CBZ is a comic book archive: a ZIP file of page images that readers show in filename order.
Common Uses
Comic book archives
Manga storage
Digital comics
CBZ Conversion FAQ
What is a CBZ file?
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CBZ (Comic Book ZIP) is a ZIP-based archive format for digital comic books.
What is actually inside a CBZ file?
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A folder of page images in reading order, compressed into one archive with a different extension. There is no text layer and no reflow — a comic page is a picture, and the reader's job is simply to show them in sequence. That makes conversion mostly a question of what happens to the images: page size, compression and whether double-page spreads are split. CBZ is a Comic Book ZIP — the same idea as CBR but built on the open ZIP format instead of RAR.
Do I need special software to open a CBZ?
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Not to get at the pages. The container in a CBZ is an ordinary ZIP, so a copy renamed to `.zip` opens in whatever file manager is already on the machine and hands over the page images — no licence, no plugin, nothing to install. A comic reader adds only the sequence and your place in it. That is the whole argument for standardising on this one: everything can read it, including software written long before comics were distributed this way.
Why are the pages in my CBZ different sizes?
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Because each page is an independent image and nothing in the format enforces consistency. Scans made in different sessions, at different resolutions, or with double-page spreads left unsplit all end up in the same archive, and the reader simply scales each one to fit as it arrives. A conversion can normalise them to a common width, which is worth doing before sending the file to a small screen.
Why are the pages of my CBZ in the wrong order?
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Because the order is the filenames and nothing else. A CBZ carries no page list — the reader sorts the images inside it as text and shows them in that order, which is why `page2` lands after `page10` whenever the numbers are not padded to the same width. Renaming them `001`, `002` and so on fixes it permanently, and it is worth doing before converting rather than after: every format downstream inherits whatever order it was handed. The archive holds one image per page in filename order, with an optional ComicInfo.xml carrying series metadata.
Where does a CBZ keep the series and issue number?
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In a small metadata file tucked inside the archive next to the pages, when it has one at all — series, issue, volume, writer and artist live there rather than in the images. Readers that know the convention show it in their library; readers that do not ignore the extra file and show you a filename. It travels intact between comic archive formats, and it has nowhere to go in a format that expects one continuous document, so plan on re-entering it after converting out of a comic archive. CBZ opens with any ZIP tool, needs no proprietary decompressor, and is the format digital comic archives prefer.
Can I search the text inside a CBZ?
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Not as it stands. The lettering is part of the artwork — pixels rather than characters — so there is nothing for a search to match and nothing to reflow at a larger font size. Optical character recognition can add a text layer over the pages and make them searchable, but the result is a document about the comic rather than a comic, so it is rarely worth it for reading.
Can a CBZ be locked with DRM?
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No, because the format has no mechanism for it: no encryption layer, no account binding, no licence server anywhere in it. That is exactly why scanned and self-published comics circulate this way, and why converting one never hits the wall a store-bought ebook does. It is a statement about the container and not about the contents — a comic with no DRM on it can still be somebody else's copyright. CBZ has no text layer, so the pages are not searchable and the text cannot reflow on a small screen.
Is the cover image kept when I convert a CBZ?
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It is, provided the book records one as the cover rather than merely having a picture on its first page. That distinction is why a converted book sometimes shows a blank placeholder in a library: the image is still inside the file, but nothing marks it as the cover, so the reader app displays nothing. It is metadata rather than content, and it can be set afterwards without touching the text.
Does it matter that CBZ is over thirty years old?
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Age itself is not the problem — several formats from that era are still perfectly good, precisely because everything has had decades to implement them. What matters is what the era assumed: small files, modest processors, no network, and features nobody needed yet. Where those assumptions still fit, the format is fine. Where they do not, that is the reason to convert.
Who controls the CBZ format?
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Nobody, and that is the point of it. The specification is public, anyone may implement it without asking or paying, and no company can change the terms later — which is why archives, standards bodies and public institutions specify formats like this one for anything that still has to open in twenty years. The trade is not compatibility, which is excellent; it is that there is no vendor to call when some tool implements the spec badly.
Can I convert a whole folder of CBZ files in one go?
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With an account, yes — drop them in together and they are queued as one job rather than handled one at a time, with the same settings applied across the batch and the results returned together. Free conversions run a single file at a time (merge tools take two); a paid plan is what unlocks batch processing and the larger per-file limit, which is what makes converting a whole archive practical.
