ZIP to TGZ

How to Convert ZIP to TGZ Online

1. Upload Your ZIP File: Drag and drop or click "+ Add Files" to select one or more ZIP archives. Batch is supported — you can queue several ZIPs at once.
2. Pick Combine Mode: Under "Combine?" choose Single Archive to merge the contents of every uploaded ZIP into one consolidated .tgz, or Individual Archives to produce one .tgz per input ZIP (the default for archive-to-archive jobs). The defaults match a typical tar -czf run.
3. Review the Output Extension: The output is .tgz — byte-for-byte identical to a .tar.gz produced by GNU tar with gzip. If you need the longer extension explicitly, use the sibling ZIP to TAR.GZ page; the file is otherwise the same.
4. Convert and Download: Click "Convert." The job runs in your browser session — no sign-up, no watermark — and the resulting tarball is ready to tar -xzf on any Linux, macOS, or WSL system.

Why Convert ZIP to TGZ?

ZIP is the lingua franca of Windows and consumer file sharing — it ships in Windows Explorer, Finder, and every email client. TGZ (also written .tar.gz) is the lingua franca of Unix software distribution: it is the format Linux source releases, npm package tarballs, Homebrew bottles, and Docker image layers all rely on. The two formats compress reasonably similarly (DEFLATE vs gzip both descend from the LZ77 family) but they package metadata very differently, and that's why a conversion step matters when you cross the Windows/Unix boundary.

• Linux server deploys — Most install scripts and CI runners assume tar -xzf release.tgz. Handing them a ZIP forces an extra unzip dependency that minimal container images often lack.
• npm package distribution — npm pack emits a <name>-<version>.tgz tarball; if a colleague sent you a ZIP of a package, converting to .tgz lets npm install ./pkg.tgz work without re-archiving by hand.
• Source-tree backups that need Unix permissions — TGZ preserves owner, group, and the executable bit. ZIP's permission handling is implementation-defined and most Windows-built ZIPs drop the executable bit entirely, breaking shell scripts on extraction.
• Homebrew, AUR, and source tarballs — Package maintainers expect upstream releases as .tar.gz/.tgz. Converting a ZIP release to TGZ aligns with ./configure && make && make install muscle memory.
• Smaller transfers for many small files — Because tar concatenates first and gzip compresses the whole stream, TGZ usually beats ZIP on archives full of small text files (source code, JSON, logs). ZIP compresses each entry independently, which weakens compression on highly similar files.
• Docker build context and layer artifacts — Image layers are stored as gzipped tar streams; converting an archive you received as ZIP into TGZ matches the format Docker already uses internally.

ZIP vs TGZ — Format Comparison

.tgz vs .tar.gz — Are They Different?

The two are interchangeable: rename archive.tgz to archive.tar.gz and every Unix tool will still extract it. The dual naming is a vestige of the FAT 8.3 filename limit; today the choice is purely cosmetic.

Frequently Asked Questions

Are .tgz and .tar.gz actually the same file?

Yes. Both are a tar archive that has been gzip-compressed in a single step (tar -czf). The two extensions describe the exact same byte layout — the magic bytes start with the gzip header 1F 8B, and inside is a standard POSIX tar stream. You can rename one to the other and extraction tools won't notice. The split exists only because early MS-DOS and Windows filesystems limited extensions to three characters, so .tar.gz was contracted to .tgz.

Why convert ZIP to TGZ instead of just renaming?

Renaming doesn't change the container format — the bytes of a ZIP are not a tar stream, so renaming file.zip to file.tgz produces a corrupt file that tar will refuse to open. Conversion actually unpacks the ZIP, repacks the contents as a tar archive, then gzip-compresses the result. Only a real conversion produces a tarball Unix tools accept.

Will TGZ preserve Unix file permissions and the executable bit?

The tar container preserves owner, group, mode bits, and modification time. However, ZIP files created on Windows often don't store a Unix mode in the first place, so when we convert we fall back to sensible defaults (typically 0644 for files, 0755 for directories). If the original ZIP was made on macOS or Linux with a tool that wrote external file attributes, those Unix permissions are read and copied to the tar entry. The executable bit specifically is preserved when present in the ZIP's external attributes.

Will TGZ be smaller than my ZIP?

Often yes for archives with many small, similar files (source code, config, JSON, logs) because gzip compresses across file boundaries while ZIP compresses each file independently. For archives of already-compressed media (JPEG, MP4, MP3, PDF) the difference is marginal — both will produce a file roughly the size of the originals plus a few percent overhead. Don't expect dramatic savings on photo or video collections.

What compression level does the converter use?

The output uses gzip's default compression level, which is -6 per the gzip(1) man page — a balance of speed and ratio used by tar -czf, gzip with no flags, and most distro packaging scripts. This matches what you'd get on a stock Linux system, so the resulting .tgz is interchangeable with one produced by tar -czf archive.tgz dir/ locally.

Can I convert several ZIPs into one combined TGZ?

Yes. Upload all your ZIPs and pick Single Archive under "Combine?" — every file across every input ZIP is gathered into one tar stream and gzip-compressed together. Pick Individual Archives instead if you want one .tgz per input ZIP (useful when the originals represent distinct projects).

How do I extract a TGZ on Windows?

Windows 11 added native tar/tar.gz support via the built-in tar.exe in 2023, so tar -xzf archive.tgz works in PowerShell or Command Prompt out of the box. On older Windows, use 7-Zip, WinRAR, or PeaZip — all extract .tgz natively. WSL gives you the full GNU tar.

Will encryption or password protection survive the conversion?

No — and this is intentional. ZIP supports password protection (ZipCrypto or AES-256), but the .tgz format itself has no built-in encryption. If your input ZIP is encrypted we cannot read it without the password. For an encrypted Unix-friendly equivalent, convert to plain TGZ first, then run gpg --symmetric archive.tgz or age -p over the result.

When should I pick .tar.gz vs .tar.bz2 vs .tar.xz?

Pick TGZ for the broadest compatibility and fastest extraction — every Unix system has gzip. Pick TAR.BZ2 for ~10–15% better compression at the cost of slower compress/decompress speed. Pick TAR.XZ for the smallest size on text-heavy archives, with noticeably slower compression but extraction speed close to gzip on modern CPUs. Most Linux distros now ship sources as .tar.xz; npm and Homebrew still default to .tgz.

How do I get back to ZIP later?

Use the reverse page — TGZ to ZIP — to repack the tarball into a ZIP container. Note that the round trip ZIP → TGZ → ZIP isn't bit-identical because the two containers store metadata differently, but the file contents will be intact.