Convert Archive Known limits
Convert an archive from one format to another.
Worth knowing before you startConversion works by extracting the source archive into memory, then repacking to the target format. Very large archives may exceed available browser memory. RAR and a few other proprietary formats can be read but not written — you can convert from RAR, but not to it.
Choose archive
or drop it anywhere on this page
ZIP · RAR · 7Z · TAR · GZ · TGZ · BZ2 · XZ · ISO · CAB · +3
Processed on your device — never uploaded
How to convert archive
- Drop in the archive you want to convert.
- Choose the target format — ZIP for compatibility, 7z or TAR.XZ for maximum compression.
- Download the converted archive.
About this tool
Archive format conversion comes up in a handful of predictable situations: a build system expects a tar.gz, a client's machine cannot open 7z, or an old RAR downloaded from a forum needs to become a ZIP before the files inside can be distributed elsewhere.
The approach here is straightforward: decompress the source archive entirely, then repack the files into the target format. This is bounded by memory rather than by any feature gap — the tool can represent every format it can read, with the exception of RAR, whose encoder is not available as open-source software. The output formats all use well-established open specifications.
Questions
Why would I convert an archive format?
Common reasons: a recipient cannot open 7z or RAR, you want to switch from a proprietary format to an open one, or you are moving from ZIP to TAR.XZ to get meaningfully better compression on a collection of text files before distributing them.
Can it convert from RAR?
Yes, extracting from RAR is fully supported, including RAR5. The constraint is in the other direction: because the RAR encoding format is proprietary, the tool can read RAR but cannot create it. Converting a RAR file to ZIP or 7z works fine; converting anything to RAR does not.
What is the memory limitation in practice?
The contents of the archive are decompressed into your browser's memory before repacking. An archive that is 50 MB compressed but 800 MB when extracted needs roughly 800 MB of browser memory. For large software distributions or disk images, that can be a problem. For typical document and code archives, it is not.