List of archive formats

This is a list of file formats used by archivers and compressors used to create archive files.

Archive formats by purpose

Archive formats are used for backups, mobility, and archiving. Many archive formats losslessly compress the data to consume less storage space and result in faster transfer times as the same data is represented by fewer bytes. Another benefit is that files are combined into one archive file which has less overhead for managing or transferring. Archive formats are used by Unix-like and Windows operating systems to package software for easier distributing and installing than binary executables.

Archiving and compression

File extension	MIME type	Official name	Creation platform	Restoration platform	Restorable with free software	Description
.7z	application/	7z	Multiple	Multiple		Open source file format. Used by 7-Zip.
.s7z	application/	7zX	macOS	macOS, restoration on different platforms is possible although not immediate		Based on 7z. Preserves Spotlight metadata, resource forks, owner/group information, dates and other data which would be otherwise lost with compression. Made obsolete by the introduction of AppleDouble-encoded 7z archives.
.aar	application/	Apple Archive	macOS	macOS		Created by Apple introduced with iOS 14 in 2020.
.ace	application/	ACE	Windows	Multiple		Proprietary format
.afa	application/	AFA	UNIX-like	UNIX-like		A format that compresses and doubly encrypt the data avoiding brute force attacks, also hide files in an AFA file. It has two ways to safeguard data integrity and subsequent repair of the file if has an error or Astrotite ).
.alz	application/	ALZip	Windows	Multiple		A mainly Korean format designed for very large archives.
.apk	application/	APK	Multiple	Multiple		Android application package.
.arc,.ark	application/	ARC	Multiple	Multiple		Very popular in the early days of BBSes, one of the first to offer compression and archiving in a single program. Largely replaced by PKZIP.
.arc,.cdx	application/	FreeArc	Windows, Linux	Windows, Linux		Open source file format developed by Bulat Ziganshin. A "FreeArc Next" version is under development which includes Zstandard support.
.arj	application/	ARJ	Originally DOS, now multiple	Multiple		Competitor to PKZIP in the 1990s, offered better multi-part archive handling.
.b1	application/	B1	Multiple	Multiple		Open archive format, used by B1 Free Archiver
.b6z		B6Z	macOS	Multiple		Compressed archive format B6Zip
.ba		Scifer	Multiple	Multiple		Binary Archive with external header
.bh		BlakHole				Proprietary format from the ZipTV Compression Components
.cab	application/	Cabinet	Windows	Multiple		The Microsoft Windows native archive format, which is also used by many proprietary installers such as WISE.
.car		Compressia archive	Originally DOS, now DOS and Windows	Originally DOS, now DOS and Windows		Created by Yaakov Gringeler; released last in 2003, now apparently defunct. Free trial of 30 days lets user create and extract archives; after that it is possible to extract, but not to create.
.cfs	application/	Compact File Set	Windows, Unix-like including macOS	Multiple		Open source file format.
.cpt		Compact Pro	Classic Mac OS	Multiple		Compact Pro archive, a common archiver used on Mac platforms until about Mac OS 7.5.x. Competed with StuffIt; now obsolete.
.dar	application/	Disk Archiver	Unix-like including macOS	Unix-like including macOS, Windows		Open source file format. Files are compressed individually with either gzip, bzip2 or lzo.
.dd		DiskDoubler	Classic Mac OS			Obsolete
.dgc	application/	DGCA	Windows	Windows
.dmg	application/	Apple Disk Image	macOS	macOS, Windows, Linux		Supports "Internet-enabled" disk images, which, once downloaded, are automatically decompressed, mounted, have the contents extracted, and thrown away. Currently, Safari is the only browser that supports this form of extraction; however, the images can be manually extracted as well. This format can also be password-protected or encrypted with 128-bit or 256-bit AES encryption.
.ear		EAR	Multiple	Multiple		Enterprise Java Archive archive
.gca	application/	GCA				The predecessor of DGCA.
.genozip		Genozip	Linux, macOS, Windows	Linux, macOS, Windows		Optimized for genomic file types such as FASTQ, BAM, VCF
.ha			Originally DOS, now multiple	Multiple	, but may be covered by patents	DOS era format; uses arithmetic/Markov coding
.hki		WinHKI	MS Windows	MS Windows		HKI
.ice		ICE	Windows	Windows		Produced by ICEOWS program. Excels at text file compression.
.jar	application/	JAR	Multiple	Multiple		Java archive, compatible with ZIP files
.kgb		KGB Archiver	Multiple	Multiple		Open sourced archiver with compression using the PAQ family of algorithms and optional encryption.
.lzh,.lha	application/	LHA	Originally DOS, now multiple	Multiple		The standard format on Amiga.
.lzx	application/	LZX	Amiga			Archiver originally used on The Amiga. Now copied by Microsoft to use in their.cab and.chm files.
.pak		PAK	HP NonStop	HP NonStop		file format from NoGate Consultings, a rival from ARC-Compressor. .pak was also briefly used by the short lived MSDOS PKPAK program.
.partimg		PartImage	Multiple	Multiple		A disk image archive format that supports several compression methods as well as splitting the archive into smaller pieces.
.paq6,.paq7,.paq8 and variants		PAQ	Unix-like and Windows	Unix-like and Windows		An experimental open source packager
.pea		PeaZip	Linux and Windows	Linux and Windows		Open source archiver supporting authenticated encryption, cascaded encryption, volume spanning, customizable object level and volume level integrity checks, fast deflate based compression
