Alternatives to XZ Utils
The standard command-line tool for creating and reading .xz files. The listings below can replace it for an important use case. Each note says what changes if you switch.
The original
XZ Utils
The standard command-line tool for creating and reading .xz files.
Replacements
Listings that take over the same core job as XZ Utils.
Zstandard
Meta's compression tool that hits near-zlib ratios at far higher speed, now used across Linux and modern filesystems.
Zstandard compresses and decompresses much faster and also reads and writes xz files, but its maximum ratio is below xz at the slowest settings.
7-Zip
The small, free archiver that opens practically every archive format and compresses better than ZIP.
7-Zip also uses LZMA2 and creates XZ files, adds the 7z container and a Windows graphical app, and is licensed under LGPL-2.1.
p7zip
Command-line port of 7-Zip's compression tools for POSIX systems.
p7zip provides 7-Zip's LZMA compression on the Linux and macOS command line, is widely bundled in distributions, but has slower development.
Brotli
Compress and decompress data using the Brotli format.
Brotli is an MIT-licensed command-line tool and library using a different format, and its stream does not include checksums or original length metadata.
Lzip
A command-line lossless compressor using a simplified LZMA, designed for long-term archiving and data safety.
Lzip uses a simplified LZMA with integrity checking and recovery options for long-term archiving, but is less widely used than xz.
bzip2
A long-established command-line block-sorting compressor and library for .bz2 files.
bzip2 is a long-established, widely supported compressor with limited recovery from damaged media, generally slower than modern compressors.
GNU Gzip
The GNU command-line compression program that creates and decompresses .gz files.
GNU Gzip is faster and read almost everywhere, but gives a lower compression ratio than xz.
bzip3
A command-line compressor and library intended as a stronger successor to bzip2.
bzip3 aims to beat bzip2 on large text and source archives, but its .bz3 format is less widely supported.
Also worth comparing
These listings name XZ Utils as their own alternative, so the relationship runs both ways.
Kanzi
A multi-threaded lossless data compressor written in Java with selectable transforms and entropy codecs.
XZ Utils uses the widely shipped .xz format with strong LZMA2 ratios and no Java requirement, though high levels are slow and memory-hungry.
lrzip
A command-line compressor for large files that finds redundancy across long distances in the data.
XZ Utils uses the widely supported .xz format with strong LZMA2 ratios on every platform, though without lrzip's long-distance redundancy search, and high levels are slow.
pixz
A parallel, indexing xz compressor that allows random access into compressed tar.xz archives.
XZ Utils is the standard .xz tool shipped on nearly every Linux and BSD system and also runs on Windows, but it lacks pixz's indexed random access into tar.xz.
Similar software
Related functionality, not a direct replacement.
ouch
Command-line tool that compresses and extracts archives without format-specific flags.
7-Zip-zstd
Build of 7-Zip that adds Zstandard, Brotli, LZ4, LZ5 and Fast-LZMA2 compression.
zpaqfranz
Keep compressed, versioned archives of changing files.
GNU Tar
The GNU command-line tool for creating, extracting, updating and listing tar archives.
bsdtar (libarchive)
Command-line archivers built on libarchive that read and write tar, zip, cpio, ISO and more.
pigz
A parallel implementation of gzip that uses multiple CPU cores to compress data faster.
