1. Best Zip Tool For Mac
2. Best Zip Tool For Mac

1. Although considered to be a little pricey, it is also said that you can never really go wrong with this Zip tool in particular. If you want to stick to free options for Zip utilities, make sure to try the YemuZip that is especially designed for use among MAC users.
2. Windows: Zip only. This feature was added back in Windows XP, so practically every Windows user can create and extract zip files. Mac OS X: Zip is supported, and so are other archive types like.tar.gz and.tar.bz2.7z and.rar will require third-party software.

WinZip, WinRAR and 7Zip are three of the most popular file compression tools for Windows, but which gives the best compression result? Let's check it out. While 7-Zip is a classic favorite, PeaZip might be the best option for most users. It’s not as slim as 7-Zip, but PeaZip uses its extra size wisely on user-friendliness and attractive aesthetics.

The Mac really doesn't have a lot of great utilities for creating file archives, but it does have one excellent option for unarchiving: the aptly named The Unarchiver. It integrates directly with the OS X Finder and supports practically any format you can imagine.

The Unarchiver is the built-in default file compression utility for Mac OS X. Unlike Windows, which only supports the ZIP format out-of-the-box, The Unarchiver handles most major formats. The Best Free File Compression app downloads for Mac: RAR Expander WinZip Mac WinZip Mac StuffIt Expander The Unarchiver Zipeg iZip StuffIt RAR Extrac.

Note: The Unarchiver isn't actually capable of creating archives, but there's really no app on the Mac that does a great job of archiving and unarchiving. You really need two separate apps for the best experience. The Unarchiver provides that experience for unarchiving, but for creating compressed files you'll need something else. We'll discuss your options first thing in the Competition section of this post.

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The Unarchiver

Platform: Mac OS X
Price: Free
Download Page

Features

• Supports practically every compressed file format you can think of. See the full list here
• You can toggle which compressed file formats The Unarchiver will decompress and which ones it will ignore.
• Integrates with the Mac OS X Finder like it was a built-in feature.
• You can choose where it extracts files, or you can have it ask you every time.
• You can choose to keep or discard the archive once it has been decompressed.

Where It Excels

The Unarchiver doesn't do much, but that's kind of where it excels. It just unarchives practically any file you can throw at it. It's about as speedy as you can expect, and you can customize which file types it handles and which ones it doesn't. Using it feels like part of the OS X Finder, which is the other thing that makes it so great. Basically, using The Unarchiver is like adding a much broader range of supported compressed file formats to your Mac.

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Where It Falls Short

The Unarchiver doesn't do much, so it's lacking in that regard. Not only would the ability to actually compress files be very welcome—especially if it was through a contextual menu item—but the lack of features and control make it difficult to deal with an imperfect (and the occasional multi-part) archive. Aside from that, there's not much to complain about. It does what it says it's going to do, and it does it well the majority of the time.

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The Competition

Before we get into the competition (of which there is very little), let's talk about apps that can compress your files. The best ones are kind of pricey. Archiver is very pretty and will cost you $19. Behind it's good looks is a pretty good feature set, offering plenty of supported formats and even the ability to password-protect an archive. Alternatively you have an app called Compress Files. It weighs in at $15, so you'll save a little money. In exchange for those savings you lose a few supported file formats. For a little more than both apps ($20), you can get BetterZIP, which offers tons of features and supported formats. If you want a free utility that only supports ZIP files, use the one built-in to the Finder already. If you want a free app that can create zip files without including the annoying .DS_STORE files that OS X loves to include in its archives, try YemuZip.

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As for the competition for The Unarchiver, there are a few apps worth noting. UnRarX is probably the best RAR decompressor on the Mac, but it suffers from a really unfriendly user interface. It's free, though, and is indispensable when dealing with RAR archives—specifically the problematic ones. For ZIP files, you can count on the Mac OS X Finder to handle those for you no problem. Most of the previously-mentioned archive creation apps can handle unarchiving files, too, but nothing is quite as good as The Unarchive so chances are you'll prefer to use two apps—one for archiving and one for unarchiving—to get the job done.

