PeaZip is a cross-platform, free file archiver and extractor, capable of supporting more than 180 archives. Providing fast multi-format archive formats like 7Z, ARC, BR, BZ2, GZ TAR ZIP to quickly archive files quickly with high compression ratio.
Keyfiles provide increased security during extraction by counteracting dictionary and social engineering password guessing attacks. You can even save any task as a script (via Save as command button in file archiving / conversion and extraction interfaces).
Features
PeaZip comes equipped with many features for file archiving, backup and compression. Supporting over 200 archive formats – localized in over 30 languages – PeaZip also prioritizes security through strong file encryption, two factor authentication and secure data deletion. Furthermore, this tool can convert archives between formats as well as create self-extracting files while adding and editing files inside existing archives as well as bookmarking archives/folders and conducting various search filters.
The latest version of the program offers numerous enhancements and new features, including enhanced support for archive formats, faster speed, less memory usage and removal of legacy code. Now the tool can open archives of up to 250,000 items faster and uses 10% less memory compared to its previous version; additionally developers have eliminated a bottleneck during selection of large groups of files for archiving/extraction.
This program allows users to schedule archiveing tasks via Windows Task Scheduler and automatically back up archived files on external drives. Furthermore, it extracts archived files to a temporary location while creating thumbnails for files within an archive. It also features various file management functions like bytewise file comparison, secure deletion and system benchmarking – plus it offers split/join files operations, make recursive copy operations, view images as well as generate random passwords and keyfiles!
Interface
PeaZip features an appealing, modern interface, with a toolbar equipped with buttons to add and extract files and a workspace that emulates Windows Explorer – featuring drag and drop support, to move objects across panels or within Windows, for use when adding them to PeaZip’s archive layout or opening archive files dragged from elsewhere on your system. Furthermore, its context menu contains other functions, including mass rename and deletion as well as searching duplicates and verifying checksums or hashes of displayed or selected files.
This program comes equipped with an optional lock to prevent unauthorised access, and uses keyfile encryption (extraction) for higher security than password-only solutions, thus mitigating dictionary attacks or social engineering schemes to bypass password guessing shortcuts. Furthermore, there is also a password manager built-in so users can keep track of their own passwords.
For those who prefer running it via the command line, Archive/Conversion and Extract also provides its own frontend that translates GUI commands into scripts before running them as batch or shell mode executables. You can access this feature from either interface: either through “Save as script” button in Archiving/Conversion interface or Extraction interface or Console tab of Task task.
PeaZip can be downloaded as a DEB package for Ubuntu or other Debian-based distributions, RPM for RHEL/Fedora systems and Flatpak for Arch, as well as being portable-ready on Windows, macOS and BSD systems.
Supported File Formats
PeaZip supports over 175 archive file formats. This list of file types includes Zip (both read and write support), RAR, 7Z, TAR, bzip2, gz and tgz files, FreeArc’s ARC/WRC archives as well as ZPAQ/UPX/xz and PEA native file extensions from ZPAQ UPX xz and FreeArc WRC archives as well as ZPAQ’s ZPAQ file extension native extension ZPAQ/UPX/xz files as well as PeaZip’s own native PEA file extensions for maximum security. Furthermore PeaZip supports encrypted archives both using AES encryption algorithms with keyfile/password combination providing maximum protection of any keyfile/password combination providing added protection when accessing archive contents.
PeaZip features an intuitive user interface with an upper toolbar equipped with buttons for actions such as conversion, testing, extracting and more. Furthermore, its features can be integrated directly into Windows context menu for convenient access.
The application uses the Deflate compression algorithm, which is efficient on modern hardware. This provides a huge advantage over older compression utilities which tend to use up more resources and move slower. Furthermore, it supports both AE-encrypted archives as well as ZIPCrypto-encrypted ones. However, PeaZip does not support WinZip’s newer ZIPX archive formats which offer additional advantages (such as improved performance or file encryption) at the expense of compatibility with older ZIP utilities and often require extra meta data updates to update required features correctly; such archives can still be opened using PeaZip but you are advised to edit them with appropriate tools to retain required features.
Price
Windows comes equipped with its own file compression tools, but PeaZip offers far superior file compression options. Available both for Windows and Linux OS platforms alike, PeaZip offers more than 200 archive formats support as well as an advanced archiving and encryption system that enables it to extract multiple files simultaneously while creating self-extracting archives or converting file formats, split and join archives securely delete files as well as securely split/join/join archives and securely delete files securely – this program can even be used on external storage devices such as USB flash drives!
PeaZip was our top performer when it came to file compression performance in our tests, ranking ahead of both Bandizip and Winrar in our Deflate method tests with an excellent compression ratio of 97MB while still keeping speed high; BZip2 algorithm and Zstandard also produced comparable results; plus it offered strong encryption using password protection and keyfile storage for added peace of mind.
PeaZip’s latest version focuses on improving performance, with an extraction process that’s faster and uses less RAM than before, password protection detection, incorrect path name correction capabilities, drag-and-drop support improvements, library updates translations and an UPX frontend being among its main goals.