7-zip vs WinRar

7-zip is a free file compression program. It can compress/decompress many compression formats, and also comes with its own format.

My company gave me a licensed WinRAR. Let's see hot 7-zip compared to commercial product.

First I tried to compress the whole "My Documents" folder. It contained a lot of text and binary files, including a few MP3 and JPG pictures (which is already compressed).

Then I try to compress the whole cygwin directory, contain mostly binary files. Most of the files are not compressed.

	uncompress		7-zip (.zip)	7-zip (.7z)	WinRAR (.zip)	WinRAR(.rar)
My Documents	93.1MB		27.4	14.7	28.1	21.9
cygwin	449MB		175	113	180	159