Open source archiving software compresses to 7z format which has a lower compression ratio than most other archiving formats. 7-Zip even compresses standard zip formats smaller than most other compatible programs.

7-Zip utilizes LZMA and LZMA2 compression, and can encrypt using the strong AES-256 symmetrical cipher. Other abilities include creation of self extracting archives, integration with Windows shell, a powerful file manager, a command line version, and localization for dozens of languages.

The following archive formats are supported by 7-Zip:

• Packing / unpacking: 7z, XZ, BZIP2, GZIP, TAR, ZIP and WIM
• Unpacking only: ARJ, CAB, CHM, CPIO, CramFS, DEB, DMG, FAT, HFS, ISO, LZH, LZMA, MBR, MSI, NSIS, NTFS, RAR, RPM, SquashFS, UDF, VHD, WIM, XAR and Z.