UPDATE: @dumbinacan sent me a link to Keka, which I was not aware of, and it's pretty great. It archives and unarchives, costs nothing, and has a contextual menu add-on so you can use it directly in the Finder.

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ANOTHER UPDATE: A lot of user suggestions have been coming in so I thought I'd start a list of some popular user alternatives.

• Entropy, $19, via @rainierrr
• iPack, $2, via @artiste212

Lifehacker's App Directory is a new and growing directory of recommendations for the best applications and tools in a number of given categories.

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Just about everything that gets stored electronically nowadays is compressed in some form or another. Whether it’s game discs, Windows install discs, webpages, music, video, images, internet downloads or setup installers, most files are shrunk down from their original size to reduce the storage space they consume. One of the most popular and widely used file compression formats around today is ZIP which was developed by PKWare in 1989. Unlike JPG or MP3, ZIP is an archive format which allows you to store several files and also folders inside a single compressed ZIP file.

Living in the internet age, it’s beneficial if a file can be compressed to half its size before you upload or download it, this can save bandwidth and time. Of course, there are many file compression formats around besides ZIP, others such as RAR and 7z are also very well known. ZIP archive compression is the only one which is natively supported out of the box by Windows, but like the copy function in Windows, there are better and faster alternatives.

For more serious compression needs, dedicated archiver software that can handle ZIP or other better formats may be required. Many software archivers come with their own features but in the end what’s still important is the speed at which files can be compressed or extracted and the output size of the compressed file. There are many claims made about who’s fastest or offers the best compression rate, but you will never know who’s right until they’ve been tried out. Here we put 15 file archivers to the test to see which ones have the best compression rate plus the fastest speed.

To cover common real world scenarios, we’re going to perform 3 compress and 2 extract tests for each archiver, there are two main sets of results. The first is to test (de)compressing a ZIP file as it’s still the most common and widely used format. The second set of results is when using the best compression format the archiver has to offer. Finally we ran a quick test to see if each archiver can successfully open the Mozilla Firefox omni.ja file (English version). This is a valid optimized JAR file that should be supported by most archiver’s, but some detect it as corrupt and won’t open what is a legitimate archive.

If you wish to go straight to the tests and results, they can be found on page 2 of this article.

The Archiver Programs on Test

We are going to test out the following 15 archivers, some free and some shareware. In each description is the result of whether the Omni.ja can be opened by the program and the setting used for the maximum compression tests.

1. 7-Zip

7-Zip is one of the most well known and popular archivers around due to the 7z archive format which compresses files into much smaller sizes than ZIP. Being open source, 7z is now found in most other free and paid archiving applications. The stable version 9.20 has not been updated since 2010, but there are several newer alpha builds that keep development slowly moving. 7-Zip can compress to 7 formats and decompress to another 25 or so, including WIM, CAB, MSI, MBR and and VHD files. It’s also very useful to extract the contents of setup installers.

Version tested: 9.20 (64-bit)
Omni.ja Support: No (Yes in 9.32 alpha)
Price: Free
Max Compression used: 7z Ultra LZMA2

2. ALZip

ALZip used to be shareware but has been made available to use for free by the developer, the product key is shown on their website when you download the program. ALZip supports decompression of 40 archive formats such as 7z, RAR, CAB and ISO, and can compress to 8 different types that includes their own EGG format which offers generally better compression than ZIP. Useful options such as configuring an antivirus to scan manually, command line, span, merge and restore corrupted archives are all available.

Version tested: 8.51
Omni.ja Support: Yes
Price: Free
Max Compression used: EGG Priority on compress ratio

3. B1 Free Archiver

B1 has versions for Windows, Mac, Linux and Android and calls itself a friendly and simple archiver. The program can only archive in ZIP or its own open source B1 format which uses LZMA compression. Nearly 30 formats can be extracted including 7z and ZIPX. Pay attention to the installer as it pre-ticks an option to send statistical data to B1, download the standalone setup file to get the full installer and not the online downloader. The website also has a useful online unarchiver which can extract several different formats without needing software.

