One of the first things I do after a fresh Windows installation is download third-party apps like VLC media player and 7-Zip, tools I consider essential for getting started. 7-Zip has been irreplaceable on Windows because Microsoft didn’t offer a proper first-party alternative for extracting compressed files in formats beyond ZIP until recently.
With Windows 11, Microsoft has expanded support for compression formats, so you won’t need 7-Zip anymore, until you realize that Windows’ built-in archive utility lacks many features, support for compression formats, and lags behind in compression speeds.
Windows 11 now handles most archive formats
File Explorer has grown from ZIP to 7z and TAR
Over the past few years, Microsoft has slowly added native support for compressed files in Windows 11. Windows has supported ZIP for decades, but Windows 11 and later updates added extraction for RAR, TAR, 7z, GZ, and similar formats, and update 24H2 also added a compression wizard in File Explorer.
Before Windows 11 23H2, you’d have to rely on a third-party tool like 7-Zip or WinRAR for anything other than ZIP. Now, Windows 11’s built-in extraction wizard defeats the purpose of downloading these tools. However, 7-Zip is faster and has more features than Windows 11’s default extractor.
Shell integration and single-threaded handling add overhead that 7-Zip avoids
For 7z, Windows 11 can use the same compression method as 7-Zip, but the speed difference comes from the implementation. Windows’ archive utility struggles with the same issue that applies to every other first-party app: inefficient implementation.
For starters, Windows’ Extractor is built into File Explorer and isn’t a separate app. This same integration adds performance overhead from heavy shell-integration hooks, animations, and other processes it runs. Then, File Explorer processes files one by one, using only a single core at once.
In contrast, 7-Zip is much more efficient because it has no UI bottlenecks or overhead, uses optimized archive-management code, and can use multiple CPU cores at once to speed up compression and extraction.
7-Zip is still much faster
Compressing 3.29GB of PNGs took Windows nearly three times as long
To show the actual difference between File Explorer and 7-Zip, TweakNow compared them for compression and extraction. When compressing 800 images (PNG) to ZIP that totaled roughly 3.29GB, Windows 11 took 01:28, while 7-Zip took less than half of that at just 30.98 seconds.
Extracting the same ZIP file, 7-Zip took 15.55 seconds at 211.6 MB/s, while Windows took 37.22 seconds at 88–90 MB/s, making 7-Zip roughly 2.4 times faster than File Explorer.
For compression, File Explorer takes the win over 7-Zip, but it offers lower compression quality. File Explorer produces a significantly larger archive size than 7-Zip. My own testing showed 7-Zip taking 1:25 to compress a 1.6GB folder to 1.1 GB, while Windows took 55 seconds, but the final size came down to 1.5GB.
This speed gap widens with larger files. If you regularly unpack or compress larger files, you’ll get lower speeds and larger file sizes, which defeats the purpose of compressing files in the first place.
Where Windows 11 still falls short
Missing encryption, split volumes, and compression format support
Windows handles only basic archive tasks, so for broader functionality you’ll still need 7-Zip. For instance, Windows 11 can’t create RAR archives, but only extract them.
Then, File Explorer can’t open or create archives with AES-256 encryption, so you’re locked out of password-protected archives, whether you’re extracting or compressing them.
If that isn’t enough, there’s no native support for ISO extraction (without mounting) and other less common compression types, command-line support, solid compression, or self-extracting archives. For an average user, this may not matter much, but for someone who needs a proper archive utility, 7-Zip is crucial.
It makes sense that Windows doesn’t have this extended support, since 7-Zip is built around compression and extraction as a whole, while Windows offers only basic archive functions for convenience that allow extraction/compression by just opening the right-click context menu.
Windows 11 is enough for light, occasional use
A simple, separate wizard would’ve fixed the speed problems with the File Explorer integration. Still, 7-Zip has support for 30+ formats, which Windows’ archive utility can’t hold a candle to.
If you mostly handle PDF documents or photos, you probably don’t need 7-Zip. However, you can’t rely on Windows 11’s archive utility for larger files because it’s slower. If you also need support for file types like ISO and features like AES-256 encryption, splitting into volumes, and more, these are missing from Windows’ archive utility.
This is where 7-Zip still becomes irreplaceable. It’s free, lightweight, open source and integrates into the right-click context menu, so you don’t even have to open the app anytime you need to extract or compress a file.