Mojibake
, from the Japanese 文字 "character" + 化け "change", is the occurrence of incorrect, unreadable characters shown when computer software fails to render text correctly according to its associated character encoding.-Causes:...

character. Optionally, extended characters can be set to be always replaced by a 'corrupted' "?" character to avoid possible issues between archive's and system's character encodings.
Commandline batch compression and expansion requires free add-on software downloaded from the WinZip website.
Peazip supports file encryption and file name encryption, although only in certain types of archives, including its own Pea format, 7-zip, zip and Arc.
Many shells have built-in zip file support. Windows Explorer
Windows Explorer
This article is about the Windows file system browser. For the similarly named web browser, see Internet ExplorerWindows Explorer is a file manager application that is included with releases of the Microsoft Windows operating system from Windows 95 onwards. It provides a graphical user interface...

has "Send To"->"ZIP-compressed folder".
Since version 3.0 (2008).

Reading

Information about what archive formats the archivers can read. External links lead to information about support in future versions of the archiver or extensions that provide such functionality.

	ZIP ZIP (file format) Zip is a file format used for data compression and archiving. A zip file contains one or more files that have been compressed, to reduce file size, or stored as is...	TAR Tar (file format) In computing, tar is both a file format and the name of a program used to handle such files...	GZ	BZ/BZ2 Bzip2 bzip2 is a free and open source implementation of the Burrows–Wheeler algorithm. It is developed and maintained by Julian Seward. Seward made the first public release of bzip2, version 0.15, in July 1996.-Compression efficiency:...	7z 7z 7z is a compressed archive file format that supports several different data compression, encryption and pre-processing algorithms. The 7z format initially appeared as implemented by the 7-Zip archiver. The 7-Zip program is publicly available under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public...	RAR RAR (file format) RAR stands for Roshal ARchive. It is a proprietary archive file format that supports data compression, error recovery, and file spanning...	LHA/LZH LHA (file format) LHA is a freeware compression utility and associated file format. It was created in 1988 by , and originally named LHarc. A complete rewrite of LHarc, tentatively named LHx, was eventually released as LH. It was then renamed to LHA to avoid conflicting with the then-new MS-DOS 5.0 LH command...	ACE ACE (file format) In computing, ACE is a proprietary data compression archive file format developed by Marcel Lemke, and later bought by e-merge GmbH. The peak of its popularity was 1999—2001, when it provided slightly better compression rates than RAR, which has since become more popular.-WinAce:WinAce, maintained...	SIT StuffIt StuffIt is a family of computer software utilities for archiving and compressing files on the Macintosh and Microsoft Windows platforms: it was originally produced for the Macintosh. An old version for Linux and Sun Solaris 2.7 or later is also available...	SITX StuffIt StuffIt is a family of computer software utilities for archiving and compressing files on the Macintosh and Microsoft Windows platforms: it was originally produced for the Macintosh. An old version for Linux and Sun Solaris 2.7 or later is also available...	ARJ ARJ ARJ is a software tool designed by Robert K. Jung for creating high-efficiency compressed file archives. ARJ is currently on version 2.85 for DOS and 3.15 for Windows and supports 16-bit and 32-bit Intel architectures.ARJ was one of two mainstream archivers for DOS and Windows during early and...	KGB KGB Archiver KGB Archiver is a file archiver and data compression utility based on the PAQ6 compression algorithm.Written in Microsoft Visual C++ by Tomasz Pawlak, KGB Archiver is designed to achieve a very high compression ratio...	DAR DAR (Disk Archiver) DAR is a command-line archiving tool and a replacement for tar.It features:Support for slices, archives split over multiple files of a particular size.Option of deleting files from the system which are removed in the archive....	ARC ARC (file format) ARC is a lossless data compression and archival format by System Enhancement Associates . It was very popular during the early days of networked dial-up BBS. The file format and the program were both called ARC...	CAB Cabinet (file format) In computing, CAB is the Microsoft Windows native compressed archive format. It supports compression and digital signing, and is used in a variety of Microsoft installation engines: Setup API, Device Installer, AdvPack and Windows Installer.Though Cabinet was originally called Diamond, its .CAB...	ALZ ALZip ALZip is an archive and compression utility from ESTsoft for Microsoft Windows.- History :Originally ALZip was developed in 1999 as an internal application at the South Korean software company ESTsoft in response to employee frustration with using the English interface in WinZip.The Korean...	ISO/CD Image ISO image An ISO image is an archive file of an optical disc, composed of the data contents of every written sector of an optical disc, including the optical disc file system...