Version tested: 1.4.69
Omni.ja Support: No
Price: Free
Max Compression used: B1 Ultra

4. Bandizip

Bandizip is a program we’ve looked at in the past and it’s known for producing good compression ratios for the archives it creates. While not boasting tons of extra features apart from an image preview and viewer, it is a solid program with support for around 35 archive formats. These include ZIPX, RAR, APK, ISO, IMG, XPI and CAB, 8 of the formats can be used for compression. Something quite useful is an archive preview option in the context menu and the option to (de)compress multiple archives at once via right click.

Version tested: 3.09
Omni.ja Support: Yes
Price: Free
Max Compression used: 7z Level 3-Maximum Compression

5. FreeArc

The single biggest drawback of FreeArc is its inability to create any other type of archive apart from its own Arc format or an Arc based SFX executable. However, it can extract several different formats such as ZIP, RAR, 7z, CAB without any trouble. FreeArc is a bit lacking in certain areas such as multivolume archives and storing attributes/extended timestamps/NTFS streams inside the archive, but it does have a compression format that offers potentially better compression than 7z. Although not updated since 2010, a new FreeArc 0.70 is an ongoing work in progress.

Version tested: 0.666
Omni.ja Support: No
Price: Free
Max Compression used: Maximum

6. HAMSTER Free ZIP Archiver

If you want a nice looking archiver, Hamster Free Zip certainly wins the prize there. It’s also easy to use and intuitive but does only have support for compressing ZIP and 7z, ideal for this test though. Around 12 formats can be extracted, including RAR, ISO and CAB. An interesting option is the ability to create a ZIP/7z and then directly upload your archives to the cloud from within the program, Dropbox and Yandex are currently supported. A box during install needs unticking as it’s text is unreadable but installs adware if you don’t.

Version tested: 3.0.0.34
Omni.ja Support: No
Price: Free
Max Compression used: 7z *** Maximum

7. HaoZip

HaoZip is from China and has several useful additions besides the archiver itself. These include a batch picture converter, batch renamer, batch string replacer, MD5 checksum compare, image Viewer and also an option to mount virtual disc images. HaoZip can compress to 11 archive types including 7z and decompress around 50. You can also use the simple built in malware/trojan scanner to check the files you’re working with. There is a HaoZip 4 which decompresses the newer RAR5 and ZIPX formats but it’s currently only available in the Chinese language.

Version tested: 3.0 (64-bit)
Omni.ja Support: No
Price: Free
Max Compression used: 7z Ultra LZMA2

8. KuaiZip

KuaiZip is quite a small and simple archiver that also has its own KZ compression format (better compression than ZIP, but not as good as 7z) as well as the standard ZIP and 7z formats, around 40 archive types can be extracted. A useful feature is the ability to mount disc and virtual images such as APE, FLAC, NRG, ISO, MDS, VHD, VMDK and VDI. Similar to HaoZip (in looks as well), KuaiZip has a newer version available (2.3.2 is from 2011) but it’s only available in Chinese.

Version tested: 2.3.2
Omni.ja Support: No
Price: Free
Max Compression used: 7z Best

9. PeaZip

PeaZip isn’t so much an archiver in itself but is more of a frontend for other archivers and uses their command line versions to compress files, including 7-Zip and FreeArc. Because PeaZip uses other archivers the number of supported formats is quite impressive, around 150 for reading/extracting and 16 can be used for compression. Other useful options are an encrypted password manager, secure delete function and a simple file/image manager. Watch for the adware during setup or use the portable version.

Version tested: 5.2.1
Omni.ja Support: No
Price: Free
Max Compression used: Arc level 9

10. PKZIP

PKWare developed the ZIP archive format back in the late 80’s and PKZIP was the archiver that first used ZIP compression. The PKZIP program itself is perhaps a little behind the times these days in terms of what it can handle. The best type of archive it can create is ZIP (you can use different compression methods) although close to 20 different types can be opened and decompressed. PKZIP can also integrate itself into Microsoft Outlook and other Office applications which allows you to work on documents direct from a ZIP file.

