The following tables compare general and technical information for a number of

file archiver In computing, a file archiver is utility software that combines computer file, files into a single archive file or in less common cases, multiple files. A minimally designed archiver might concatenate the content of files along with file file n ...

s. Please see the individual products' articles for further information. They are neither all-inclusive nor are some entries necessarily up to date. Unless otherwise specified in the footnotes section, comparisons are based on the stable versions—''without'' add-ons, extensions or external programs.

General information

Basic general information about the archivers. Legend:

Notes:

Operating system support

The

operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware and software resources, and provides common daemon (computing), services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems scheduler (computing), schedule tasks for ...

s the archivers can run on without emulation or compatibility layer. Ubuntu's own GUI ''Archive manager,'' for example, can open and create many archive formats (including Rar archives) even to the extent of splitting into parts and encryption and ability to be read by the ''native program''. This is presumably a "compatibility layer." Notes:

Archiver features

Information about what common archiver features are implemented natively (without third-party add-ons). Notes:

Archive format support

Reading

Information about what archive formats the archivers can read. External links lead to information about support in future versions of the archiver or extensions that provide such functionality. Note that gzip, bzip2 and xz are compression formats rather than archive formats. Notes:

Writing

Information about what archive formats the archivers can write and create. External links lead to information about support in future versions of the archiver or extensions that provide such functionality. Note that gzip, bzip2 and xz are compression formats rather than archive formats. Notes:

Uncommon archive format support

PeaZip has full support for Brotli, Zstandard, various LPAQ and PAQ formats, QUAD / BALZ / BCM (highly efficient ROLZ based compressors), FreeArc format, and for its native PEA format. 7-Zip includes read support for .msi,

cpio cpio is a general file archiver utility and its associated file format. It is primarily installed on Unix-like computer operating systems. The software utility was originally intended as a tape archiving program as part of the Programmer's Work ...

and xar, plus Apple's dmg/

HFS HFS may refer to: Businesses and organisations * Croatian Film Association () * Hellenic Fire Service, Greece * Hospitality Franchise Systems, US Computing * Hierarchical file system, a system for organizing directories and files * Hierarchica ...

disk images and the deb/ .rpm package distribution formats; beta versions (9.07 onwards) have full support for the LZMA2-compressed . xz format.