WinRAR

RAR is the best, but SmartTAR can be better...

A lot of programs these days open Rar, though Winrar is the official tool for creating Rar files. I had to wonder how relevant Winrar is these years, .. and it still is.

From Perplexity AI: RAR uses advanced algorithms like PPMd and LZMA2 to shrink files more effectively—often 10-40% smaller than ZIP equivalents on text, videos, or databases.

Overall, a solid program and you can't really knock them for it. While technically it is freemium software, if you never pay for it, all they do is bug you whenever you turn it on to buy a license, which as far as freemium products go is pretty mild.

I actually moved to WinRAR from 7-zip because of a few critical security holes in the latter - and yes, I have paid for it. I love how well RAR5 performs in terms of compression while still maintaining a good speed (if all I was after was a high compression ratio, I'd use ZPAQ for everything), and the user interface is exactly how I want it.

In Russia, and not only, this piece of software was abused by more cracks and serials than any other in existence. Including "Photoshop" even. However, I only used it for a while. Then I came to "Haozip". Later on to something else. These days I am using "Haozip" again. I don't know why I dumped it, as it's a copy of "Winrar" with some extra functions. Also, the best % compressor is TAR.XZ. Although slow. LZ4 is very fast. With results much better than ZIP. RAR or ZIP are nothing in comparison. There is also LZTURBO, which could be the fastest of all. I have not yet tested it. See for yourself. Also, ARC ("Freearc") is powerful for its use of special modules and preprocessing files. Gives much better results than "Winrar". But for the sake of piracy and availability none of these algos or programs ever gained the popularity of "Winrar". Pirates and torrents totally made that program. So much that it survived decades. Because if you used it when you were 12, you would be using it still when you were 35.