Question

What is the best zip application for Windows? I've always used Power Archiver, but I think I've come to the conclusion its a bit annoying and its interface is too busy.

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Summary of popular Zip Utilities from answers:

• 7-Zip
• Winrar
• IZarc
• ALZip

Answer 1

7zip

• It handles all major formats and works incredibly fast.
• And is free.
• And has great windows integration via context menus.
• Small footprint
• Lets you explore archives without extracting them.
• And you can use it in the shell.
• Supports multi-volume archives.
• Mostly licensed under LGPL

Answer 2

That is odd... Everyone mention 7-Zip, which has a somewhat ugly GUI. I would go with JZip , based on 7-Zip, but with a much more classic and practicable user interface.

To quote from their support section:

What is the difference between 7-Zip and jZip?

7-zip offers a state of the art compression engine. It's a good application and this is why we decided to use 7-Zip as our underlying compression engine.

We created jZip for users who feel they want the same kind of compression capabilities offered by 7-zip but in an easier more streamlined user interface. We have spent significant time designing a sleek user interface that lets you to easily use the underlying compression engine.

Answer 3

7Zip is pretty good as well. Very small footprint and fast.

Answer 4

I like winrar. You can interact with it by just right clicking on files.

Answer 5

I use 7zip with the 7z format regularly, but when I need extreme compression (transferring very large files from customer to my local PC) I use CCMX. The downside is that it can only compress/decompress only one file by archive, then I use PKZIP / 7Zip to create the archive with no compression (PKZIP -e0) and then compress the resulting archive with CCMX.

You can see a very detailed comparison of compression programs here

My informal comparison: a 28 Mby directory of application data files:

Uncompressed: 24.467.111 by
PKZIP (-exx): 5.185.540 by
7ZA (7Zip format, -mx=9): 3.046.852 by
CCMX (after PKZIP -e0 to create the archive): 2.851.344 by

Answer 6

I use 7zip, but if I didn't have to work with .gz and .bzip files I would just stick with the built-in Windows .zip file handling.

Answer 7

7zip is great, and you can use it in the shell too.

Answer 8

I would suggest IZarc http://www.izarc.org/ Faster than 7zip and handles large files better than 7zip

Answer 9

I use WinRAR mostly because if its ability to archive a large file by splitting it up into many smaller files (which is a great thing for file hosting sites which have a size cap). Does 7z have a similar feature?

Edit by [Justin Standard]:

I searched around a bit, and I don't think 7zip has that feature, though I could be was wrong. I also searched on WinRAR and couldn't find decent documentation. Could you point me to where this features is documented?

Here is the documentation:
http://www.win-rar.com/index.php?id=24&kb_article_id=49

Edit by [Justin Standard]:

Some more searching reveals that 7zip does support multivolume archiving using the -v switch on the command line.

Usage syntax:

-v{Size}[b | k | m | g]

See the 7 zip help files for more detailed documentation.

Answer 10

Depends on what you want. WinRAR has become a pseudostandard in terms of prevalence, but is not open-source (but you can decompress it freely). 7z is its closes competitor but has to installed -- it's not widely known. GZip and BZip2 are well known standards, but you'll need to tar the files beforehand, and gz,bz2, and tar aren't well known on windows. Anything compatible with DEFLATE should probably work. There are other exotic programs with exotic compression schemes with varying rankings based on speed or space.

7zip is your best bet, and it's free.

Answer 11

I would vote up Justin's answer, but since it's already at 7 it's too perfect too touch.

At any rate, yes, I would go with 7zip - free and fast.

Answer 12

I have been using winrar for many years. I found PeaZip recently and i was wondering if you had any expirience with it.

Answer 13

I prefer WinRAR. Handles Zip aswell.

Answer 14

I swear by WinRAR. The shell integration is great. I love the Compress and E-Mail function as well.

Answer 15

AlZip has a nice interface and uses the old .zip format which is used built into windows. It uses good windows for the interface and has a good set of context menus built-in but customizable.

I must admit that it has one 'easter egg' that annoyed me: When you install it, it adds a little egg icon on your right-click menu that gives you bird named new folders. First time I noticed it I thought I had been hacked. : )

To turn it off from inside AlZip go to Tools>Preferences>Context Menu and uncheck the 'Power Extras' option "Create new folder".

Answer 16

WinRar is my preferred flavor

Answer 17

+1 7-zip

Answer 18

WinRAR is my compression tool of choice, but 7Zip also works well. Compression ratios are usually similar with the two formats.

Answer 19

I'd say that the one you're using - PowerArchiver - is already the best one :-) Even though I agree that it's become a bit busier in recent versions, the user interface is just so much better than any of the free ones I've tried. 7-zip's GUI just makes me cringe. AlZip looks alright, but the faux ad banner in the screenshot kills it for me.

Answer 20

+1 for winrar, never used anything else though so cant comment if its the best or not

Answer 21

I've been using DotNetZip's WinForms tool. (I'm sort of biased) The tool comes with the DotNetZip library. Creates and reads regular ZIPs, ZIP64, AES, Unicode, SFX... Fast.

Free.

Answer 22

if you want maximum compression (at the cost of rather high resource usage, that is) then KGB Archiver is clearly the winner (and compression ratio should be a criterion with this question). however, as for daily use, old habits (WinRAR) die hard. :)