[lstodd]

.zip is used as a seekable container with some compression. There is no replacement comparable in simplicity. 7z is overcomplicated, compressed tar is not seekable.

.gz/deflate is used when something very cheap and very fast is needed. xz/lzma is quite often too slow or requires too much memory even on decompression.

so no, .zip and .gz are very much needed in 2026.

[adapiz]

Compared to xz and even parallel xz, gzip and parallel gzip are just better if speed is more important. The compression is not superior but already good if you consider just the uncompressed data. For long term storage, it makes sense, to invest the extra time for better compression but if it's about transfer time, you might end up with a overall longer processing time instead of just a longer transfer time because of a worse compression ratio. It's like with image formats: Pick the right one for your use case.

[MrDrMcCoy]

If you add zstd to the comparison matrix, it wins on both speed and compression ratio. Its adoption is quickly catching up to xz as a result, and I expect it to approach gzip in availability in a few years.