RAR to TGZ Converter

RAR to TGZ Converter

.tgz is not a format of its own — it is the one-piece spelling of .tar.gz, a tar bundle wrapped in a single gzip stream. The gzip manual makes the equivalence official: gunzip "recognizes the special extensions .tgz and .taz as shorthands for .tar.gz and .tar.Z," and gzip itself falls back to .tgz rather than truncate a name on filesystems that cannot hold the longer form. This converter unpacks your proprietary RAR and rebuilds its contents as a gzipped tarball carrying the .tgz name — useful when a build script, package manifest or upload form matches on that exact extension.

TGZ Format at a Glance

Is a .tgz Really the Same File as a .tar.gz?

From this converter, yes — byte for byte. Both extensions route to the same tar invocation, so the only difference is the name on the file. We checked rather than assuming: packing the same tree under both names with the exact commands this converter runs produced files with identical SHA-256 hashes, and the gzip header in each carries no stored filename and an MTIME field of zero, which RFC 1952 defines as "no time stamp is available" — the value gzip writes when it reads from a pipe instead of a named file. That is also why the output is reproducible: the same input gives the same bytes every time, with no embedded conversion date.

How the two names behave across common tools:

The practical rule: pick the name your recipient's tooling expects. Automated systems sometimes match on the literal string, which is the only reason to prefer one over the other. If you want the long form instead, use RAR to TAR.GZ.

How to Convert RAR to TGZ

1. Upload Your RAR File: Drag the .rar onto the page or click "Add Files" to browse. Only .rar is accepted here.
2. Leave the Output Set to TGZ: The output extension is fixed on this page, and there is no compression-level control — gzip runs at its default level 6.
3. Check the Combine Setting: Archive-to-archive conversions offer only Individual Archives, and it is preselected. Upload three RAR files and three separate .tgz files come back.
4. Convert and Download: Click "Convert" and download the tarball. Files upload over an encrypted connection, are processed on our servers, and are deleted automatically after a few hours — no sign-up, no watermark.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does the conversion change anything inside the archive?

No. Both RAR and gzipped tar are lossless containers. The RAR is expanded to its original bytes and those exact bytes are bundled and gzipped, so a file pulled out of the .tgz is bit-for-bit what the RAR held. Only the wrapper and the compression algorithm change.

Why is my .tgz larger than the RAR was?

Because gzip is the weakest of the mainstream compressors. DEFLATE works within a 32 KB sliding window, so it only spots redundancy in a narrow neighbourhood, while RAR5 uses a far larger dictionary. Packing a 853-file, 5.71 MB source tree with the same commands this converter runs, the gzipped tarball came to 1.06 MB against 1.49 MB for the source RAR — gzip won there, but on a handful of large similar files RAR often wins instead. If size is the priority, tar.xz produced 743 KB on the same corpus, and 7z 752 KB.

Is .taz also a shorthand for this format?

No — that one is a genuine trap. The gzip manual pairs .tgz with .tar.gz but pairs .taz with .tar.Z, which is the old Unix compress utility's LZW format, not gzip. Modern gunzip can still decode .Z data, but a .taz and a .tgz are not interchangeable and renaming one to the other will confuse tools that trust the extension.

Can I convert a password-protected RAR to .tgz?

No. There is no password field on this page, so an encrypted RAR — whether only the data or the whole header is encrypted — cannot be opened. The extractor reaches its password prompt and the job ends without producing an output file. Decrypt it with WinRAR, 7-Zip or unrar on your own computer first, then upload the plain archive.

What about a multi-part RAR split into .part01.rar, .part02.rar?

Not supported. Every volume of the set must be readable at the same time, and this page converts one uploaded file per job. Uploading only the first part extracts whatever fits inside it and then aborts with a missing-volume error, so nothing usable comes back. Rejoin the set on your own machine — put all parts in one folder and run unrar x archive.part01.rar — re-archive the result, and upload that.

Are Unix permissions and the directory tree preserved?

The directory tree, empty directories, UTF-8 filenames and modification times all come through. Permission bits do too when the source RAR recorded them, which is the case for archives created on Linux or macOS but generally not for Windows-made ones. Ownership is the one field rewritten: the uid/gid in the tar headers belong to the conversion service, and on your end only root applies stored ownership during extraction anyway.

A folder vanished between the RAR and the .tgz — why?

A security sweep runs between extraction and repacking. It deletes symbolic links, device nodes, named pipes and sockets, so only regular files and directories reach the tarball. It also removes any directory literally named dev, proc or sys at any depth, because malicious archives use those names to smuggle virtual-filesystem entries — which occasionally catches a legitimately-named source folder. Rename the folder before archiving if you need it.

How do I open a .tgz on Windows?

7-Zip and PeaZip both read it, and the command-line tar.exe bundled with Windows since build 17063 takes tar -xf archive.tgz directly. File Explorer's built-in extraction will not help: Microsoft documents native support for ZIP, RAR, 7z and TAR, but not the gzip-compressed variants. In 7-Zip's GUI you may need two passes — one to unwrap the gzip stream into a .tar, one to open the tar inside.

Is there a limit on archive size?

Two ceilings apply to the extracted contents rather than the upload itself: the unpacked tree must stay under 5 GB and under 50,000 entries, or the job is rejected. Both are reachable from a small-looking RAR — a compressed disk image will hit the size cap, a dependency folder the file count.

I just want the files out — do I need to convert at all?

Probably not. If your goal is to read what is inside the RAR rather than to hand someone a different archive, the RAR extractor unpacks it and gives you the contents directly. Convert to .tgz when something downstream — a deployment script, a package index, an upload form — specifically wants a gzipped tarball.