Alternatives to 7-Zip-zstd
Build of 7-Zip that adds Zstandard, Brotli, LZ4, LZ5 and Fast-LZMA2 compression. The listings below can replace it for an important use case. Each note says what changes if you switch.
The original
7-Zip-zstd
Build of 7-Zip that adds Zstandard, Brotli, LZ4, LZ5 and Fast-LZMA2 compression.
Replacements
Listings that take over the same core job as 7-Zip-zstd.
7-Zip
The small, free archiver that opens practically every archive format and compresses better than ZIP.
7-Zip is the upstream project, running on Windows with console builds for Linux and macOS, but it lacks the added Zstandard, Brotli and LZ4 codecs.
NanaZip
A 7-Zip fork that adds the Windows 11 right-click menu and ships through the Microsoft Store.
NanaZip is a 7-Zip fork for Windows 10 and 11 that adds the Windows 11 context menu and Store updates, and is MIT licensed rather than BSD.
PeaZip
A cross-platform archive manager that reads over two hundred formats and has a real file manager built in.
PeaZip is a cross-platform graphical archive manager reading over 200 formats with a built-in file manager, under the LGPL-3.0 license, with a busier interface.
Bandizip
Fast archiver for Windows and macOS with strong Unicode handling.
Bandizip offers multi-core compression on Windows and macOS with strong Unicode handling, but it is closed source and its free edition shows advertisements.
WinRAR
The archiver that created the RAR format, sold as shareware whose trial has never really expired.
WinRAR is paid, closed source software that creates RAR archives with recovery records, but it does not offer the extra Zstandard and Brotli codecs.
Also worth comparing
These listings name 7-Zip-zstd as their own alternative, so the relationship runs both ways.
p7zip
Command-line port of 7-Zip's compression tools for POSIX systems.
7-Zip-zstd adds Zstandard, Brotli and LZ4 codecs to 7-Zip on Windows and Linux, but archives using them will not open in stock 7-Zip.
Zipware
A freeware Windows archiver that extracts ZIP, RAR, 7z and many other formats and creates ZIP and 7z archives.
7-Zip-zstd is a BSD-3-Clause 7-Zip build adding Zstandard, Brotli and LZ4 codecs, though archives using those codecs will not open in stock 7-Zip.
Similar software
Related functionality, not a direct replacement.
Zstandard
Meta's compression tool that hits near-zlib ratios at far higher speed, now used across Linux and modern filesystems.
Brotli
Compress and decompress data using the Brotli format.
XZ Utils
The standard command-line tool for creating and reading .xz files.
LZ4
A lossless compression format and command-line tool built for very high compression and decompression speed.
