Make a TAR or TAR.GZ
Build the archive format Linux and macOS expect, without opening a terminal. Nothing is stored at any point.
- Never stored
- No queue, no waiting
- No signup, no watermark
How it works
Add your files
As many as you like, folders included.
Choose TAR or TAR.GZ
Plain TAR bundles without compressing. TAR.GZ compresses the whole bundle, which is usually what you want.
Download it
Built and saved straight to your downloads.
Why TAR beats ZIP on size and loses on convenience
TAR does not compress. It concatenates files into one stream, each preceded by a 512-byte header carrying its name, size, permissions, ownership and timestamp, and the compression is a separate layer wrapped around the whole result. That stacking is exactly why a .tar.gz is smaller than a ZIP of the same files: gzip sees one continuous stream and can exploit repetition between files, where ZIP compresses each file on its own and cannot. For a folder of similar documents or source code the difference is often large.
The cost is paid at the other end. Because the compression wraps everything, a .tar.gz has no catalogue — listing its contents means decompressing from the start, and extracting the last file means decompressing all of it. A ZIP lists instantly at any size. Which format is better depends entirely on whether the archive will be unpacked whole, which a backup or a source release always is.
Already-compressed files change the arithmetic completely. A TAR of JPEGs, MP4s or PDFs gains almost nothing from the gzip step, because that material has had its repetition removed already — the archive is essentially the sum of its inputs. TAR is still worth using there for the same reason as ZIP, to send one file rather than many, just not for the size.
Permissions are written as sensible defaults rather than read from your files, and this is the honest limit. A page has no access to the mode bits, ownership or symbolic links on your disk — it receives file contents and names and nothing else. So an executable script arrives in the archive non-executable, and a symbolic link cannot be recorded as one. For a .tar.gz of documents that is irrelevant; for packaging something that will be unpacked and run, it is the whole point of the format and it is missing.
When you want something else
For anything where the metadata matters — a backup, a source release, moving a directory tree between machines — tar -czf archive.tar.gz folder/ is the right tool and it is already installed on every Mac and Linux machine, and on Windows since 2018. It records real permissions, ownership, symbolic links and timestamps, streams to disk with no size limit, and is what every recipient expects a tarball to contain.
For a smaller file still, change the compression rather than the container: tar -cJf archive.tar.xz folder/ uses xz and is typically substantially smaller than gzip at the cost of time, while --zstd is nearly as small and dramatically faster. Both are read by every current Unix system. And if the recipient is on Windows and not technical, a plain ZIP remains the considerate choice.
Frequently asked questions
Should I pick TAR or TAR.GZ?
TAR.GZ, almost always — plain TAR does not compress at all, so the archive is the size of everything in it added together. Plain TAR is useful when the contents are already compressed, or when something downstream expects to do the compressing.
Will Linux accept the archives this makes?
Yes, and that is tested rather than assumed: every build checks that GNU tar itself lists and extracts what this page produces, byte for byte. Long file names are written as POSIX pax headers, which is the standard extension and what bsdtar and 7-Zip on Windows read without complaint.
Are my files stored anywhere?
No. The archive is built and saved straight to your downloads, and nothing is kept afterwards. That matters here: the things people most often need to zip — documents, photographs, a folder of work — are exactly the things that should not be handed to a stranger's server first.
Why would I use this instead of ZIP?
Mostly because something else asked for it — a server, a deployment script, a colleague on Linux. There is one real technical advantage: because TAR.GZ compresses the bundle as a single stream rather than each file separately, it is often noticeably smaller than a ZIP when you have many small similar files, like source code or logs. For sending one archive to one person on Windows, ZIP is the friendlier choice.
Is there a size limit?
Available memory, rather than a fixed size cap. Hundreds of files and several gigabytes are fine on a normal computer; a phone will manage less.
Good to know: TAR stores no compression of its own, so the gzip step is where the size comes from — already-compressed files (JPEG, MP4, PDF) will barely shrink. File permissions are written as sensible defaults because a browser cannot read the real ones from your disk.
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