.phar		PHAR	Multiple	Multiple		A package format to enable distribution of applications and libraries by bundling many PHP code files and other resources into a single archive file
.pim		PIM	Windows	Windows		The format from the PIM - a freeware compression tool by Ilia Muraviev. It uses an LZP-based compression algorithm with set of filters for executable, image and audio files.
.pit		PackIt	Classic Mac OS			obsolete
.qda		Quadruple D	Windows	Windows		Used for data in games written using the Quadruple D library for Delphi. Uses byte pair compression.
.rar	application/	RAR	Originally DOS, now WinRAR	Multiple		A popular proprietary archive format.
.rk		RK and WinRK	Multiple	Multiple		The format from a proprietary archiving package. Odd among proprietary packages in that they focus on incorporating experimental algorithms with the highest possible compression, such as PAQ, PPMD and PPMZ, as well as a proprietary algorithms.
.sda		Self Dissolving ARChive	Commodore 64, Commodore 128	Commodore 64, Commodore 128		SDAs refer to Self Dissolving ARC files, and are based on the Commodore 64 and Commodore 128 versions of ARC, originally written by Chris Smeets. While the files share the same extension, they are not compatible between platforms. That is, an SDA created on a Commodore 64 but run on a Commodore 128 in Commodore 128 mode will crash the machine, and vice versa. The intended successor to SDA is SFX.
.sea		Self Extracting Archive	Classic Mac OS	Classic Mac OS		A pre-Mac OS X Self-Extracting Archive format. StuffIt, Compact Pro, Disk Doubler and others could create.sea files, though the StuffIt versions were the most common.
.sen		Scifer	Multiple	Multiple		Scifer Archive with internal header
.sfx		Self Extracting Archive	Commodore 64, Commodore 128	Commodore 64, Commodore 128		SFX is a Self Extracting Archive which uses the LHArc compression algorithm. It was originally developed by Chris Smeets on the Commodore platform, and runs primarily using the CS-DOS extension for the Commodore 128. Unlike its predecessor SDA, SFX files will run on both the Commodore 64 and Commodore 128 regardless of which machine they were created on.
.shk		NuFX	Originally Apple II, now multiple	Multiple		An archive format designed for the Apple II series of computers. The canonical implementation is ShrinkIt, which can operate on disk images as well as files. Preferred compression algorithm is a combination of RLE and 12-bit LZW. Archives can be manipulated with the command-line NuLib tool, or the Windows-based CiderPress.
.sit	application/	StuffIt	Originally Classic Mac OS, now multiple	Originally Classic Mac OS, now multiple		A compression format common on Apple Macintosh computers. The free StuffIt Expander is available for Windows and macOS.
.sitx	application/	StuffIt X	Multiple	Multiple		The replacement for the.sit format that supports more compression methods, UNIX file permissions, long file names, very large files, more encryption options, data specific compressors. The free StuffIt Expander is available for Windows and OS X.
.sqx		SQX	Windows	Windows		A royalty-free compressing format
.tar.gz,.tgz,.tar.Z,.tar.bz2, .tbz2,.tar.lz,.tlz,.tar.xz,.txz,.tar.zst	application/	tar with gzip, compress, bzip2, lzip, xz, or zstd	Multiple	Multiple		The "tarball" format combines tar archives with a file-based compression scheme. Commonly used for source and binary distribution on Unix-like platforms, widely available elsewhere. Xarchiver supports the.tar.zst Archive/Compression format on Unix-like platforms.
.uc.uc0.uc2.ucn.ur2.ue2		UltraCompressor II	DOS	DOS		UltraCompressor 2.3 was developed to act as an alternative to the then popular PKZIP application. The main feature of the application is its ability to create large archives. This means that compressed archives with the UC2 file extension can hold almost 1 million files.
.uca		PerfectCompress	Windows	Windows		Based on PAQ, RZM, CSC, CCM, and 7zip. The format consists of a PAQ, RZM, CSC, or CCM compressed file and a manifest with compression settings stored in a 7z archive.
.uha		UHarc	DOS/Windows	DOS/Windows		A high compression rate archive format originally for DOS.
.war		WAR	Multiple	Multiple		Web Application archive
.wim	application/	Windows Image	Windows	Windows		File-based disk image format developed to deploy Microsoft Windows.
.xar	application/	XAR	Multiple	Multiple
.xp3		KiriKiri	Windows	Windows		Native format of the Open Source KiriKiri Visual Novel engine. Uses combination of block splitting and zlib compression. The filenames and pathes are stored in UTF-16 format. For integrity check, the Adler-32 hashsum is used. For many proprietary games, the files are encrypted via so-called "cxdec" module, which implements xor-based encryption.
.yz1		YZ1	Windows, DOS, Linux	Windows, DOS, Linux		Yamazaki zipper archive. Compression format used in DeepFreezer archiver utility created by Yamazaki Satoshi. Read and write support exists in TUGZip, IZArc and ZipZag
.zip,.zipx	application/	ZIP	Originally DOS, now multiple	Multiple		The most widely used compression format on Microsoft Windows. Commonly used on Macintosh and Unix systems as well.
.zoo	application/	zoo	Multiple	Multiple
.zpaq		ZPAQ	Multiple	Multiple		Journaling archive format with rollback capability. Supports deduplication and incremental update based on last-modified dates. Multi-threaded. Compresses in LZ77, BWT, and context mixing formats. Open source.
.zz		Zzip	Multiple	Multiple		Archiver with a compression algorithm based on the Burrows–Wheeler transform method.