7-Zip 7-Zip 7-Zip is an open source file archiver. 7-Zip operates with the 7z archive format, but can read and write several other archive formats. The program can be used from a command line interface, graphical user interface, or with Microsoft Windows shell integration. 7-Zip began in 1999 and is actively...
ALZip ALZip ALZip is an archive and compression utility from ESTsoft for Microsoft Windows.- History :Originally ALZip was developed in 1999 as an internal application at the South Korean software company ESTsoft in response to employee frustration with using the English interface in WinZip.The Korean...
Archive Utility Archive utility * For archive utility applications in general see file archiver.* For the MAC OS Archive Utility service application see Archive Utility....
Ark Ark (computing) Ark is an archiving tool for the KDE Software Compilation, included into kdeutils package.- Features :*Ark does not intrinsically understand any archive format, but instead acts as a frontend to command-line archivers...
Bandizip Bandizip Bandizip is a free file archiver and compressor for Microsoft Windows, developed by Bandisoft. Key features for Bandizip include the ability to preview archives from the right click context menu, selectively compress files based on high compressibility versus poor compressibility, and create...
BetterZip BetterZip BetterZip is a trialware file archiver and data compression utility developed by Robert Rezabek, and first released in May 2006. It is developed solely for the Mac OS X platform...
Bitser
bsdtar/libarchive
Disk ARchiver DAR (Disk Archiver) DAR is a command-line archiving tool and a replacement for tar.It features:Support for slices, archives split over multiple files of a particular size.Option of deleting files from the system which are removed in the archive....
File Roller File Roller File Roller is the archive manager of the GNOME desktop environment.-Features:File Roller Archive Manager can:* Create and modify archives.* View the content of an archive.* View a file contained in the archive.* Extract files from the archive....
Filzip Filzip Filzip is a freeware file archiver program for the Microsoft Windows platform.It was written by Philipp Engel. While free, the author does request donations to help the cost of development and reward him for his work...
FreeArc FreeArc FreeArc is a free and open source file archiver developed by Bulat Ziganshin.-Algorithms:FreeArc uses LZMA, PPMD, TrueAudio, Tornado and GRzip algorithms with automatic switching by file type, and also uses set of filters—for instance it can remove repetitions from text.-Archive size:In Tom's...
GNU tar
iArchiver IArchiver iArchiver is a software utility for handling file archives on the Apple Macintosh. It is now renamed Rucksack.iArchiver was designed as a universal tool for working with archives, and can be used to create, extract and convert a large number of common and legacy archive formats with a drag-and-drop...
Info-ZIP Info-ZIP Info-ZIP is a set of open-source software to handle ZIP archives. It has been in circulation since 1989. It consists of 4 separately-installable packages: the Zip and UnZip command-line utilities; and WiZ and MacZip, which are graphical user interfaces for archiving programs in Microsoft Windows...
IZArc IZArc IZArc is a proprietary file archiver for Microsoft Windows developed by Bulgarian programmer Ivan Zahariev. The program is freeware and closed source. In addition to the most commonly used archive formats, like zip, rar, gzip, tar.gz, bzip2, and 7z, IZArc handles a large number of less common formats...
Keka Keka Keka is a Mac OS X frontend GUI of p7zip, the UNIX port of 7-Zip. It allows users to compress files and folders into files that are usually of a smaller size that can be extracted afterwards for use again. 7-Zip, using the .7z format, is a very high compression format that in many cases beats ZIP...
KGB Archiver KGB Archiver KGB Archiver is a file archiver and data compression utility based on the PAQ6 compression algorithm.Written in Microsoft Visual C++ by Tomasz Pawlak, KGB Archiver is designed to achieve a very high compression ratio...
PeaZip PeaZip PeaZip is a file manager and file archiver for Microsoft Windows and GNU/Linux. It supports its native PEA archive format and other mainstream formats, with special focus on handling open formats...
PKZIP PKZIP PKZIP is an archiving tool originally written by Phil Katz and marketed by his company PKWARE, Inc. The common "PK" prefix used in both PKZIP and PKWARE stands for "Phil Katz".-History:...
PowerArchiver PowerArchiver PowerArchiver is a proprietary file archiver for Microsoft Windows, developed by ConeXware Inc. It supports full read-write access to several different archive formats, including ZIP, 7z and Tar. Additionally, read-only support includes RAR, ACE and various disk image formats. The evaluation...
StuffIt StuffIt StuffIt is a family of computer software utilities for archiving and compressing files on the Macintosh and Microsoft Windows platforms: it was originally produced for the Macintosh. An old version for Linux and Sun Solaris 2.7 or later is also available...
The Unarchiver The Unarchiver The Unarchiver is a free data decompression frontend of libxad, which supports more formats than Archive Utility , the built-in archive unpacker program in Mac OS X. It can also handle filenames in foreign character sets, created with non-English versions of other operating systems. The latest...