Version tested: 14.20.0019
Omni.ja Support: Yes
Price: $29
Max Compression used: NA

On page 2 we’ll go through the other archivers and show the results of our tests.

12Next › View All

You might also like:

15 Free File Copy Tools Tested for the Fastest Transfer SpeedsHow to Optimize or Deoptimize Firefox OMNI.JA File3 Ways to Convert Archives Into Different Compression Formats5 Ways to Preview ZIP and Download Selected Files in ArchiveUnable to View Pictures in Archive with 7-Zip

Very helpful comparison. Thanks.

I know this is an old article, but did anyone test “Gnu Zip”?
I don’t know if the compression ratio is very good, but I’m hearing it’s DE-compression speed beats all others.

I’d also like to see a comparison of *different* formats (which format creates the smallest files? Which archiver decompresses *its own* format the fastest? Do the different archivers extract their OWN formats faster/slower than .zip?)

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How about WinRar?

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What about WinRAR? It’s listed and tested like all the other major archivers…

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WinRar is not listed in any other place then the comment section.

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I’ll give you a clue, there is quite clearly more than one page to this article.…….

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PeaZip is better option for alternative for winzip. PeaZip is easy to use and very fast working software.

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all zip and 7zip are the best alternatives for winzip i have tried bot of them they can easily replace winzip .thank you for sharing the list of the alternatives of winzip.It’s very helpful.

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7z works with Ultra setting up from 6GB RAM it’s rather system requirement than issue. Tested on Windows 7 66bit, as in upper benchmark.

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The test doesn’t say if Solid compression was used and what the dictionary sizes chosen were. Harmonizing them across all archivers would be fair regardless of what the author has chosen for their “best” preset. I think FreeArc has a huge dict (and memory requirements) by default. Obviously the VDMK test was solid because it consists of one file.

WinRAR has the most user friendly and accurate design. All options are discoverable from the GUI. PeaZip and PA unfortunately always follow the latest design trends, and look quite ugly now. It was the ribbon here, now they have Metro style. The corporate bloat starts at their installers already. While FreeArc compresses well, only a few programs can extract this experimental format. I think it is unreliable.

7-Zip Zstandard is a good new format, combining fast speed and large dictionary. Other formats offer either one (Zip) or the other (Lzma), with RAR somewhere inbetween on the scale, but not free. Zstd is good for backups where duplicate files are likely to occur, or large file transfers or installs that have to be done in reasonble time.

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The default settings were used for each archiver, so if solid compression is a default option, it is used. The dictionary size is the same. Most users aren’t likely to play around with settings like those, that’s why we went with the settings we did.

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Among the free programs, “BANDIZIP” seems to be the best.
I have been using this program for a long time. very satisfied.

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Yes, especially that “smart” feature, it pretty cool and I do not care about whether or not root folder in zip file anymore.

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Great write. For a simpleton like me though, I prefer using online tools that don’t require me to download software (I’m currently using WebZip.co, but there are a few other good ones as well). The only caveat is I think they mostly support ZIP only.

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Several years after and yet this article still compells comments from readers! Kudos for this well put analysis. I’ve been trying out archives hoping to find the best (I prefer compression ratio over speed) and this article spared me a lot of time and effort trying them all out. My top choice has been 7z LZMA2 (using 7-zip), until a few days ago when I tried Arc (using FreeArc). Even though it lacks splitting into volumes/parts, I’ve had better compression ratios (38%) while archiving huge games. Since I burn the archives onto DVDs, splitting is a must have feature for me. My workaround has been simple; I simply zip (using Winrar) the arc output of FreeArc and split them into DVD5-fit parts, but with compression level set to “store” or “none”, so that extraction is a two-stage process, one being the extraction of the multi-part zip archive, and the second being the extraction of the arc archive.

Again, kudos for putting this information up, came in really handy.

