TAR to TGZ Converter

How to Convert TAR to TGZ Online

1. Upload Your TAR File: Drag and drop, or click "+ Add Files" to select one or more .tar archives from your computer. Batch is supported — process several archives in one pass.
2. Pick Archive Mode: Choose Single Archive to bundle every upload into one combined .tgz, or Individual Archives to produce one .tgz per input .tar. For converting an existing TAR straight to TGZ, Individual Archives is the typical pick.
3. Review Defaults (Optional): The output extension is already set to TGZ. No re-archiving or repacking happens — the inner tar layout is preserved exactly; gzip is added as the outer compression layer.
4. Convert and Download: Click Convert. Files are processed on our servers and the resulting .tgz is returned for download. No sign-up, no watermark, no software install.

Why Convert TAR to TGZ?

A plain .tar archive bundles files but performs no compression — tar literally stands for tape archive, designed in 1979 for Seventh Edition Unix to write streams to magnetic tape. Adding gzip on top (producing .tar.gz or its short form .tgz) typically shrinks the archive 50-80% for source code, text, logs, and other compressible payloads. The two extensions are byte-identical: archive.tgz is just archive.tar.gz renamed so it fit MS-DOS 8.3 filename limits, and the convention stuck.

• Faster uploads and downloads — Source tarballs, log bundles, and config dumps compress dramatically with gzip's DEFLATE algorithm (LZ77 + Huffman coding). A 200 MB tar of JavaScript or JSON commonly drops to 30-50 MB as .tgz.
• Standard distribution format on Linux/Unix — Most Linux source releases ship as .tar.gz/.tgz: kernel.org tarballs, GNU project releases, and the contents of npm packages (which are .tgz under the hood) all use this format.
• Direct extraction with one command — tar -xzf archive.tgz unpacks gzipped tar in a single step on Linux, macOS, BSD, and WSL. No separate decompress-then-untar step required.
• Lower storage and bandwidth costs — Backups, CI artifacts, and S3 objects cost less to store and transfer when compressed. Gzip is universally supported by web servers, CDNs, and object stores as Content-Encoding.
• Preserve Unix metadata that ZIP loses — Tar (and therefore tgz) keeps file mode bits, owner/group IDs, symbolic links, hard links, and device files. ZIP discards most of this. For server backups or Docker-style filesystem snapshots, that matters.
• npm and language ecosystem compatibility — npm pack and npm publish produce .tgz files; pip wheels and Python sdists, RubyGems, and Composer all rely on tar+gzip conventions. Converting a plain .tar to .tgz is often the last step before publishing.

If you need the opposite direction (strip gzip back to plain tar), use TGZ to TAR. For a heavier compression ratio than gzip, see TAR to 7Z or TAR to ZIP.

TAR vs TGZ — Format Comparison

When TGZ Wins, When It Doesn't

Frequently Asked Questions

Is .tgz the same file as .tar.gz?

Yes — byte-for-byte identical when produced from the same inputs with the same gzip settings. The .tgz extension is a contraction created so the name would fit the old MS-DOS 8.3 filename limit (eight-character base, three-character extension). On any modern OS you can rename archive.tar.gz to archive.tgz (or vice versa) and every tool will keep working. We use .tgz as the output extension here for the shorter, more portable name.

Will my files inside the archive be modified?

No. The tar payload is wrapped in a gzip stream, not repacked. Inner file names, permissions (mode bits), owner/group IDs, modification times, symbolic links, and hard links are preserved exactly as they were in the source .tar. Extracting with tar -xzf yields the same tree you started with.

How much smaller will my TGZ be compared to the TAR?

It depends entirely on what's inside. Text-heavy content (source code, JSON, XML, SQL dumps) typically compresses 3-10x — a 100 MB tar of code might land at 10-30 MB as tgz. Already-compressed content (JPEGs, MP3s, MP4s, PDFs with image-only pages) compresses by only a few percent at best, since gzip can't find redundancy that the underlying codec has already removed. Mixed archives usually end up in the 50-70% range.

What compression algorithm does gzip use?

Gzip is specified in RFC 1952 and uses the DEFLATE algorithm from RFC 1951. DEFLATE combines LZ77 (a sliding-window dictionary that finds repeated byte sequences) with Huffman coding (variable-length symbol encoding that assigns shorter codes to more frequent values). The same algorithm powers .zip, PNG image compression, and HTTP Content-Encoding: gzip.

Can I open a .tgz file on Windows?

Yes. Windows 10 (build 17063+) and Windows 11 include a built-in tar.exe on the command line — tar -xzf archive.tgz works in PowerShell or Command Prompt. For a GUI, 7-Zip, WinRAR, and PeaZip all handle .tgz natively. Note that 7-Zip and some other tools may show the archive as two nested layers — the outer gzip and the inner tar — requiring two extract steps if you click through manually.

Should I use TGZ, ZIP, 7Z, or TAR.XZ for my project?

• .tgz — best default for Linux/Unix audiences, npm, and source releases. Universal tooling.
• .zip — best for Windows and cross-platform users who want one double-click extract. Loses Unix permissions.
• .7z — smaller than tgz (often 20-40% better) but requires 7-Zip-compatible software; not built into most OSes.
• .tar.xz — slower to compress but smaller than tgz; common for kernel and large source releases.
• .tar.zst — modern Zstandard; faster and often smaller than gzip, but tooling is still catching up on older systems.

Does this tool re-compress an existing TGZ?

No. This page is for plain .tar (uncompressed) input. If you already have a .tgz and want to repack at a different compression level or switch to a different compressor, run TGZ to TAR first to strip gzip, then convert the resulting .tar to your target format.

What's the maximum file size I can convert?

Free conversions are sized for typical source bundles and backups — most users won't hit the cap. If you have a multi-gigabyte archive (full disk image, large media library), upload time becomes the practical constraint rather than the conversion itself. For very large jobs, consider running tar czf locally with gzip --best or pigz for parallel gzip.

Are my uploaded files private?

Uploads are processed and then deleted on a short retention window. We don't index, share, or scan your archive contents. For sensitive backups (production database dumps, customer data) we recommend gzipping locally with the tar binary on your own machine — no upload, no network exposure.