Extract 7Z

Open a .7z archive and download what is inside — no 7-Zip install, nothing uploaded.

Extract Archives

Select a .zip, .rar, .tar.gz or .7z file to extract its contents inside your browser. No files are uploaded to any server.

The format nothing opens by default

ZIP is built into every operating system. 7z is not built into any of them, which is the awkward part: someone sends you a .7z, and getting one document out of it means installing an archive manager first. That is a lot of ceremony for a file you will read once.

This page reads the format directly. libarchive — the same reader behind a great many desktop tools — is compiled to WebAssembly and runs in a background thread on your own machine.

Why it compresses so much better

7z uses LZMA, which looks for repeated data across a window measured in megabytes rather than the 32 KB that deflate — the algorithm inside ZIP — works with. It also compresses the files as one continuous stream instead of one at a time, so twenty similar spreadsheets share their redundancy rather than each carrying its own copy.

The trade-off is on the way out: because the stream is continuous, pulling a single file from the end of a large archive can mean working through much of what came before it. That is why a big 7z takes noticeably longer to open than a ZIP of the same size.

What is refused, and why

Encrypted archives are declined with a message rather than a confusing error, since nothing here asks for a password yet. Very large or deliberately malicious archives are refused too: everything is extracted into memory, so the archive's own listing is checked against the same caps ZIP extraction uses before any of it is decompressed.

Extract 7Z FAQ

Do I need 7-Zip installed?

No, and that is most of the point. 7z is the one common archive format no operating system opens on its own — Windows, macOS and most Linux desktops all need software installed first. This page reads it directly in the browser, which is often the quickest way to get one file out of an archive on a machine you would rather not install anything on.

Is my archive uploaded?

No. Decompression runs in a background thread on your own device, using libarchive compiled to WebAssembly. The archive never leaves the tab, and both the code and the compressed data stay on your machine.

Why is 7z usually smaller than ZIP?

Two reasons. It uses LZMA rather than deflate, which finds matches across a far larger window, and it compresses the files as one continuous stream rather than each separately — so a folder of similar files shares its redundancy instead of repeating it. That is also why extracting one file from a large 7z can mean decompressing rather a lot of what sits before it.

Can it open a password-protected 7z?

Not at the moment. Encrypted 7z archives are refused with a message rather than a confusing failure. If that would be useful, it is a reasonable thing to add.

What about a huge archive?

The same caps that protect ZIP and tar.gz extraction apply here, and for the same reason: everything is extracted into memory, so an archive engineered to expand to gigabytes would otherwise take the tab down. The archive's own listing is checked before anything is decompressed, so a declared bomb is refused without allocating for it.