RAR is a proprietary archive file format that supports data compression, error correction and file spanning. It was developed in 1993 by Russian software engineer Eugene Roshal and the software is licensed by win.rar GmbH. The name RAR stands for Roshal Archive.
7-Zip is a free and open-source file archiver, a utility used to place groups of files within compressed containers known as "archives". It is developed by Igor Pavlov and was first released in 1999. 7-Zip has its own archive format called 7z, but can read and write several others.
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 License. The LZMA SDK 4.62 was placed in the public domain in December 2008. The latest stable version of 7-Zip and LZMA SDK is version 24.05.
StuffIt Expander is a proprietary, freeware, closed source, decompression software utility developed by Allume Systems. It runs on the classic Mac OS, macOS, and Microsoft Windows. Prior to 2011, a Linux version had also been available for download.
WinRAR is a trialware file archiver utility, developed by Eugene Roshal of win.rar GmbH. It can create and view archives in RAR or ZIP file formats, and unpack numerous archive file formats. To enable the user to test the integrity of archives, WinRAR embeds CRC32 or BLAKE2 checksums for each file in each archive. WinRAR supports creating encrypted, multi-part and self-extracting archives.
The following tables compare general and technical information for a number of file archivers. 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.
In computing, solid compression is a method for data compression of multiple files, wherein all the uncompressed files are concatenated and treated as a single data block. Such an archive is called a solid archive. It is used natively in the 7z and RAR formats, as well as indirectly in tar-based formats such as .tar.gz and .tar.bz2. By contrast, the ZIP format is not solid because it stores separately compressed files.
ZipGenius is a freeware file archiver developed by The ZipGenius Team 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 editions: standard and suite. While the suite edition includes optional modules of the ZipGenius project, the standard setup package simply includes the main ZipGenius application.
File Roller is a file archiver for the GNOME desktop environment.
A self-extracting archive is a computer executable program which combines compressed data in an archive file with machine-executable code to extract the information. Running on a compatible operating system, it does not need a suitable extractor in the target computer to extract the data. The executable part of the file is known as a decompressor stub.
A comic book archive or comic book reader file is a type of archive file for the purpose of sequential viewing of images, commonly for comic books. The idea was made popular by the CDisplay sequential image viewer; since then, many viewers for different platforms have been created.
CDemu is a free and open-source virtual drive software, designed to emulate an optical drive and optical disc on the Linux operating system.
PeaZip is a free and open-source file manager and file archiver for Microsoft Windows, ReactOS, Linux, MacOS and BSD by Giorgio Tani. It supports its native PEA archive format and other mainstream formats, with special focus on handling open formats. Version 9.4.0 supported 234 file extensions.
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. Deepin's archive manager is based on Xarchiver.
AcetoneISO is a free and open-source virtual drive software to mount and manage image files. Its goals are to be simple, intuitive and stable. Written in Qt, this software is meant for all those people looking for a "Daemon Tools for Linux". However, AcetoneISO does not emulate any copy protection while mounting.
FreeArc is a free and open-source high-performance file archiver developed by Bulat Ziganshin. The project is presumably discontinued, since no information has been released by the developers since 2016 and the official website is down.
BetterZip is a trialware file archiver developed by Robert Rezabek, and first released in May 2006.It is developed solely for the macOS platform. Unlike the built-in Archive Utility from Apple it includes the ability to extract and compress in many archive formats, as well as the ability to view an archive and selectively extract files without automatically extracting the entire contents.
B1 Free Archiver is a proprietary freeware multi-platform file archiver and file manager. B1 Archiver is available for Microsoft Windows, Linux, macOS, and Android. It has full support for ZIP and its native B1 format. The program decompresses more than 20 popular archive formats. It creates split and encrypted archives.
Hetman Partition Recovery is a shareware program for recovery of deleted data from hard drive partitions and other storage media. The utility supports both functioning disks and damaged logical partitions and recovers data from both reformatted disks and disks which have had their file system changed from FAT to NTFS or vice versa. In addition to working on existing partitions the tool can also find deleted logical drives, displaying them to the user for further search and recovery of deleted files as well as correcting errors in logical partition design. Hetman Partition Recovery supports reading of regular, zipped, and encrypted files, from disks formatted under NTFS and/or FAT file systems.
Express Zip File Compression Software is a file compression and archiving software program developed by NCH Software for Windows and Mac OS first released in 2010. It offers the ability to open, manage, archive, extract, and compress digital documents into .zip, .tar, .tgz, .wim, .arj, and .lzh as well as additional archive formats. It also supports file zipping and unzipping, file compression, sending compressed files as attachments via email, and backing up files by burning them to compatible discs (CD/DVD).