TUGZip TUGZip TUGZip is a freeware file archiver for Microsoft Windows. It handles a great variety of archive formats, including some of the commonly used ones like zip, rar, gzip, bzip2, sqx and 7z...
WinAce WinAce WinAce is an archiving program for Windows with its own "ACE" compressed archive format and built-in support for other common archive formats types such as ZIP, RAR and MS-CAB...
WinRAR WinRAR WinRAR is a shareware file archiver and data compression utility developed by Eugene Roshal, and first released in autumn of 1993. It is one of the few applications that is able to create RAR archives natively, because the encoding method is held to be proprietary.-Developer:The current developer...
WinZip WinZip WinZip is a proprietary file archiver and compressor for Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X, developed by WinZip Computing...
XAD
Xarchiver Xarchiver Xarchiver is a front-end to various command line archiving tools for Linux and BSD operating systems, designed to be independent of the desktop environment. It is the default archiving application of Xfce and LXDE....
ZipGenius ZipGenius ZipGenius is a freeware file archiver developed by Matteo Riso of M.Dev Software for Microsoft Windows. It is capable of handling nearly two dozen file formats, including all the most common formats, as well as password-protect archives and work directly with CD-R/RW drives. It is presented in two...
	ZIP ZIP (file format) Zip is a file format used for data compression and archiving. A zip file contains one or more files that have been compressed, to reduce file size, or stored as is...	TAR Tar (file format) In computing, tar is both a file format and the name of a program used to handle such files...	GZ	BZ/BZ2 Bzip2 bzip2 is a free and open source implementation of the Burrows–Wheeler algorithm. It is developed and maintained by Julian Seward. Seward made the first public release of bzip2, version 0.15, in July 1996.-Compression efficiency:...	7z 7z 7z is a compressed archive file format that supports several different data compression, encryption and pre-processing algorithms. The 7z format initially appeared as implemented by the 7-Zip archiver. The 7-Zip program is publicly available under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public...	RAR RAR (file format) RAR stands for Roshal ARchive. It is a proprietary archive file format that supports data compression, error recovery, and file spanning...	LHA/LZH LHA (file format) LHA is a freeware compression utility and associated file format. It was created in 1988 by , and originally named LHarc. A complete rewrite of LHarc, tentatively named LHx, was eventually released as LH. It was then renamed to LHA to avoid conflicting with the then-new MS-DOS 5.0 LH command...	ACE ACE (file format) In computing, ACE is a proprietary data compression archive file format developed by Marcel Lemke, and later bought by e-merge GmbH. The peak of its popularity was 1999—2001, when it provided slightly better compression rates than RAR, which has since become more popular.-WinAce:WinAce, maintained...	SIT StuffIt StuffIt is a family of computer software utilities for archiving and compressing files on the Macintosh and Microsoft Windows platforms: it was originally produced for the Macintosh. An old version for Linux and Sun Solaris 2.7 or later is also available...	SITX StuffIt StuffIt is a family of computer software utilities for archiving and compressing files on the Macintosh and Microsoft Windows platforms: it was originally produced for the Macintosh. An old version for Linux and Sun Solaris 2.7 or later is also available...	ARJ ARJ ARJ is a software tool designed by Robert K. Jung for creating high-efficiency compressed file archives. ARJ is currently on version 2.85 for DOS and 3.15 for Windows and supports 16-bit and 32-bit Intel architectures.ARJ was one of two mainstream archivers for DOS and Windows during early and...	KGB KGB Archiver KGB Archiver is a file archiver and data compression utility based on the PAQ6 compression algorithm.Written in Microsoft Visual C++ by Tomasz Pawlak, KGB Archiver is designed to achieve a very high compression ratio...	DAR DAR (Disk Archiver) DAR is a command-line archiving tool and a replacement for tar.It features:Support for slices, archives split over multiple files of a particular size.Option of deleting files from the system which are removed in the archive....	ARC ARC (file format) ARC is a lossless data compression and archival format by System Enhancement Associates . It was very popular during the early days of networked dial-up BBS. The file format and the program were both called ARC...	CAB Cabinet (file format) In computing, CAB is the Microsoft Windows native compressed archive format. It supports compression and digital signing, and is used in a variety of Microsoft installation engines: Setup API, Device Installer, AdvPack and Windows Installer.Though Cabinet was originally called Diamond, its .CAB...	ALZ ALZip ALZip is an archive and compression utility from ESTsoft for Microsoft Windows.- History :Originally ALZip was developed in 1999 as an internal application at the South Korean software company ESTsoft in response to employee frustration with using the English interface in WinZip.The Korean...	ISO/CD Image ISO image An ISO image is an archive file of an optical disc, composed of the data contents of every written sector of an optical disc, including the optical disc file system...

