TAR Converter

How to Convert TAR to Any Format

1. Upload Your TAR File: Drag and drop your .tar archive or click "Add Files". Batch is supported — drop in several TARs at once, and you can pull from your computer, Google Drive, or Dropbox.
2. Pick an Output Format: Choose the target archive — ZIP, 7Z, RAR, TAR, TAR.GZ, TAR.BZ2, TAR.XZ, TGZ, TB2, or TZ2. ZIP is the default, since it's the most universally openable. Picking a compressed target (TAR.GZ, TAR.XZ, 7Z, ZIP) re-packs the bundle and shrinks it; picking plain TAR just re-writes the container.
3. Choose Combine Mode (Optional): Under "Advanced Options", the "Combine?" control sets whether multiple uploads merge into one output ("Single Archive") or each TAR becomes its own file ("Individual Archives"). For a single TAR in, single archive out, the default is fine.
4. Convert and Download: Click Convert. Files are uploaded over an encrypted connection, processed on our servers, and deleted automatically after a few hours — no sign-up, no watermark, never shared.

Popular TAR Conversions

• TAR to ZIP — the most Windows- and macOS-friendly target; both open ZIP with a double-click, no extra software
• TAR to 7Z — highest compression ratio when you want the smallest possible file
• TAR to TAR.GZ — add fast gzip compression while keeping the Unix-native tarball
• TAR to TGZ — the same gzip-compressed tarball under its short .tgz extension
• TAR to TAR.XZ — maximum-ratio xz compression for archiving large datasets
• TAR to RAR — for recipients who standardize on WinRAR

Why Convert a TAR File?

TAR — short for "tape archive" — was introduced to Unix in January 1979 and standardized by POSIX (the ustar and pax formats). It is a bundling format: it concatenates many files and folders into one stream, preserving Unix permissions and directory structure, but it does not compress anything. A .tar is the same total size as its contents. That single fact drives almost every reason people convert it.

• You're on Windows or macOS and want a double-click archive. Plain TAR has no native extractor in Windows Explorer or macOS Finder before recent builds, and even where it works the experience is rough. ZIP opens natively on both, which is why TAR to ZIP is the most common conversion here.
• You need the file smaller. Because TAR is uncompressed, the most useful "conversion" is to add a compressor. TAR.GZ (gzip) is the fast, ubiquitous default; TAR.XZ (xz) squeezes hardest at the cost of speed; 7Z reaches similar ratios with a Windows-friendly tool. See the table below for the tradeoff.
• You want a Unix-native compressed tarball. Developers shipping source code or backups usually want .tar.gz (or its short alias .tgz) rather than ZIP, because it preserves Unix file modes and symlinks that ZIP handles less cleanly.
• A recipient standardizes on a specific tool. Some teams expect RAR or 7Z; converting once saves everyone an extraction headache.

TAR and Common Archive Targets Compared

Among the tar-compressor variants, the practical ordering is consistent: gzip is the fastest with the lowest ratio, bzip2 sits in the middle, and xz compresses the hardest but slowest.

Tarball Extensions and Their Aliases

The output list offers several names that look like different formats but are not. A compressed tarball is always the same two-stage idea — tar bundles, then a compressor squeezes the whole bundle — and the extension only records which compressor ran. This table maps every tarball target this converter offers:

If a build script, package manager, or upload form insists on one spelling, pick that target — you are choosing a filename convention, not a different archive.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is a TAR file compressed?

No — and this is the most common misunderstanding about the format. TAR only bundles files together into one stream; it stores them uncompressed, so a .tar is roughly the same size as the sum of its contents. To make it smaller you pair it with a compressor, which is why you see .tar.gz (gzip), .tar.bz2 (bzip2), and .tar.xz (xz). Converting TAR to TAR.GZ, TAR.XZ, ZIP, or 7Z here adds that compression step.

What's the difference between .tar.gz and .tgz?

Nothing technical — they are the same thing. .tgz is just the short, single-extension alias for .tar.gz: a TAR archive compressed with gzip. Some tools and platforms that dislike double extensions (or 8.3-style names) prefer .tgz. Pick whichever extension your recipient or build system expects; the bytes inside are identical.

Should I convert TAR to ZIP or to TAR.GZ?

It depends on who opens it. Choose ZIP if the recipient is on Windows or macOS and you want a double-click extract with no extra software, since both open ZIP natively. Choose TAR.GZ (or TGZ) if you're shipping to a Unix/Linux audience, preserving file permissions and symlinks, or distributing source code — that's the convention developers expect. For the absolute smallest file, TAR to 7Z or TAR.XZ compress harder than ZIP's standard DEFLATE.

Does converting TAR keep my folder structure and permissions?

The directory structure is preserved across every target. Unix file permissions and symlinks survive cleanly into the tar-based formats (TAR.GZ, TAR.BZ2, TAR.XZ) because they keep the original tar container. ZIP and RAR store paths and folders faithfully but represent Unix modes and symlinks less completely, so if exact permission bits matter — for a backup or a deploy artifact — stay within the .tar.* family.

Which compressed TAR format gives the smallest file?

For pure ratio, xz (TAR.XZ) and 7Z lead, followed by bzip2 (TAR.BZ2), with gzip (TAR.GZ) the largest of the four but the fastest to make. In our testing on a folder of mixed source code and text, the xz target was meaningfully smaller than the gzip target, while gzip finished fastest — the usual speed-versus-size tradeoff. If you're archiving rarely-accessed data, the extra xz time is worth it; for everyday transfer, gzip is the pragmatic choice.

What's the difference between .tar.bz2, .tb2, and .tz2?

There is none — all three are a TAR archive compressed with bzip2, and the bytes inside are identical. .tb2 and .tz2 exist purely as short, single-extension spellings for environments that historically struggled with a double extension like .tar.bz2. The same pattern repeats elsewhere in the list: .tgz is the short form of .tar.gz. Choose whichever spelling the tool, script, or recipient on the other end expects; the archive itself does not change.

Does converting a TAR archive change or re-compress the files inside it?

No. TAR is a lossless container, so there is no quality setting and nothing is re-encoded — every member file comes back out byte-for-byte identical to what went in. When you pick a compressed target such as TAR.GZ, TAR.XZ, ZIP, or 7Z, the compressor operates on the archive stream and is fully reversed at extraction time, so a JPEG, MP3, or spreadsheet inside is unchanged. This is a very different operation from a media conversion: repacking an archive ten times still yields the original files, because no generation loss exists in the format.

Is it safe to convert a TAR file here, and is there a size limit?

Your file is uploaded over an encrypted (TLS) connection, processed on our servers, and deleted automatically after a few hours — no sign-up, no watermark, and nothing is shared or made public. There's no fixed per-file cap; the real constraint is upload size and your connection speed, so multi-gigabyte archives are fine but take longer to send. You can also queue several TARs in one batch and download the results together.