Convert RAR to TAR.GZ
Free online converter for RAR files. Gzip-compressed TAR archive. Nothing to install, no watermark, and every file is deleted automatically.
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Upload a RAR file to convert it to TAR.GZ. Up to 3 files at once, 100 MB each.
Free · up to 3 files · 100 MB each · files deleted automatically after 1 hour.
About RAR and TGZ
RAR .rar
A proprietary archive format from WinRAR. Its compression is good and its recovery records are genuinely useful, but only its owner licenses the ability to create one.
Good for
- Strong compression with optional recovery records
- Handles multi-volume splitting well
- Common in older download archives
Trade-offs
- Proprietary — creating RAR files requires licensed software
- We can extract from RAR but cannot produce it
- Needs extra software on most systems
application/vnd.rar
TAR.GZ .tgz
A tar archive passed through gzip. The tar preserves the file tree and its permissions; gzip compresses the whole stream in one pass.
Good for
- Compresses better than ZIP by finding redundancy across files
- Keeps Unix permissions and links
- The default for source code releases
Trade-offs
- No random access — one file means decompressing everything before it
- Needs extra software on Windows
application/gzip
RAR and TGZ side by side
| RAR | TGZ | |
|---|---|---|
| Compression | Proprietary | Solid stream (gzip) |
| Typically used for | Opening archives someone else sent you | Source releases, Unix backups |
What changes when you convert RAR to TGZ
The archive is rebuilt, not renamed
Your RAR is unpacked in full and its contents are written into a new TGZ. Nothing is passed through untouched, so the compression is done again from scratch at the level you choose, and the resulting size depends on that setting rather than on how the RAR was originally made. The folder structure inside is preserved exactly.
These two store files differently
RAR uses a proprietary algorithm no open tool may write, so random access within the archive. TGZ concatenates with tar, then compresses the whole stream in one pass, so reading one file means decompressing everything before it. That difference is the real reason to pick one over the other: per-file compression lets a tool pull out a single entry cheaply, while compressing everything as one stream finds patterns across files and usually ends up smaller.
Unix file modes have somewhere to go
TGZ records Unix permissions and symbolic links as a matter of course, which is why it is the format of choice for anything destined for a server. Note that it can only record what it is given: metadata the RAR never stored cannot be recovered by converting.
Why RAR is read-only here
RAR's compression is proprietary: it may be read freely but not written by open tools, so we can unpack a RAR and give you the contents in an open format, and cannot produce one. That is a licensing boundary rather than a technical one.
You choose how hard it compresses
Because the archive is built again from scratch, the compression level is yours to set rather than inherited from the RAR. It defaults to 6 — the setting that has been the sensible middle ground for deflate for thirty years. Raising it buys a few percent for a disproportionate amount of time; lowering it is worth doing for large archives of already-compressed material such as photographs or video, where there is nothing left to squeeze.