Notes:

Used to, but no longer does, due to technical and legal issues.
GNU tar calls external programs http://www.gnu.org/software/tar/manual/tar.html#Compression (like compress
Compress
Compress is a UNIX compression program based on the LZC compression method, which is an LZW implementation using variable size pointers as in LZ78.- Description of program :Files compressed by compress are typically given the extension .Z...

, gzip
Gzip
Gzip is any of several software applications used for file compression and decompression. The term usually refers to the GNU Project's implementation, "gzip" standing for GNU zip. It is based on the DEFLATE algorithm, which is a combination of Lempel-Ziv and Huffman coding...

or bzip2
Bzip2
bzip2 is a free and open source implementation of the Burrows–Wheeler algorithm. It is developed and maintained by Julian Seward. Seward made the first public release of bzip2, version 0.15, in July 1996.-Compression efficiency:...

or any other programs working with abstract streams and supporting the "-d" option) to perform (de)compression, and allowing you to implement your own filters. These external programs may be shipped with your Operating System.
GNU tar lets you implement your own filters http://www.gnu.org/software/tar/manual/tar.html#index-use_002dcompress_002dprogram-460, allowing you to use other compression programs (p7zip, ...) and filters (GPG, ...).
Starting from version 11.
Requires external program. More info
Archive Utility itself is unable to open ISO files, but Disk Utility, which also comes with Mac OS X, is able to mount them as virtual disks.
Requires external program.http://www.zipgenius.it/eng/?page_id=3
Only partial support for reading proprietary SITX format. http://wakaba.c3.cx/sup/kareha.pl/1151796773/
FreeARC uses .arc as its filename extension, but this format is not the same as the traditional ARC file
ARC (file format)
ARC is a lossless data compression and archival format by System Enhancement Associates . It was very popular during the early days of networked dial-up BBS. The file format and the program were both called ARC...

.

Writing

Information about what archive formats the archivers can write and create. External links lead to information about support in future versions of the archiver or extensions that provide such functionality.

