LZMA SDK (Software Development Kit)
7z Format
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LZMA SDK (Software Development Kit)
The
LZMA SDK
provides the documentation, samples, header files, libraries,
and tools you need to develop applications that use
LZMA
compression.
Link
Size
Date
Version
Description
1.7 MB
2026-02-12
26.00
LZMA SDK
C, C++, C#, Java
x86/x64/arm64 binaries for Windows
1 MB
2023-06-20
23.01
12 KB
2015-06-14
LZMA Specification (Draft)
What's new:
26.00:
Some minor fixes.
25.01:
The code for handling symbolic links has been changed to provide greater security when extracting files from archives.
25.00:
7-Zip for Windows can now use more than 64 CPU threads for compression.
24.09:
The default dictionary size values for LZMA/LZMA2 compression methods were increased.
24.05:
New filter for RISC-V executables.
23.01:
New filter for ARM64 executables. BCJ2 filter was improved for better compression ratio. Some bugs were fixed.
21.07:
Some minor changes and fixes.
21.06:
The bug in LZMA encoding function was fixed.
21.03 beta:
LZMA dicrionary up to 4 GB. Speed optimizations.
21.02 alpha:
macOS and Linux support. Speed optimizations.
19.00:
Encryption strength for 7z archives was increased.
18.06:
Some speed optimiztions in LZMA/LZMA2 code.
18.05:
Some speed optimiztions in LZMA/LZMA2 code.
18.01:
Some changes in LZMA2/xz multithreading code for compressing. Some bugs were fixed.
9.35:
AES code and SFXs modules were included to SDK.
9.20:
New small SFX module for installers.
9.11:
PPMd support.
9.04:
LZMA2 and XZ support.
4.62:
LZMA SDK is placed in the public domain.
LZMA / LZMA2
are default and general compression methods of
7z format
in the
7-Zip
program provides a high compression ratio and
fast decompression, so it is very suitable for embedded applications.
For example, it can be used for ROM (firmware) compressing.
LZMA SDK
includes:
C++
source code of
LZMA
Encoder and Decoder
C++
source code for
.7z
compression and decompression (reduced version)
ANSI-C
compatible source code for
LZMA / LZMA2 / XZ
compression and decompression
ANSI-C
compatible source code for
7z
decompression with example
C#
source code for
LZMA
compression and decompression
Java
source code for
LZMA
compression and decompression
lzma.exe
for .lzma compression and decompression
7zr.exe
to work with 7z archives (reduced version of 7z.exe from 7-Zip)
SFX modules
to create self-extracting packages and installers
ANSI-C
and
C++
source code in LZMA SDK is subset of source code of 7-Zip.
LZMA
features:
Compression speed: 2-8 MB/s on 4 GHz CPU using two cpu threads.
Decompression speed on single cpu thread:
30-100 MB/s on modern 4 GHz CPU (Intel, AMD, ARM).
5-15 MB/s on simple 1 GHz RISC CPU (ARM, MIPS, PowerPC).
Small memory requirements for decompression: 8-32 KB + DictionarySize
Small code size for decompression: 2-8 KB (depending on speed optimizations)
The
LZMA
decoder uses only CPU integer instructions and can be
implemented for any modern 32-bit CPU.
License
LZMA SDK
is placed in the
public domain.
Anyone is free to copy, modify, publish, use, compile, sell, or distribute the
original LZMA SDK code, either in source code form or as a compiled binary, for
any purpose, commercial or non-commercial, and by any means.
Note: The abbreviation LZMA originally stood for
Lempel - Ziv - Markov chain - Arithmetic coding.
Preliminary versions of LZMA used arithmetic coding.
But in the final version of LZMA, arithmetic coding was replaced by range coding.
LZMA Links
LZMA at Wikipedia
LZMA Benchmark results for different CPUs
XZ Utils / LZMA utils
Port of LZMA SDK for JAVA from independent developer
Port of LZMA SDK to Pascal (Delphi, Kylix and Freepascal)
PyLZMA: Python bindings for LZMA
LZMA Streams in Java
Zip-Ada : LZMA in Ada
Copyright (C) 2026 Igor Pavlov.