100% Free File Archiver / Compression

Data compression or source coding is the process of encoding information using fewer bits (or other information-bearing units) than an unencoded representation would use through use of specific encoding schemes. Compression is useful because it helps reduce the consumption of expensive resources, such as hard disk space or transmission bandwidth.

7-Zip is an open source file archiver designed originally for Microsoft Windows. 7-Zip operates with the 7z archive format, and can read and write to several other archive formats. The program can be used from a command line interface, graphical user interface, or Windows shell integration. 7-Zip began in 2000 and is actively developed by Igor Pavlov. It is related to a cross-platform port, p7zip. You can download it here.

IZArc (pronounced like "easy-arc") is a proprietary file archiver for Microsoft Windows developed by Bulgarian programmer Ivan Zahariev. The program is freeware, but not open source. In addition to the most commonly used archive formats, like zip, rar, gzip, tar.gz, bzip2, and 7z, IZArc handles an unusually large number of less common formats (48 in total, see below). Another distinguishing feature of IZArc is its ability to convert archives into different formats (including CD images and conversion between self-extracting and standard archives). You can download it here.

TUGZip is a freeware file archiver for Microsoft Windows. It handles a great variety of archive formats, including some of the commonly used ones like zip, rar, gzip, bzip2, sqx and 7z. It can also view disk image files like BIN, C2D, IMG, ISO and NRG. You can download it here.


PeaZip is a file manager and file archiver for Microsoft Windows and Linux. It supports its native PEA archive format (featuring compression, multi volume split and flexible authenticated encryption and integrity check schemes) and other mainstream formats, with special focus on handling open formats.

PeaZip is mainly written in Free Pascal, using Lazarus. It is free software, released under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License. You can download it here.