7-Zip is the gold-standard free archiver for Windows. It compresses files smaller than WinZip or WinRAR using its native 7z format, and it can open virtually any archive format you encounter — ZIP, RAR, TAR, GZ, BZ2, XZ, ISO, and more.
It integrates into Windows Explorer’s right-click context menu so archiving and extracting is just two clicks away. There’s no bloatware, no subscription, no nags — it’s been free and open source for over 25 years.
Unlike WinRAR (which technically requires a paid license after the trial) or the built-in Windows ZIP support (which is slow and limited), 7-Zip just works for everything.