7-Zip is a file archiver with a high compression ratio.
The main features of 7-Zip are:
- High compression ratio in new 7z format with LZMA compression
- Supported packing / unpacking formats: 7z, ZIP, GZIP, BZIP2 and TAR
- Supported formats for unpacking only: ARJ, CAB, CHM, CPIO, DEB, DMG, HFS, ISO, LZH, LZMA, MSI, NSIS, RAR, RPM, UDF, WIM, XAR and Z.
- Compression ratio for ZIP and GZIP formats: 2-10 % better than the ratio provided by PKZip and WinZip
- Strong AES-256 encryption in 7z and ZIP formats
- Self-extracting capability for 7z format
- Integration with Windows Shell
- Powerful File Manager
- Powerful command line version
- Plugin for FAR Manager
- Localizations for 74 languages
Compression ratio
We compared 7-Zip with some of the leading archivers.
FILE SETS: Mozilla Firefox 1.0.7 for Windows and Google Earth 3.0.0616 for Windows after full installation.
| Archiver | Mozilla Firefox | Google Earth | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 161 files 15,684,168 bytes | 115 files 23,530,652 bytes | |||
| Compressed size | Ratio | Compressed size | Ratio | |
| 7-Zip 4.23 (7z format) | 4621135 | 100% | 6109183 | 100% |
| WinRAR 3.50 | 5021556 | 109% | 6824892 | 112% |
| CABARC 5.1 | 5131393 | 111% | 7434325 | 122% |
| WinZip 10.0 beta (maximum-PPMd) | 5277118 | 114% | 8200708 | 134% |
| 7-Zip 4.23 (zip format) | 6222627 | 135% | 8909446 | 146% |
| WinZip 10.0 beta (maximum-portable) | 6448666 | 140% | 9153898 | 150% |
Compression ratio results are very dependent upon the data used for the tests. Usually, 7-Zip compresses to 7z format 30-70% better than to zip format. And 7-Zip compresses to zip format 2-10% better than most of other zip compatible programs.