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BoxedApp Packer vs papaw

BoxedApp Packer

softanics.com

papaw

github.com

Side by side

FigureBoxedApp Packerpapaw
Price from—Free
Free plan—Yes
Free trialYes—
Open source——
WindowsYes—
Linux—Yes
Self-hosted—Yes
Plans published41
Spec score · Executable Packers8.2 (#4)7.9 (#8)
PurposeBoxedApp Packer turns a Windows application into one self-contained executable with dependencies embedded.papaw is a permissively licensed packer for executables with statically linked third-party components, intended for devices with limited disk space.

Plans

BoxedApp Packer

  • Home License$49, paid once
  • Single License$799, paid once
  • Site License$4,999, paid once
  • Source Code LicensePriced on request

BoxedApp Packer pricing →

papaw

  • papawFree

papaw pricing →

In their own words

BoxedApp Packer

BoxedApp Packer has no write-up on Specifiction yet; its figures are above.

Visit softanics.com

papaw

papaw is a Linux executable packer for programs that include statically linked third-party components, aimed at devices with limited disk space. It compresses executables and bundles them with a decompressor of about 15–40 KB. Supported algorithms are LZMA2, LZMA1, Zstandard and Deflate, and packed executables can replace themselves on disk when run. The project is free and unencumbered software under the MIT license, and can be self-hosted. It uses Meson and can be included as a Meson subproject; the README recommends `custom_target()` for running `papawify`. Prebuilt static binaries are available through GitHub releases, with example assets for aarch64, arm, armeb, i386, mips, mipsel and x86_64. To support portability, the project avoids machine-specific assembly and newer system calls such as `fexecve()`. Optional very basic anti-debugging protection is intended to discourage trivial reverse-engineering techniques. The payload is extracted to a temporary file; when run as root, papaw mounts a tmpfs filesystem and lazily unmounts it before extraction.

Visit github.com