	ZIP ZIP (file format) Zip is a file format used for data compression and archiving. A zip file contains one or more files that have been compressed, to reduce file size, or stored as is...	TAR Tar (file format) In computing, tar is both a file format and the name of a program used to handle such files...	gzip Gzip Gzip is any of several software applications used for file compression and decompression. The term usually refers to the GNU Project's implementation, "gzip" standing for GNU zip. It is based on the DEFLATE algorithm, which is a combination of Lempel-Ziv and Huffman coding...	bzip2 Bzip2 bzip2 is a free and open source implementation of the Burrows–Wheeler algorithm. It is developed and maintained by Julian Seward. Seward made the first public release of bzip2, version 0.15, in July 1996.-Compression efficiency:...	7z 7z 7z is a compressed archive file format that supports several different data compression, encryption and pre-processing algorithms. The 7z format initially appeared as implemented by the 7-Zip archiver. The 7-Zip program is publicly available under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public...	xz Xz xz is a lossless data compression file format incorporating the LZMA2 compression algorithm. Like gzip and bzip2, concatenation is supported to compress multiple files, but the convention is to bundle a file that is an archive itself, such as those created by the tar or cpio Unix...	RAR RAR (file format) RAR stands for Roshal ARchive. It is a proprietary archive file format that supports data compression, error recovery, and file spanning...	LHA/LZH LHA (file format) LHA is a freeware compression utility and associated file format. It was created in 1988 by , and originally named LHarc. A complete rewrite of LHarc, tentatively named LHx, was eventually released as LH. It was then renamed to LHA to avoid conflicting with the then-new MS-DOS 5.0 LH command...	ACE ACE (file format) In computing, ACE is a proprietary data compression archive file format developed by Marcel Lemke, and later bought by e-merge GmbH. The peak of its popularity was 1999—2001, when it provided slightly better compression rates than RAR, which has since become more popular.-WinAce:WinAce, maintained...	StuffIt StuffIt StuffIt is a family of computer software utilities for archiving and compressing files on the Macintosh and Microsoft Windows platforms: it was originally produced for the Macintosh. An old version for Linux and Sun Solaris 2.7 or later is also available...	StuffIt X StuffIt StuffIt is a family of computer software utilities for archiving and compressing files on the Macintosh and Microsoft Windows platforms: it was originally produced for the Macintosh. An old version for Linux and Sun Solaris 2.7 or later is also available...	ARJ ARJ ARJ is a software tool designed by Robert K. Jung for creating high-efficiency compressed file archives. ARJ is currently on version 2.85 for DOS and 3.15 for Windows and supports 16-bit and 32-bit Intel architectures.ARJ was one of two mainstream archivers for DOS and Windows during early and...	KGB KGB Archiver KGB Archiver is a file archiver and data compression utility based on the PAQ6 compression algorithm.Written in Microsoft Visual C++ by Tomasz Pawlak, KGB Archiver is designed to achieve a very high compression ratio...	DAR DAR (Disk Archiver) DAR is a command-line archiving tool and a replacement for tar.It features:Support for slices, archives split over multiple files of a particular size.Option of deleting files from the system which are removed in the archive....	ARC ARC (file format) ARC is a lossless data compression and archival format by System Enhancement Associates . It was very popular during the early days of networked dial-up BBS. The file format and the program were both called ARC...	CAB Cabinet (file format) In computing, CAB is the Microsoft Windows native compressed archive format. It supports compression and digital signing, and is used in a variety of Microsoft installation engines: Setup API, Device Installer, AdvPack and Windows Installer.Though Cabinet was originally called Diamond, its .CAB...	ALZ ALZip ALZip is an archive and compression utility from ESTsoft for Microsoft Windows.- History :Originally ALZip was developed in 1999 as an internal application at the South Korean software company ESTsoft in response to employee frustration with using the English interface in WinZip.The Korean...	ISO/CD Image ISO image An ISO image is an archive file of an optical disc, composed of the data contents of every written sector of an optical disc, including the optical disc file system...
7-Zip 7-Zip 7-Zip is an open source file archiver. 7-Zip operates with the 7z archive format, but can read and write several other archive formats. The program can be used from a command line interface, graphical user interface, or with Microsoft Windows shell integration. 7-Zip began in 1999 and is actively...
ALZip ALZip ALZip is an archive and compression utility from ESTsoft for Microsoft Windows.- History :Originally ALZip was developed in 1999 as an internal application at the South Korean software company ESTsoft in response to employee frustration with using the English interface in WinZip.The Korean...
Archive Utility Archive utility * For archive utility applications in general see file archiver.* For the MAC OS Archive Utility service application see Archive Utility....
