application/zipapplication/zip is the media type for ZIP archives, which bundle multiple files and directories and compress each entry individually. It is widely used for document bundles, software distribution, and backup downloads, and virtually every OS supports it natively.
ZIP is both a container and a compression format, with its file listing (the central directory) placed at the end of the archive. This makes streaming creation awkward and requires a complete file to read the table of contents and extract individual entries. Force downloads with `Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="archive.zip"`.
An important gotcha: ZIP data is already compressed, so re-compressing it with gzip over HTTP is pointless. Do not apply `Content-Encoding: gzip` to a zip response — it wastes CPU for no size gain and can cause double-compression issues in some proxies. docx/xlsx/pptx, jar, apk, and epub are internally ZIP but use their own dedicated types.
e.g. Content-Type: application/zip