Archive format comparisons
Head-to-head comparisons of the formats and archivers people argue about most.
ZIP and RAR are the two formats most desktop users have actually heard of. ZIP is older, open, and built into every operating system; RAR is newer, proprietary,…
7z almost always produces smaller files than ZIP using the LZMA2 algorithm, but ZIP is more universally supported. The choice is between size and compatibility.…
RAR and 7z compete for the same niche: maximum compression with strong encryption. 7z compresses slightly better on most data and is open and free; RAR has reco…
Both are tarballs — the difference is the compressor. tar.gz uses DEFLATE and is fast; tar.xz uses LZMA2 and produces much smaller files at the cost of CPU time…
tar.xz has been the king of small Unix tarballs for over a decade. Zstandard challenges it with comparable ratios at a fraction of the CPU time, especially duri…
gzip has been the universal Unix compressor since 1992. Zstandard, from 2016, beats it on every axis at moderate levels — speed, ratio, and tunability — but lac…
7-Zip and WinRAR are the two heavyweight Windows archivers. The difference is mainly licensing — 7-Zip is free and open, WinRAR is shareware that nags you to pa…
7-Zip is the engine; PeaZip is a richer GUI built around the same engine plus more formats. PeaZip wins on UI and format coverage; 7-Zip wins on minimalism and …
On macOS, Keka and The Unarchiver are the two essential free archivers. They serve different roles: Keka creates archives in many formats; The Unarchiver only e…
ZIP and tar.gz are the universal cross-platform archive choices. ZIP is the Windows-friendly default; tar.gz is the Unix-friendly default. They use the same DEF…
XZ holds the crown for raw compression ratio on most general data, but Zstandard catches up at its highest levels and decompresses an order of magnitude faster.…
LZ4 and Snappy are the two real-time compressors of choice for databases, filesystems, and streaming pipelines. Both prioritize speed over ratio. LZ4 is slightl…
bzip3 is a 2022 modernization of the Burrows-Wheeler approach pioneered by bzip2 in 1996. It compresses noticeably better at similar speeds while keeping the bl…
ISO and IMG are both raw disc images, but ISO follows the ISO 9660 / UDF filesystem standards while IMG is a generic sector dump. ISO files mount on every opera…
Parquet and ORC are the two columnar file formats that dominate analytics. They have nearly identical capabilities — column-grouped storage, multiple compressor…
VMDK is the universal hypervisor disk format; qcow2 is the QEMU/KVM native one. Both support sparse files and snapshots, but qcow2's richer cluster-level featur…
APK is the file Android devices actually install. AAB is the upload format Google Play asks developers for, then converts into per-device APKs at install time. …
CAB is a pure compressed archive used inside Windows installers; MSI is a Windows Installer database that often references or embeds CAB payloads. Confusion com…
DEB and RPM are the two dominant Linux package formats. They cover the same use case — install software with dependencies — but with different metadata layouts …
DMG and PKG are the two ways software arrives on macOS. A DMG is a disk image you mount and drag the app from; a PKG is an installer that runs scripts and place…
Flatpak and Snap are the two cross-distribution Linux app formats. Flatpak is a community standard centered on Flathub; Snap is Canonical-driven and tightly int…
AppImage and Flatpak both ship cross-distribution Linux apps without distro packaging, but with different philosophies. AppImage is a single-file double-clickab…
7z is the everyday champion of compression ratio; ZPAQ pushes ratios still further using context mixing — but at glacial speed. ZPAQ also happens to be a journa…
Borg and restic are the two leading open-source deduplicating backup formats. Both chunk data, deduplicate by content hash, and encrypt before upload. Borg is o…
EPUB is the W3C-blessed open e-book standard everyone except Amazon ships. MOBI was the Kindle format until 2022, when Amazon switched to KFX. Both are ZIP-like…