PeaZip is a free cross-platform archive manager that provides an open-source alternative to proprietary software like WinZip and WinRar.
The tool solves the need for a unified interface to handle diverse archive formats and operations across multiple operating systems. It works with over two hundred archive types and variants including 7z, rar, zip, brotli, zstandard, and many others, while also handling spanned archives. Beyond extraction, it offers compression using open-source technologies from projects like 7-Zip, FreeArc, PAQ, and Zstandard, file splitting and joining, archive conversion, comment editing, and archive searching. The application includes security features such as strong encryption with multiple standards, two-factor authentication, an encrypted password manager, and secure deletion capabilities. It also functions as a general file manager with bookmarking, search, duplicate detection, and integrated viewers for text, hex, and image content.
Developers and end users seeking a lightweight, portable alternative to commercial archivers should consider PeaZip, particularly those on BSD, Linux, macOS, or Windows who need broad format support without installation overhead. The tool runs as a native application on x86-64 and ARM architectures and is available as a portable package. It suits users who value open-source licensing and those needing to work with less common archive formats or perform advanced operations like volume spanning and format conversion. The project explicitly positions itself against proprietary software in the same category.
The codebase is written in Lazarus and FreePascal with Windows installers scripted in InnoSetup. The project maintains source snapshots alongside each release and provides detailed build instructions for compiling binaries and creating packages across target systems. A separate translations repository indicates ongoing localization efforts. The tool includes benchmarking documentation and maintains comprehensive FAQ and support resources alongside an active issue tracker.
