Extract TAR
Extract a TAR or TAR.GZ archive online and get the contents back as a ZIP that Windows and macOS can open natively. TAR is the standard on Linux and in source distributions, and it is precisely the format Windows still has no built-in support for. It is free, needs no account, and adds no watermark to your result.
Extract TAR
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What people use it for.
What happens to your file.
The archive is decompressed and read, every member path is validated before anything is written, and the extracted contents are repackaged as a ZIP for download. Member count and total output size are capped, so an archive that expands enormously is rejected rather than allowed to exhaust the server.
Where it stops: One archive is extracted per job, and both the member count and the total expanded size are limited for fair use on a shared server. Encrypted or password-protected archives cannot be opened, and a download that was cut short is reported as incomplete rather than half-extracted.
Which files it opens
| Extension | What it is |
|---|---|
| .tar | An uncompressed tarball: many files joined into one |
| .tar.gz | A tarball compressed with gzip, the most common form on Linux |
| .tgz | The same thing with a shorter name |
What happens to each entry
- Files keep the dates the archive recorded, and scripts marked executable stay executable.
- Symbolic links, device files and pipes are skipped, and everything else still comes out. A hard link comes out as a copy of the file it points to.
- An entry whose path would land outside the extraction folder is refused before anything is written.
- A file added twice with tar --append comes out once, as its later version, exactly as tar extracts it.
- Two entries whose names differ only in capitals both come out; the second gets “(2)” added, because Windows and macOS would treat them as one file.
- File names an old Windows tool wrote in its own character set keep their accented letters.
- Up to 5,000 entries and 500 MB once extracted.
Everything you need, without a paywall.
Common questions.
Why does the result come back as a ZIP?
Because Windows and macOS open ZIP files without any extra software, whereas TAR normally needs a separate tool on Windows. The files inside are unchanged.
Are path traversal entries handled safely?
Yes. Every member path is validated before extraction, so an archive containing entries such as ../../etc/passwd cannot write outside the extraction directory.
What are the size limits?
One archive per job, with caps on the number of members and the total expanded size. These exist to protect a shared server from archives that decompress to an enormous size.
You might also need.
Convert TAR or TAR.GZ archives into ZIP while safely validating archive member paths.
Convert a ZIP archive into TAR while safely validating member paths and extraction size.
Inspect filenames, compressed sizes, original sizes, compression ratios and directory entries without extracting the archive.
Decompress one GZIP file per job and restore the contained bytes under a streaming output-size limit.