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I downloaded an ubuntu image that was about 150 mb and after compressing become 2 gb
And apparently it has compressed by kgb archiver

It’s the link of that ubuntu image :

kent.dl.sourceforge.net/project/linuxonandroid/Ubuntu/13.10/Small/ubuntu-13.10.SMALL.ext2.v1.zip

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Hi mr.

Just wanna let you know that images of dvd’s often includes a lot of empty space. So when you compress it, it reduces ridiculously in size. No compression tools will compress 2 gb of “data” to 150 mb. :-)

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without including sizes of finished archives (among secs) these tests (article) are irrelevant

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Did you even read the results? The size of archive created and time it took is all in the table.

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IZArc version 4.2 has been released as completely adware-free- see version history- izarc.org/news.html

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I wish you had used more than a maximum 2.54 GB size data set; that really isn’t very much. Right now I’m looking to compress the contents of an external USB drive; the drive is 250 GB but the data total is only 106 GB of that. But that 106 GB is still way larger than the sizes used in any of the tests performed. Granted, I’m not sure when the tests were done, but the Core 2 Quad Q6600 CPU dates from 2007 and that probably represents 5 “generations” or so in computer time. Still, your results are good to know as they give a general idea ( eg. I don’t think UltimateZip would win any contests on an i5 at the present time either )… thanks for this.

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You raise some interesting points but trying to compress 100GB+ for testing would have taken simply far too long. We would have needed to compress that 100GB 30 separate times and decompressed it another 30 times, that is simply unworkable. In my opinion using the sizes we did in all the tests are far closer to what the average user is going compress, compressing the sizes you mention are rare and for niche purposes only.

As for the hardware, that is simply what I have in my test PC and even though it’s old, it still compares reasonably well with the average PC or laptop CPU of today. We could have used an i7 system with 16GB of RAM, but again, that is unrepresentative of what the majority of people have. Some sites like to test on high end hardware, we like to test or normal hardware.

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lol, who would compress over 100GB, omg…

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How about compressing 4K series? One episode has 20GB already.
Who would not compress over 100GB, omg …

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gr8 job you’ve done and it was described so purely clearly. thank you so much for valuable effort to let is know more about compressing.good luck!

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Thank for the amazing results i was surfing the internet nearly 3 days ago to find this issue ……. so Im using winRAR of course the BEST. thank for the Results really appreciate it !!! ;-)

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Thanks for the throughout article. A remark for ZIP Compression 7-Zip and PeaZip share the same results.
What I’m left to wonder is how archivers compare using their best compression format (own’s format? i.e. WinRar -> Rar; 7-Zip -> 7z) with optimal settings as they would strike to achieve the best compression with the best performance; the best compromise between the two.

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Optimal settings which strike a balance will differ with each user because I might prefer a bit more compression over speed, you might prefer a bit more speed over compression, so there is no real definitive best compromise that suites everybody.

Also things like the speed of your computer will have a big say, the faster your PC, the higher the compression ratio you can use without sacrificing too much extra time…

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nice test bro. applause for that :)

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Hi HAL9000,

How come you didn’t rate WinRAR!?!? BTW, WinRAR when put thru VirusTotal returns Malware/Trojan warning! So, I stopped using it.

Q: Does it really have Malware in it!?!?

Thanks! :)

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I like WinRAR and personally use it. This isn’t about not rating something and simply about hard facts, and the facts are during our tests WinRAR does fine when zipping but the RAR format really can’t live with 7z in terms of compression.

Of course WinRAR doesn’t have malware in it, VirusTotal is a guide only and shouldn’t be fully relied on. You have to look at what antivirus are saying it’s malware and what they are saying. Just looking now, the 1 saying it’s malicious is reporting “Trojan/Win32.SGeneric”, the generic bit in there means it’s guessing (and getting it wrong)…

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I mentioned this before but Bandizip has a limitation with 7z files. It won’t let you edit the contents. Try creating a text file and store it to 7z archive. Then open it and try to edit, rename, or delete the file. It won’t let you. This automatically makes me unable to use Bandizip as my main archiving program. I think every other archiver lets you edit the contents of 7z files. Bandizip also does not offer file name encryption for 7z.

