Which is the best compression format?

RAR or Zip or 7z

The famous compression format which we know is "ZIP".While the ZIP format predates the RAR format, the latter has advantages over ZIP compression.

1) RAR files compress more efficiently, resulting in smaller file size than zip files though it takes slightly longer to compress and decompress RAR files.

2) RAR files are easier to repair if it has been corrupted. Newer versions of the format also support Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) and multi-threading.

3) Current versions of Windows operating systems incorporate native support for both RAR and ZIP files.

A popular, free and open source compression utility is 7-zip, which handles RAR, ZIP,etc.The main feature of 7-Zip is the High compression ratio in new 7z format with LZMA compression.

Features of 7zip:
1) Packing / unpacking: 7z, ZIP, GZIP, BZIP2 and TAR
2) Unpacking only: RAR, CAB, CHM, MSI & some other formats
3) For ZIP and GZIP formats, 7-Zip provides a compression ratio that is 2-10 % better than the ratio provided by PKZip and WinZip
4) Strong AES-256 encryption in 7z and ZIP formats