7-Zip
Version 26.02 · Igor Pavlov · Windows 7 / 8 / 10 / 11 (32-bit and 64-bit) · ranked #158 in the library
The open source archiver that compresses harder than anything else on the desktop, reads every format you are likely to meet, and asks for nothing in return because it never had a licence to sell.
Read the installation section below before you start. The order of the steps matters on this release.
About this release
Overview
7-Zip is genuinely free software and always has been. There is no trial, no nag window, no pro tier and nothing to activate, which makes it the odd listing on a site like this: the only reason to download it here rather than anywhere else is convenience and the bundled portable build. The source is public, the licence permits use in any setting including commercial work, and the program has been maintained by the same author for a very long time.
The technical argument for it is the 7z format and the LZMA2 compression behind it. On source trees, document sets, virtual machine images and anything else with internal repetition, a 7z archive is routinely a good deal smaller than the equivalent ZIP, and the dictionary size can be pushed high enough to find matches across hundreds of megabytes at the cost of memory during compression. Solid mode treats the whole archive as one stream so similar files compress against each other rather than in isolation.
Format coverage is the other half. It packs to 7z, ZIP, GZIP, BZIP2, XZ, TAR and WIM, and it unpacks a much longer list including RAR, ISO, CAB, DMG, MSI, RPM, DEB, VHD, ARJ, LZH, NSIS and installer payloads, which makes it a general purpose tool for looking inside things as much as for compressing them. Encryption on 7z archives is AES-256 with an optional pass that hides the filenames as well as the contents, and the whole feature set is available from the shell context menu and from a command line binary that scripts cleanly.
What it does
Feature breakdown
High ratio 7z compression
LZMA2 with configurable dictionary size up to the limits of your memory, plus solid archiving so similar files compress against one another instead of separately.
Broad format support
Creates 7z, ZIP, GZIP, BZIP2, XZ, TAR and WIM, and opens RAR, ISO, CAB, DMG, MSI, RPM, DEB, VHD, ARJ, LZH, NSIS and more.
AES-256 encryption
Strong encryption on 7z and ZIP archives, with an option on 7z to encrypt the file listing so the archive contents are not visible from outside.
Shell integration and file manager
Full right click menu for compress and extract, plus a two panel file manager that browses inside archives as if they were folders.
Command line binary
A complete console archiver for scripted backups and build pipelines, with switches for filtering, splitting, volume sizes and multi-threading.
Self-extracting archives
Build an executable that unpacks itself for recipients with no archiver installed, in both installer and simple extraction modes.
Changed in this build
Version 26.02
- Improved multi-threaded compression scaling on processors with high core counts.
- Better handling of very large ZIP archives beyond the classic four gigabyte boundaries.
- Additional extraction support for several newer installer container formats.
- Fixed a crash when opening an archive with a deliberately malformed central directory.
- Refreshed interface translations and a cleaner high DPI context menu on modern displays.
Installation
Follow these in order
- Extract the archive with whatever archiver is already on the machine.
- Pick the build matching your system, the 64-bit one unless the machine is genuinely 32-bit.
- Run the installer and accept the default location, or copy the portable folder anywhere if you would rather not install.
- Open the options dialog and tick the file associations you want it to own.
- Enable the shell integration entries you use, the cascaded submenu keeps the context menu tidy.
- That is the whole process. There is no activation step and nothing to disable.
Release notes
From whoever packed it
- This is free open source software. Nothing here is patched and no antivirus exclusion is needed.
- A portable build is included in the archive for use from a stick with no installation and no registry entries.
- Dictionary size drives both the compression ratio and the memory used during packing. Raising it costs RAM on the machine doing the compressing.
System requirements
Minimum and recommended
| Operating system | Windows 7 through Windows 11, 32-bit or 64-bit |
|---|---|
| Processor | Any x86 or x64 processor, more cores directly reduce compression time |
| Memory | 512 MB for normal use, several gigabytes if you set a very large dictionary |
| Graphics | No requirement |
| Storage | 6 MB for the program |
Questions about this release
Answered before you ask
- Why is it listed here if it is free?
- Convenience. It is the archiver most of the other listings expect you to have, and the bundled portable build saves a step.
- Can it create RAR archives?
- No. It extracts RAR files but the format is proprietary, so creation is not supported.
- Is the 7z format readable elsewhere?
- Yes, most current archivers on every platform read 7z, and the reference implementation is open for anything that does not.
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