Ark Ark (computing) Ark is an archiving tool for the KDE Software Compilation, included into kdeutils package.- Features :*Ark does not intrinsically understand any archive format, but instead acts as a frontend to command-line archivers...
Bandizip Bandizip Bandizip is a free file archiver and compressor for Microsoft Windows, developed by Bandisoft. Key features for Bandizip include the ability to preview archives from the right click context menu, selectively compress files based on high compressibility versus poor compressibility, and create...
BetterZip BetterZip BetterZip is a trialware file archiver and data compression utility developed by Robert Rezabek, and first released in May 2006. It is developed solely for the Mac OS X platform...
Bitser
bsdtar/libarchive Tar (file format) In computing, tar is both a file format and the name of a program used to handle such files...
Disk ARchiver DAR (Disk Archiver) DAR is a command-line archiving tool and a replacement for tar.It features:Support for slices, archives split over multiple files of a particular size.Option of deleting files from the system which are removed in the archive....
File Roller File Roller File Roller is the archive manager of the GNOME desktop environment.-Features:File Roller Archive Manager can:* Create and modify archives.* View the content of an archive.* View a file contained in the archive.* Extract files from the archive....
Filzip Filzip Filzip is a freeware file archiver program for the Microsoft Windows platform.It was written by Philipp Engel. While free, the author does request donations to help the cost of development and reward him for his work...
FreeArc FreeArc FreeArc is a free and open source file archiver developed by Bulat Ziganshin.-Algorithms:FreeArc uses LZMA, PPMD, TrueAudio, Tornado and GRzip algorithms with automatic switching by file type, and also uses set of filters—for instance it can remove repetitions from text.-Archive size:In Tom's...
GNU tar Tar (file format) In computing, tar is both a file format and the name of a program used to handle such files...
iArchiver IArchiver iArchiver is a software utility for handling file archives on the Apple Macintosh. It is now renamed Rucksack.iArchiver was designed as a universal tool for working with archives, and can be used to create, extract and convert a large number of common and legacy archive formats with a drag-and-drop...
Info-ZIP Info-ZIP Info-ZIP is a set of open-source software to handle ZIP archives. It has been in circulation since 1989. It consists of 4 separately-installable packages: the Zip and UnZip command-line utilities; and WiZ and MacZip, which are graphical user interfaces for archiving programs in Microsoft Windows...
IZArc IZArc IZArc is a proprietary file archiver for Microsoft Windows developed by Bulgarian programmer Ivan Zahariev. The program is freeware and closed source. In addition to the most commonly used archive formats, like zip, rar, gzip, tar.gz, bzip2, and 7z, IZArc handles a large number of less common formats...
Keka Keka Keka is a Mac OS X frontend GUI of p7zip, the UNIX port of 7-Zip. It allows users to compress files and folders into files that are usually of a smaller size that can be extracted afterwards for use again. 7-Zip, using the .7z format, is a very high compression format that in many cases beats ZIP...
KGB Archiver KGB Archiver KGB Archiver is a file archiver and data compression utility based on the PAQ6 compression algorithm.Written in Microsoft Visual C++ by Tomasz Pawlak, KGB Archiver is designed to achieve a very high compression ratio...
PeaZip PeaZip PeaZip is a file manager and file archiver for Microsoft Windows and GNU/Linux. It supports its native PEA archive format and other mainstream formats, with special focus on handling open formats...
PKZIP PKZIP PKZIP is an archiving tool originally written by Phil Katz and marketed by his company PKWARE, Inc. The common "PK" prefix used in both PKZIP and PKWARE stands for "Phil Katz".-History:...
PowerArchiver PowerArchiver PowerArchiver is a proprietary file archiver for Microsoft Windows, developed by ConeXware Inc. It supports full read-write access to several different archive formats, including ZIP, 7z and Tar. Additionally, read-only support includes RAR, ACE and various disk image formats. The evaluation...
Star
StuffIt StuffIt StuffIt is a family of computer software utilities for archiving and compressing files on the Macintosh and Microsoft Windows platforms: it was originally produced for the Macintosh. An old version for Linux and Sun Solaris 2.7 or later is also available...
TUGZip TUGZip TUGZip is a freeware file archiver for Microsoft Windows. It handles a great variety of archive formats, including some of the commonly used ones like zip, rar, gzip, bzip2, sqx and 7z...
WinAce WinAce WinAce is an archiving program for Windows with its own "ACE" compressed archive format and built-in support for other common archive formats types such as ZIP, RAR and MS-CAB...
WinRAR WinRAR WinRAR is a shareware file archiver and data compression utility developed by Eugene Roshal, and first released in autumn of 1993. It is one of the few applications that is able to create RAR archives natively, because the encoding method is held to be proprietary.-Developer:The current developer...
