Archive Explorer

← All formats

PEA file format

.pea  ·  archive+compression  ·  introduced 2007 by Giorgio Tani (PeaZip)

What is a PEA file?

PEA (Pack Encrypt Authenticate) is the native archive format of PeaZip. It pairs LZMA2 compression with strong AES-256 encryption and HMAC integrity. PEA is open-source and well-documented but rarely seen outside the PeaZip ecosystem.

Most readers reach this page after double-clicking a .pea file and finding their operating system unsure what to do with it. The good news: PEA is a well-understood format with mature tooling on every major platform. It is supported in one click by mainstream archivers on Windows, macOS, and Linux.

How to extract a PEA file

Opening a .pea file is straightforward on every modern operating system. The exact steps depend on which platform you are on:

On Windows

  1. Locate the .pea file in File Explorer.
  2. Right-click the file. If you have 7-Zip installed, choose 7-Zip → Extract Here. On Windows 11 the built-in extractor handles ZIP, 7z, RAR and several other formats directly through Extract All…
  3. If prompted, pick a destination folder and click Extract.
  4. The extracted files appear in a folder next to the original archive.

On macOS

  1. Find the .pea file in Finder.
  2. Install The Unarchiver from the Mac App Store, or Keka for both creating and extracting.
  3. Right-click the file → Open With → The Unarchiver (or just double-click after Unarchiver is set as the default).
  4. The extracted folder appears next to the archive.

On Linux

  1. Use your file manager: right-click the archive → Extract Here (file-roller on GNOME, Ark on KDE).
  2. On the command line, run one of: 
    7z x archive.pea    # works for almost any format
  3. The files appear in the current directory.

How to create a PEA file

To pack files into a .pea archive, you typically need an archiver that supports writing this format. Not every tool can create every format — for example, only WinRAR can create real RAR files. The sidebar lists the software known to read and write PEA.

On the command line, the canonical create command is:

# Use 7-Zip, PeaZip, or the format's reference tool to create .pea files.

If you regularly create archives at scale, a dedicated archive automation suite can wrap this command in scheduled jobs, integrity checks, and offsite replication.

Strengths

  • Strong encryption + authentication
  • Open format

Weaknesses and limitations

  • Tooling outside PeaZip is limited

Typical use cases

  • Encrypted archives in PeaZip
  • Authenticated archives with strong integrity

Technical details

PEA uses the DEFLATE / LZMA2 + AES-256 algorithm and is identified on disk by the magic byte sequence 50 45 41. The standard MIME type is application/x-pea. The format is an open specification and is free for any use.

Frequently asked questions

Is PEA safe to open?

Archive files are containers — they are only as safe as what they contain. A .pea from a trusted source is fine; one received from a stranger can hold malicious executables, scripts, or files engineered to exploit bugs in your archiver. Always keep your archiver updated, and never run unknown executables that come out of an archive. A safe workflow is to extract into a sandbox and scan the contents before opening anything.

What is the maximum file size?

Modern implementations support archives in the multi-terabyte range. The practical limit is your filesystem (FAT32 caps at 4 GB; ext4, NTFS, APFS, and exFAT all comfortably handle multi-TB files).

Can I password-protect a PEA?

Yes. PEA supports password protection with AES-256 encryption in modern archivers like 7-Zip, WinRAR, and PeaZip. Avoid the legacy ZipCrypto algorithm — it has been broken for years.

How does PEA compare to other formats?

See our format comparison pages such as ZIP vs 7z, ZIP vs RAR, and tar.gz vs tar.xz for side-by-side feature tables.

Related formats