7-zip STILL has the flaw with their file name encryption. Create a text file and add it to 7z, password protect it, and choose encrypt file names. Then open the 7z and drag another file to the window and save it. Close and re-open. The file name encryption is gone. And there’s no way to add it back. You have to create a whole new archive. Very stupid. Also development for 7-zip is at a snail’s pace.

I think Haozip is the best free one. It has good features and performance and none of these flaws, no disadvantages that I can see. I think it’s wise to keep several archiving programs in case one fails you but for main use Haozip gets my vote.

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I am surprised the test was for ZIP compression, and NOT RAR compression archiver’s. In my experience, RAR is by far a more popular compression format.

Maybe the business world runs ZIP compression, but the internet (cyber lockers) almost “exclusively” use RAR.

Raymond, Does RAR compression have a better algorithm (smaller size) than ZIP compression??

Hugo.

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ZIP is still by far the most used compression format, among other things, you can ZIP/UnZIP something in any recent version of Windows without software. Most software that uses some form of compression will use ZIP as well, RAR is not a free format so cannot usually be used to compress files unless you pay to include it in your software, only decompress is free to use in RAR’s case. It’s not that cyberlockers use RAR, it’s all to do with “scene” rules and people uploading the content as it was compressed by the hackers and crackers that created it.

In the Max compression test, WinRAR obviously uses RAR to compress. As you can see it doesn’t compress that great compared to 7z but is better than ZIP and comparable to ZIPX.

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IZArc isn’t included… ummm… why? Again?

I’m not so much challenging your decision not to include it as I’m just wondering if I’m misguided in my long-term liking of it. I know it opens a whole lot of formats; and compresses a bunch, too.

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Sadly, the maker sometimes includes crapware/adware in the installer which can usually be opted-out of… except for this latest version does a little bit of a scare tactic that lit-up my anti-virus software at first; but, in the end, the badness somehow didn’t make it onto my machine. I sent him one of my angriest (but not abusive, mind you; but just really upset) emails ever. It almost put me off of IZArc, after all these years.

But all that notwithstanding, I always thought that IZArc was one of the better ones; some say the best.

No? Enlighten me! [grin]

Best Zip Tool For Mac

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Before IZArc started all this adware nonsense, it was one of the free archivers I would recommend to people because it was easy to use and supported quite a lot of formats.

Offering crapware which you cannot opt out of crosses the line for me though. When you try to install, the first screen offers crapware, click Cancel and it cancels the IZArc install totally, click Next and it installs the crapware so you cannot choose not to install it. Reviews at download sites like CNET or Softpedia have torn IZArc to shreds in recent months, and rightly so in this case IMO….

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Doing this in windows 7, I downloaded the files and the put 3 together in a folder on my desktop….
Step 5 after I click on build, it goes into Save As window in Documents
when I click save I get a message,
Vista
Class not registered

File name: Vista
Save as type: ISO Files (*.iso)

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Which program and version are you using…?

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Thank you very much for this nice tests and article. And maybe thanks for the giveaway. Regards Sugart.

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Thank you very much for this informative piece!

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Thanks.

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You didn’t note that none of the other programs will open an archive created with rar5 format in Winrar.

You need to upgrade your Winrar

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The goal of this article is not to list exactly which archivers can open which archives, you’ll have to refer to the respective program or website for that.

I’m not quite sure what your second comment means, 5.01 is the latest official version available and what was used for the test….

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Wrong! At least one program does open/extract rar5 archives:
Bandizip, beginning with V 3.09 (it is exactly the version tested here).
See here, please: bandisoft.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=2062
Maybe others in the rest can do that, I don’t know yet.
Cheers!

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… and Raymond (CC) is cooooooming back, ladies and gentlemen! :)
Nice work!
For me, still working WinRAR and 7-Zip… Plus Bandizip, from 2013, after some personal tests; love it. I tried Haozip, Kuaizip, AlZip, UltimateZip and Winarchiver too, but Bandizip was my choice.
Last month I tested an old friend, PowerArchiver, but the new version 2013 (v14, all builds) came with an ancient error of this software: the “Explorer needs to close” one. This bug was present in v12 too, but not in v13, figure it!
Cheers!

