tar or zip — which should I use?

tar only concatenates files into one stream without compressing, which is why it is usually piped through gzip into .tar.gz; it preserves Unix paths and permissions and is the default on Linux. zip compresses on its own and opens with a double-click on Windows and macOS. Send tar.gz to a server, zip to a person.

Why no .tar.xz or .tar.bz2?

Browsers only ship gzip natively; xz and bzip2 would need extra compression libraries that are large and slow in JavaScript. Compress those locally if you need them. Extraction is a different story — the RAR / 7Z extractor reads all of them.

Will non-ASCII filenames survive?

Yes. Names are written as UTF-8, which every modern tar (GNU tar, bsdtar, 7-Zip) reads as UTF-8.

How large an archive can it build?

File contents are streamed in rather than loaded into memory, so multi-gigabyte inputs are fine. The finished archive is held by the browser before download, so extremely large results are bounded by available memory.

🗄️

🗄️Create tar / tar.gz Online - No Command Line Needed

Build tar and tar.gz archives right in the browser — no command line, no upload. Handy on Windows, where there is no tar at hand but the file has to go to a Linux box. Output is standard ustar, so GNU tar and bsdtar open it without complaints.

Free · No sign-up · Runs in your browserLast updated: 2026-10-26

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How to use TAR Archiver

1Click "Add files" or "Add folder", or just drop things in
2Pick .tar (no compression) or .tar.gz (gzip), and name the archive
3Click "Create archive" and download it

FAQ

tar or zip — which should I use?: tar only concatenates files into one stream without compressing, which is why it is usually piped through gzip into .tar.gz; it preserves Unix paths and permissions and is the default on Linux. zip compresses on its own and opens with a double-click on Windows and macOS. Send tar.gz to a server, zip to a person.
Why no .tar.xz or .tar.bz2?: Browsers only ship gzip natively; xz and bzip2 would need extra compression libraries that are large and slow in JavaScript. Compress those locally if you need them. Extraction is a different story — the RAR / 7Z extractor reads all of them.
Will non-ASCII filenames survive?: Yes. Names are written as UTF-8, which every modern tar (GNU tar, bsdtar, 7-Zip) reads as UTF-8.
How large an archive can it build?: File contents are streamed in rather than loaded into memory, so multi-gigabyte inputs are fine. The finished archive is held by the browser before download, so extremely large results are bounded by available memory.