RAR to 7Z Converter

RAR vs 7Z — Which Archive Should You Keep?

RAR and 7z do the same job — bundle a folder and squeeze it — but only one of them is free to make. RAR belongs to RARLAB, whose licence states that "neither RAR binary code, WinRAR binary code, UnRAR source or UnRAR binary code may be used or reverse engineered to re-create the RAR compression algorithm, which is proprietary, without written permission," and WinRAR itself is 40-day trialware. 7-Zip is free software under the GNU LGPL, and its 7z format packs at least as tightly. The short answer: if you are archiving for the long term, publishing a download, or handing files to someone who does not own WinRAR, convert to 7z. If you depend on RAR recovery records, stay on RAR.

Side-by-side: RAR vs 7Z

Microsoft documents native File Explorer extraction for ZIP, RAR, 7z and TAR in Windows 11 24H2, so on a current Windows machine both formats open with a double-click.

Does 7Z Actually Come Out Smaller?

Usually yes, and by more than people expect — because 7z compresses solid by default while rar a does not. We packed the same 853-file, 5.71 MB source tree four ways, using the same commands this converter runs:

So on many small text-like files, the 7z repack beat even a maximum-effort solid RAR. On already-compressed payloads — JPEGs, MP4s, nested archives — neither format has much left to take, and the two land within a few percent of each other.

When to Stay on RAR

• You created the archive with a recovery record and want to keep the ability to repair bit-rot or a truncated download.
• The archive is already split into .part01.rar, .part02.rar volumes that your recipients expect.
• Your recipients are on Windows 11 and the format genuinely does not matter — Explorer opens both.

When to Convert to 7Z

• You want an archive anyone can re-create, not just open, without buying a licence.
• You are shipping a download and want the smallest single file, especially for many small text-like files.
• You need the archive to sit in a scripted pipeline where 7z or p7zip is already installed.

How to Convert RAR to 7Z

1. Upload Your RAR File: Drag the .rar onto the page or click "Add Files" to browse. Only .rar is accepted here; if you want to pick the target format from a dropdown instead, start at the RAR converter hub, and if you already have a .7z you want to turn into something else, use the 7Z converter.
2. Leave the Output Set to 7Z: The output extension is fixed on this page, so there is nothing to choose. There is deliberately no compression-level control — the archiver's own default (LZMA2, solid) is used.
3. Check the Combine Setting: On an archive-to-archive page the only mode offered is Individual Archives, and it is preselected. Each .rar you upload becomes its own separate .7z; uploading three RARs gives you three 7z files, not one merged bundle.
4. Convert and Download: Click "Convert" and grab the .7z. Files upload over an encrypted connection, are processed on our servers, and are deleted automatically after a few hours — no sign-up, no watermark.

What Survives the Repack, and What Does Not

The conversion is a genuine extract-and-repack, not a byte-level transcode: your RAR is unpacked, then the resulting tree is handed to 7z a. Two consequences worth knowing before you click.

• Kept: the full directory tree, empty directories, UTF-8 filenames, modification timestamps, and Unix permission bits where the source RAR stored them.
• Dropped: symbolic links, device nodes, named pipes and sockets are removed by a post-extraction security sweep, and so is any directory literally named dev, proc or sys — a sweep aimed at booby-trapped archives that occasionally catches a legitimately-named source folder. Rename such a folder before archiving if it matters.

Frequently Asked Questions

Will converting RAR to 7Z change the files inside?

No. Both are lossless containers. The RAR is expanded to its original bytes and those exact bytes are recompressed into the 7z, so a document, photo or executable extracted from the 7z is bit-for-bit what came out of the RAR. Only the wrapper and the compression algorithm change.

Can I convert a password-protected RAR here?

No. There is no password field on this page, so an encrypted RAR — whether the data alone is encrypted or the whole header is — cannot be opened. The extractor reaches its password prompt and the job fails instead of producing an archive. Decrypt the RAR with WinRAR, 7-Zip or unrar on your own computer first, then upload the plain archive.

What about a multi-part RAR — can I upload just the .part01.rar?

No. Multi-volume RAR sets need every volume present at once, and this page converts one uploaded file at a time. Feeding only archive.part01.rar extracts whatever fits inside that first volume and then stops with a missing-volume error, so the job fails rather than handing you a half-complete 7z. Join the volumes with WinRAR or unrar x archive.part01.rar on your own computer, then re-archive and upload the single result.

Do I lose RAR's recovery records when I switch to 7Z?

Yes, and there is no substitute. A RAR recovery record is redundant data added at pack time with rar rr, which WinRAR's "Repair archive" command (rar r) can then use to rebuild an archive damaged by a few bad sectors or a truncated download. The 7z format has no built-in equivalent, and the freeware unrar has no repair command at all — only the licensed rar does. If disk-rot resilience is why you picked RAR, converting is a downgrade; consider keeping the RAR and generating separate PAR2 parity files instead.

Why is my 7Z bigger than the RAR I started with?

Almost always because the contents were already compressed. A RAR full of JPEGs, MP4s, PDFs or nested ZIPs has nothing left to squeeze, so LZMA2 spends bytes on headers and dictionary structure without winning them back. The other cause is a source RAR that was built solid at maximum settings while the payload happens to suit RAR's model better — rare, but it happens on very large single files.

Can 7-Zip open the RAR directly — why convert at all?

7-Zip can unpack RAR, but it cannot pack it. That asymmetry is the whole point: an archive you can only open with tools that may not be installed, and can only rebuild with licensed software, is a poor container to standardise on. Converting once gives you a file that Windows, macOS and Linux can all read and rewrite with free tools.

Does the 7Z keep Unix file permissions from the RAR?

The permission bits, yes — the Linux build of 7-Zip records the Unix mode in the archive's attribute field and restores it on extraction, and a RAR created on Linux or macOS carries those bits through unpacking. We round-tripped 0755, 0644 and 0600 through the full RAR-to-7z-and-back path unchanged. Ownership does not survive in any useful sense: files are extracted as the conversion service's own user, and on the other end only root honours stored ownership anyway. For a permissions-and-ownership-faithful bundle, RAR to TAR records uid, gid, user name and group name in every header.

Is there a limit on how big the RAR can be?

Two limits apply after extraction rather than to the upload itself: the unpacked contents must stay under 5 GB in total and under 50,000 files, otherwise the job is rejected. In practice the binding constraint for most people is upload time on a slow connection, not either of those ceilings.

What if I want maximum compatibility instead of the smallest file?

Use RAR to ZIP. ZIP opens on a stock Windows, macOS and Linux install with no extra software and no command line, which 7z still cannot claim on older systems. You give up roughly the size advantage shown in the table above, but you gain a file nobody has to think about.