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Why wasn’t MagicRAR tested.?!

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Put simply, it’s a program very few people have heard of. If this was a test of 25 archivers it may have been included, but the 15 here are all far more well known and used.

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MagicRAR is probably one of the best ones that would be on this list, and a lot of people have heard about it, it just happens that you aren’t one of said people!

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I’ve heard of it before but virtually no-one else I know has. Apart from popping up in the odd giveaway and the advertising when it came out, MagicRAR is almost completely unknown.

If you look at download portals like CNET it gets no more than 2 or 3 downloads a WEEK, as for search engine traffic to the website, there appears to be maybe up to 5 visitors a day. By anyones definition, those sorts of numbers are not for a well known or popular software, and is a simple reason why I chose not to test as it’s maybe number 19 or 20 on my list…

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Great review Raymand. I too like 7zips more than other softwear to zip and unzip. YYZ! LoL. I have been using winrar on my old laptop for 1,172 days without a licensing key. Why you haven’t review that one? Glad to welcome you back and looking much forward to great reviews and hacking!

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I use 7Zip in my work exclusively as I can run backups from a script upon completion another script calls Fast Copy to save another copy in a secondary location…

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Very nice comparison dear. I have long been using WinRAR and 7zip. But if I win this giveaway I will certainly change over to PowerArchiver 2013 . Thanks for the giveaway.

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Great article! Nice comparison. Thank you!.

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Hey Ray Thanks for your post …. Since long you are not posting any great rebates or news !!!!

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Great article! I imagine it wasn’t that easy to compare them all. But even though I use 7Zip quite a lot, it takes time to get used to it, so I often recommend my friends B1 Free Archiver because of its interface. Speed isn’t everything.

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Thanks Tim, it’s never easy trying to pull 15 different programs together like this as many have their own issues or quirks and it’s difficult to keep the balance.

We tried to stay away from talking about the “best” archiver in the article as people define the best in different ways. B1 is a tool that was a big disappointment in the tests, it is easy to use but also terribly slow. Depending on your priorities, it’s either a good program or a poor program…

Best Zip Tool For Mac

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UHARC ?

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UHARC is not included as it’s over 7 years old since the last release/update, all the tools here are recent versions and/or still in active development.

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Great list thanks. I was a huge fan of 7-Zip for years but it is not good for large directories with small files; it takes ages to compress these kinda folders with 7-Zip. I’ve tried Bandizip it is really much faster than 7-Zip. Thanks again.

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Bandizip is great

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Nice comparison. Thank you!. After trying most of the freeware you tested, I settled on FreeArc for a couple reasons: its speed beats, and compression equals, 7-Zip (my previous favorite), and its encryption capabilities include both a number of algorithm choices and the ability to use a key file simultaneously or sequentially. PeaZip provided most of the same features, but adding files to an existing archive didn’t work well for me. Quite a bit of what I do is extremely confidential, and I need to store a backup in the cloud, so encryption is critical for me. You might want to consider that among the factors you use to compare file archivers. Don’t know if it would pass your Omni.ja test, though.

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Nice one Ray……….

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I have used and then bought winrar years ago and never regret making the purchase. But I thought by now there should be better archive/compression methods since rar like zip is outdated by now. Have high hopes for 7z, also to look out for is Freearc which seems to be making waves recently.

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Winrar all this while, no reason to change yet i guess :)

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I use PowerArhiver and I am very pleased with it , I can say that the consumption of resources uses much less as Winrar . Very useful and good article thanks

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nice post ray, I use WinRAR and I’m very love it,

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thanks for the writeup mate. sure was informative! been a couple of weeks since i got newletters form you, sigh!!

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in file compression, i first use winzip then i bumped into winrar… since then i didn’t switch to other file compression softwares… thanks for this review…. :)

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