TAR to GZ Converter
Convert TAR to TAR.GZ online for free. Fast, secure archive conversion that preserves folder structure and file integrity. No software installation required.
Max file size 10MB. Sign up for more.
| File Name | Size | Convert To |
|---|
Checking files and selected output formats.
| File Name | File Size | Download |
|---|
Convert TAR Archives in 3 Steps
Repackage archived files for better compatibility, compression, or extraction support without installing desktop archive software.
Drag and drop your .tar file into the converter above, or click "Choose Files" to browse your device.
Click "Convert All" and our server re-packs your files from TAR into GZ format while preserving the complete folder structure.
Your converted .gz archive is ready instantly. Click Download to save it to your device.
Why Convert TAR to GZ
Gzip is the default compression tool on Linux and Unix systems. Source code tarballs, package distributions, and system backups throughout the open-source world use .tar.gz as the standard format.
Gzip offers a good balance between compression ratio and speed. Files compress and decompress quickly, making GZ suitable for real-time log compression, web server content encoding, and scripted workflows.
Web servers use gzip compression to reduce the size of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript delivered to browsers. Every modern browser supports gzip content encoding for faster page loads.
Gzip works with Unix pipes, allowing on-the-fly compression and decompression without temporary files. Chain gzip with tar, cat, ssh, and other commands for efficient data processing pipelines.
Every Linux distribution, macOS installation, and Unix system includes gzip by default. Windows users can extract GZ files with 7-Zip, WinZip, or Windows Subsystem for Linux.
TAR vs GZ: Side-by-side
Technical comparison of the two formats — useful for deciding which to use, or for confirming what changes during conversion.
| Property | TAR | GZ |
|---|---|---|
| Full name | Tape Archive | GNU Zip |
| Year introduced | 1979 | 1992 |
| Developer / standard body | AT&T Unix | GNU Project |
| MIME type | application/x-tar | application/gzip |
| File extension | .tar | .gz |
| Compression | None (often paired with gzip → .tar.gz) | DEFLATE (single-file compression) |
| Color / data depth | N/A | N/A |
| Max dimensions / size | 8 EB file size | 4 GB uncompressed (typical) |
| Transparency | No | No |
| Animation | No | No |
| Standard / specification | POSIX / IEEE 1003.1 | IETF RFC 1952 |
| Best for | Unix / Linux backups, source-code distribution | Single-file compression, often inside .tar.gz archives |
About the TAR Format
TAR (Tape Archive) is a Unix file archiving format created in 1979 for writing data to sequential tape drives. Unlike ZIP or 7Z, TAR does not compress files on its own — it simply bundles multiple files and directories into a single archive while preserving Unix file permissions, ownership, timestamps, and symbolic links. This makes TAR the standard choice for software distribution and system backups on Linux and macOS.
TAR is almost always paired with a compression tool: TAR.GZ (gzip) is the most common combination, offering good speed and reasonable compression. TAR.BZ2 (bzip2) achieves better compression at the cost of slower processing, while TAR.XZ (xz/LZMA2) produces the smallest archives. Because TAR preserves the full Unix filesystem metadata that ZIP discards, it remains essential for packaging source code, deploying server configurations, and creating system images where file permissions must survive the round trip.