How to Extract RAR Files — And Why RAR Still Exists
Everything about RAR files: why they persist despite free alternatives, how to extract them, and the fascinating business model behind WinRAR's eternal trial.
You've downloaded a file. It's a .rar. You know ZIP. You might even know 7Z. But RAR keeps showing up, year after year, despite being a proprietary format with no native OS support anywhere. What's the deal?
The story of RAR is one of the most interesting in software history. Let's talk about it — and then actually extract the files.
The WinRAR Business Model
WinRAR is shareware. It offers a 40-day trial. After 40 days, a dialog box pops up saying your trial has expired. You click "Close." WinRAR keeps working. Forever.
This isn't a bug. It's the entire business model, and it's been running since 1995.
Eugene Roshal (the "R" in RAR — Roshal ARchive) understood something about software distribution that most companies didn't: if you let individuals use it for free while mildly nagging them, enterprises will buy licenses because their procurement departments can't tolerate unlicensed software. The corporate licenses are where the real money is.
It worked. WinRAR has been profitable for three decades. The company, win.rar GmbH, reportedly has around 500 million users. A fraction of a percent buying licenses is still a lot of licenses.
Why RAR Still Exists
RAR should have died. ZIP is free and universal. 7Z compresses better. GZIP and TAR own the Linux world. But RAR persists because of a few specific niches:
Historical inertia in certain communities. The gaming mod community, certain software distribution scenes, and Eastern European/Russian software ecosystems standardized on RAR in the early 2000s. Those archives still circulate. New content in those communities still uses RAR because that's what everyone expects. Split archives. RAR pioneered multi-volume archives — splitting a large file across multiple smaller files (.r00, .r01, .r02, etc., or .part1.rar, .part2.rar). In the era of floppy disks, CDs, and upload size limits on early file hosts, this was essential. ZIP added split support later, but RAR's was more robust and widely adopted.
Recovery records. RAR can embed redundancy data that allows partial recovery of corrupted archives. For large downloads over unreliable connections — which was most connections in the 2000s — this mattered.
Solid compression. Like TAR.GZ, RAR can compress files as a continuous stream rather than individually. This gives better ratios on collections of similar files. ZIP doesn't do this.
How to Extract RAR Files
You have several options, and none of them involve paying for WinRAR:
7-Zip (free, open source, Windows) — Handles RAR extraction perfectly. Right-click, "Extract Here." Been the go-to recommendation for 20 years. It can't create RAR files (proprietary algorithm), but extracting is fine. The Unarchiver (free, macOS) — Handles RAR and basically every other archive format. Install it once, forget about it. unrar (free, Linux) — The official free extraction tool from RARLAB. Available in most package managers:sudo apt install unrar.
Browser-based extraction — MyPDF's RAR extractor handles it without installing anything. Upload the RAR, download the contents. Useful when you're on a work computer where you can't install software, or on a Chromebook.
RAR vs ZIP: Compression Comparison
Here are real-world compression ratios I've tested on different content types (lower = better compression):
| Content | ZIP | RAR (solid) | 7Z (LZMA2) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Source code (500 MB) | 78 MB | 62 MB | 58 MB |
| Photos/JPGs (2 GB) | 1.97 GB | 1.96 GB | 1.96 GB |
| Office documents (1 GB) | 340 MB | 290 MB | 275 MB |
| Game assets (mixed, 5 GB) | 3.1 GB | 2.6 GB | 2.4 GB |
| Text files (200 MB) | 42 MB | 31 MB | 28 MB |
Photos and JPGs barely compress regardless of format because they're already compressed. Don't bother archiving them for size reduction.
Dealing with Password-Protected RARs
RAR's encryption is actually quite strong — AES-256 since RAR5 format. If someone sends you a password-protected RAR, you need the password. There's no shortcut.
If you're the one creating archives and want password protection, I'd actually recommend using 7Z with AES-256 encryption instead. Same security, open format, free tools.
Split RAR Archives
If you have a set of files like archive.part1.rar, archive.part2.rar, etc., you need all parts before extracting. Download them all into the same directory, then extract starting from part1. Most tools (7-Zip, The Unarchiver) will automatically find and process the subsequent parts.
Older naming conventions used .rar, .r00, .r01, .r02 — same concept, different naming scheme.
The Format's Future
RAR is slowly declining. New projects, new communities, and new software overwhelmingly use ZIP or TAR.GZ. The communities that still produce RAR files are either maintaining backwards compatibility or simply haven't changed their habits.
You'll keep encountering RAR for years, maybe decades. Old archives don't disappear. But if you're choosing a format for your own files, there's no reason to pick RAR over ZIP (universal compatibility) or 7Z (better compression).
Related Tools
- Extract RAR Files — Extract RAR archives in your browser
- Create ZIP Archive — Build universal ZIP archives
- Extract 7Z Files — Handle 7Z archives online
- Extract ZIP Files — Unzip files without software