Comparison

Containers and compression

Format

Created
by

Introduced in

Based on

Integrity check

Recovery record

Encryption supported

Unicode filenames

Modification date resolution

Pre-processing

License

Software packaging and distribution

Format	Filename extension	Created by	Introduced in	Based on	Integrity check	Recovery record	Encryption supported	Unicode filenames	Modification date resolution
Debian package	.deb	Debian	1994 Debian 0.91	ar, tar, and gzip, xz					1 s
Macintosh Installer	.pkg,.mpkg	NeXT	1989 NeXTSTEP 1.0	pax and gzip
RPM Package Manager	.rpm	Red Hat	1995 Red Hat Linux 1.0	cpio and gzip					1 s
Slackware Package	.tgz	Patrick Volkerding	1993 Slackware 1.0	tar and gzip
Windows Installer	.msi	Microsoft	2000 Windows 2000	OLE Structured Storage, Cabinet and SQL	PKCS7 Authenticode Signature				2 s
MSIX	.appx,.appxbundle,.emsix,.emsixbundle,.msix,.msixbundle	Microsoft	2012 Windows 8	Zip					1 s
Java Archive	.jar	Sun Microsystems	1997 JDK 1.1	PKZIP
Google Chrome extension package	.crx	Google	2009	Zip
Pacman	.pkg.tar.zst,.pkg.tar	Judd Vinet	2001	tar and zstd					1 s