While WinRAR and WinZip are household names, 7-Zip consistently beats them in speed and price. WinRAR is famous for its "infinite" free trial, but 7-Zip is truly open-source under the GNU LGPL license. If you want a "set it and forget it" tool that handles every compressed file type you throw at it, 7-Zip is the clear winner. Final Thoughts

Right-click a file or folder, hover over "7-Zip," and select "Add to archive..." or "Add to 'Foldername.7z'."

Once the 7-Zip download is installed, you don't even need to open the program to use it. It integrates directly into your Windows File Explorer.