WinZip WinZip WinZip is a proprietary file archiver and compressor for Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X, developed by WinZip Computing...
Xarchiver Xarchiver Xarchiver is a front-end to various command line archiving tools for Linux and BSD operating systems, designed to be independent of the desktop environment. It is the default archiving application of Xfce and LXDE....
ZipGenius ZipGenius ZipGenius is a freeware file archiver developed by Matteo Riso of M.Dev Software for Microsoft Windows. It is capable of handling nearly two dozen file formats, including all the most common formats, as well as password-protect archives and work directly with CD-R/RW drives. It is presented in two...
	ZIP ZIP (file format) Zip is a file format used for data compression and archiving. A zip file contains one or more files that have been compressed, to reduce file size, or stored as is...	TAR Tar (file format) In computing, tar is both a file format and the name of a program used to handle such files...	GZ Gzip Gzip is any of several software applications used for file compression and decompression. The term usually refers to the GNU Project's implementation, "gzip" standing for GNU zip. It is based on the DEFLATE algorithm, which is a combination of Lempel-Ziv and Huffman coding...	BZ/BZ2 Bzip2 bzip2 is a free and open source implementation of the Burrows–Wheeler algorithm. It is developed and maintained by Julian Seward. Seward made the first public release of bzip2, version 0.15, in July 1996.-Compression efficiency:...	7z 7z 7z is a compressed archive file format that supports several different data compression, encryption and pre-processing algorithms. The 7z format initially appeared as implemented by the 7-Zip archiver. The 7-Zip program is publicly available under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public...	xz Xz xz is a lossless data compression file format incorporating the LZMA2 compression algorithm. Like gzip and bzip2, concatenation is supported to compress multiple files, but the convention is to bundle a file that is an archive itself, such as those created by the tar or cpio Unix...	RAR RAR (file format) RAR stands for Roshal ARchive. It is a proprietary archive file format that supports data compression, error recovery, and file spanning...	LHA/LZH LHA (file format) LHA is a freeware compression utility and associated file format. It was created in 1988 by , and originally named LHarc. A complete rewrite of LHarc, tentatively named LHx, was eventually released as LH. It was then renamed to LHA to avoid conflicting with the then-new MS-DOS 5.0 LH command...	ACE ACE (file format) In computing, ACE is a proprietary data compression archive file format developed by Marcel Lemke, and later bought by e-merge GmbH. The peak of its popularity was 1999—2001, when it provided slightly better compression rates than RAR, which has since become more popular.-WinAce:WinAce, maintained...	SIT StuffIt StuffIt is a family of computer software utilities for archiving and compressing files on the Macintosh and Microsoft Windows platforms: it was originally produced for the Macintosh. An old version for Linux and Sun Solaris 2.7 or later is also available...	SITX StuffIt StuffIt is a family of computer software utilities for archiving and compressing files on the Macintosh and Microsoft Windows platforms: it was originally produced for the Macintosh. An old version for Linux and Sun Solaris 2.7 or later is also available...	ARJ ARJ ARJ is a software tool designed by Robert K. Jung for creating high-efficiency compressed file archives. ARJ is currently on version 2.85 for DOS and 3.15 for Windows and supports 16-bit and 32-bit Intel architectures.ARJ was one of two mainstream archivers for DOS and Windows during early and...	KGB KGB Archiver KGB Archiver is a file archiver and data compression utility based on the PAQ6 compression algorithm.Written in Microsoft Visual C++ by Tomasz Pawlak, KGB Archiver is designed to achieve a very high compression ratio...	DAR DAR (Disk Archiver) DAR is a command-line archiving tool and a replacement for tar.It features:Support for slices, archives split over multiple files of a particular size.Option of deleting files from the system which are removed in the archive....	ARC ARC (file format) ARC is a lossless data compression and archival format by System Enhancement Associates . It was very popular during the early days of networked dial-up BBS. The file format and the program were both called ARC...	CAB Cabinet (file format) In computing, CAB is the Microsoft Windows native compressed archive format. It supports compression and digital signing, and is used in a variety of Microsoft installation engines: Setup API, Device Installer, AdvPack and Windows Installer.Though Cabinet was originally called Diamond, its .CAB...	ALZ ALZip ALZip is an archive and compression utility from ESTsoft for Microsoft Windows.- History :Originally ALZip was developed in 1999 as an internal application at the South Korean software company ESTsoft in response to employee frustration with using the English interface in WinZip.The Korean...	ISO/CD Image ISO image An ISO image is an archive file of an optical disc, composed of the data contents of every written sector of an optical disc, including the optical disc file system...

