7Z

7Z is the native archive format of the 7-Zip utility, developed by Igor Pavlov and released as open-source software in 1999. It uses the LZMA or LZMA2 compression algorithms, which typically produce smaller archives than ZIP or RAR, particularly for highly compressible data such as text and executables. 7Z supports AES-256 encryption, large file sizes, and optional solid-archive mode that compresses multiple files together for better ratio.

File extensions	.7z
MIME type	application/x-7z-compressed
Developer	Igor Pavlov
First released	1999
Category	Archives
Open standard	Yes

What opens 7Z files

• 7-Zip (Windows / Linux)
• The Unarchiver (macOS)
• WinRAR
• PeaZip

Browse File Formats

Reference details for 53 file formats — extensions, MIME types, what opens each one, and how they convert.

7Z Archives ABW Documents AI Images AVIF Images AZW3 E-books BMP Images CSS Other CSV Spreadsheets DjVu E-books DOC Documents DOCX Documents EPS Images EPUB E-books FB2 E-books GIF Images GZ Archives HEIC Images HTML Documents ICO Images ISO Archives JPG Images JSON Other Keynote Presentations Markdown Documents MOBI E-books Numbers Spreadsheets ODP Presentations ODS Spreadsheets ODT Documents OTF Other Pages Documents PDF Documents PNG Images PPT Presentations PPTX Presentations PSD Images RAR Archives RAW Images RTF Documents SVG Images TAR Archives TeX / LaTeX Documents TIFF Images TSV Spreadsheets TTF Other TXT Documents WebP Images WOFF / WOFF2 Other WPD Documents XLS Spreadsheets XLSX Spreadsheets XML Documents ZIP Archives