Is my archive uploaded?

No. It is opened and repacked inside this tab. An archive is usually the whole of something — a project, a case file, a set of photographs — so uploading one to a converter hands over all of it at once. Turn your Wi-Fi off before you start and this still works.

Can it open password-protected archives?

Yes — enter the password in the options. Encrypted entries are otherwise skipped and you are told how many. The password is used here and never sent anywhere, which is the whole argument for a local tool: uploading an encrypted archive together with its password to a stranger’s server defeats the encryption entirely.

Yes, both RAR4 and RAR5. The format is detected from the file’s own bytes, not its extension.

What about multi-part archives — .part1.rar, .r00 and so on?

Give it the first volume. Whether it completes depends on the browser being able to hold all the parts, and a multi-part set is usually large enough that a desktop tool is the better answer.

Why is the ZIP bigger than the RAR?

Because ZIP compresses less well. That is the cost of a file that opens everywhere without extra software — and if the contents are photos or video, the difference will be small.

Is there a size limit?

Your device’s memory, and a deliberate ceiling of 2 GB unpacked and 20,000 files. Those are not commercial limits — they are the point past which a browser tab stops being the right tool, and past which the file is more likely to be a decompression bomb than a real archive.

RAR to ZIP Converter — No Upload, No WinRAR Needed

Repacks a RAR into a ZIP, which every operating system opens by double-clicking. The archive is read in this tab by libarchive — the same library the `bsdtar` on your Mac uses — and nothing is sent anywhere.

Why RAR is a problem in the first place

RAR is proprietary. The compression algorithm is documented enough to decompress, but the licence permits only WinRAR to create archives, which is why no operating system ships support and why the format never became a default.

So a RAR arrives — from a forum, a file host, a colleague on Windows — and the machine in front of you cannot open it. Installing WinRAR for one file is an unreasonable answer, and uploading the archive to a website is a worse one.

Both RAR v4 and the newer RAR5 are read here, including multi-part archives if you feed in the first volume.

The ZIP will usually be larger

That is the trade, and it is worth being clear about it.

RAR and 7z both compress harder than ZIP — 7z in particular, with LZMA2 and solid blocks that let it find repetition across files rather than within each one. Repacking into ZIP gives up that advantage, typically by 10–30% on mixed content and much more on something like source code.

What you get back is a file that every operating system on earth opens by double-clicking it. If the contents are already compressed — photos, video, music — the difference will be small, and the “store without compressing” option makes the repack much faster.

What is kept and what is not

Every file comes out byte for byte identical. Nothing inside the archive is decoded, recompressed or touched — a JPEG stays the same JPEG, a database stays the same database.

The folder structure is kept, including nesting. Files are written back under the same paths they had inside.

What does not survive the change of container is everything Unix-specific: file permissions, ownership, and the executable bit. ZIP can store some of that and most Windows tools ignore it, so relying on it would be worse than saying plainly that it is gone. Symbolic links are skipped rather than turned into broken files, and you are told which ones.

Paths inside archives are not trusted

An entry inside an archive can claim any path it likes, including ../../.ssh/authorized_keys. Extractors that join that onto a destination folder write outside it, which is a real and long-standing class of attack.

Nothing here writes to your disk, so the archive cannot reach anything on your machine. But the ZIP produced would carry the traversal onward to whatever unpacks it next, so entries with escaping paths are dropped and named in the result rather than passed along.

The same reasoning is behind the ceilings on entry count and unpacked size: an archive that expands to a hundred times its size is a decompression bomb, and stopping is the correct response.

Recovery records and repair

RAR can store recovery records that let WinRAR repair a damaged archive. Those are a RAR feature with no ZIP equivalent, and they are not carried over.

If the archive is already damaged, this will report which entries could not be read rather than producing a ZIP that is quietly missing files. Repairing it needs WinRAR itself.

Other names for this

Also searched as “winrar to zip”, “rar to zip converter”, “convert rar to zip free”, “unrar”.

Questions

Is my archive uploaded?: No. It is opened and repacked inside this tab. An archive is usually the whole of something — a project, a case file, a set of photographs — so uploading one to a converter hands over all of it at once. Turn your Wi-Fi off before you start and this still works.
Can it open password-protected archives?: Yes — enter the password in the options. Encrypted entries are otherwise skipped and you are told how many. The password is used here and never sent anywhere, which is the whole argument for a local tool: uploading an encrypted archive together with its password to a stranger’s server defeats the encryption entirely.
Does it handle RAR5?: Yes, both RAR4 and RAR5. The format is detected from the file’s own bytes, not its extension.
What about multi-part archives — .part1.rar, .r00 and so on?: Give it the first volume. Whether it completes depends on the browser being able to hold all the parts, and a multi-part set is usually large enough that a desktop tool is the better answer.
Why is the ZIP bigger than the RAR?: Because ZIP compresses less well. That is the cost of a file that opens everywhere without extra software — and if the contents are photos or video, the difference will be small.
Is there a size limit?: Your device’s memory, and a deliberate ceiling of 2 GB unpacked and 20,000 files. Those are not commercial limits — they are the point past which a browser tab stops being the right tool, and past which the file is more likely to be a decompression bomb than a real archive.