Notes:

Tar implementations call the external programs gzip and bzip2, 7z, xz, ... to perform compression; these external programs usually come with systems that contain tar.
Requires rar.exe from WinRAR.
Requires external program. More info
Requires Ace32.exe from WinAce.
The Extractor and XAD are not included in this list because they only expand archives.
ALZip can also write to the following formats: BH, JAR, and LZH
Updating archives is not supported.http://www.zipgenius.it/eng/?page_id=3
Requires external program.http://www.zipgenius.it/eng/?page_id=3
Stuffit supported file formats http://my.smithmicro.com/stuffitcompression/fileformats.html
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. http://utils.kde.org/projects/ark/
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. http://xarchiver.xfce.org/doc/ch01.html http://xarchiver.xfce.org/doc/ch03s03.html
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 File-Roller. writing in .rar format requires a commercial program.http://fileroller.sourceforge.net/features.html
Keka version under development is able to create ISO and DMG files.

Uncommon archive format support

PeaZip has full support for various LPAQ and PAQ

PAQ

PAQ is a series of lossless data compression archivers that have evolved through collaborative development to top rankings on several benchmarks measuring compression ratio . Specialized versions of PAQ have won the Hutter Prize and the Calgary Challenge...

formats, QUAD and BALZ (highly efficient ROLZ based compressors), FreeArc

FreeArc

FreeArc is a free and open source file archiver developed by Bulat Ziganshin.-Algorithms:FreeArc uses LZMA, PPMD, TrueAudio, Tornado and GRzip algorithms with automatic switching by file type, and also uses set of filters—for instance it can remove repetitions from text.-Archive size:In Tom's...

format, and for its native PEA format.

7-Zip includes read support for .msi, cpio

Cpio

cpio is a general file archiver utility and its associated file format. It is primarily installed on Unix-like computer operating systems. The software utility was originally intended as a tape archiving program as part of the Programmer's Workbench , and has been a component of virtually every...

and xar

Xar (archiver)

Xar is an open source file archiver and the archiver’s file format. It was created within the OpenDarwin project and is used in Mac OS X 10.5 for software installation routines, as well as browser extensions in Safari 5.0...

, plus Apple's dmg

Apple Disk Image

Apple Disk Image is a proprietary disk image format commonly used with the Mac OS X operating system. The format allows secure password protection as well as file compression and hence serves both security and file distribution functions; it is most commonly used to distribute software over the...

/HFS

Hierarchical File System

Hierarchical File System is a file system developed by Apple Inc. for use in computer systems running Mac OS. Originally designed for use on floppy and hard disks, it can also be found on read-only media such as CD-ROMs...

disk images and the deb

Deb (file format)

deb is the extension of the Debian software package format and the most often used name for such binary packages. Like the "Deb" part of the term Debian, it originates from the name of Debra, erstwhile girlfriend and now ex-wife of Debian's founder Ian Murdock.Debian packages are also used in...

/.rpm

RPM Package Manager

RPM Package Manager is a package management system. The name RPM variously refers to the .rpm file format, files in this format, software packaged in such files, and the package manager itself...

package distribution formats; beta versions (9.07 onwards) have full support for the LZMA2-compressed .xz

xz is a lossless data compression file format incorporating the LZMA2 compression algorithm. Like gzip and bzip2, concatenation is supported to compress multiple files, but the convention is to bundle a file that is an archive itself, such as those created by the tar or cpio Unix...

format.

General information

Operating system support

Archiver features

Reading

Writing

Uncommon archive format support

See also

Further reading