Thirty years of the format and the program behind it

Ask somebody which archiving tool they met first on Windows and the answer is often this one. It is developed under the guidance of the person who invented the RAR format, has been on the market since 1993, and is published and licensed by a German company; it ships in more than 40 languages. As of 2026-09 the latest stable release is 7.23, which arrived in 2026-06. The terms are the old ones: 40 days of free use, and a licence to buy if the program stays on the machine afterwards.

What the format actually buys

Three abilities carry most of the weight. Solid compression treats a large number of small files as one stream rather than as separate entries, which makes the result smaller and the work faster. Split volumes cut a large file into pieces of a chosen size, so a project can be carried on several sticks or uploaded in parts without a second tool. The recovery record is the third: redundant data stored inside the archive gives a damaged file a chance of being repaired when the medium underneath it has partly failed, which is closer to insurance than to compression.

Around those sit the features a working archive needs. Encryption uses the 256-bit variant of the standard cipher, self-extracting modules can be configured, and comments can be attached to an archive so that whoever opens it later knows what it was for. Between them they cover most of what archiving actually means in practice, from sending a folder to a colleague to keeping a decade of project material in one place.

Reading almost anything

Its own formats are only half of the story. Besides RAR and RAR5, the program opens ZIP, 7Z, TAR, GZ, ISO and dozens of other common formats, and when compressing, the output can be either its own format or the more widely readable ZIP. The practical effect is that an archive arriving from an unknown source can usually be handled without installing anything else, and there is no switching of tools depending on what somebody happened to send.

The interface has barely changed in years, and that is deliberate: a file browser layout, and a context menu woven deep into the operating system. Somebody who has used it for a decade does not have to learn anything, and a newcomer still finds the entry that extracts into the current folder within seconds, which is the action most people actually want.

Which of the three matters depends on the job. A folder of a few thousand small text files gains most from solid compression, because the shared structure between them is what a separate entry wastes. A video project too large for one disk gains from volumes, since it can cross several sticks and be rejoined later. Material meant to sit on a shelf for years gains from the recovery record, because media fails quietly and an archive with nothing redundant inside it fails with the media. Knowing which of the three is being bought is most of the decision.

A veteran that keeps shipping updates

Age has not turned it static. Recent versions have improved the efficiency of deleting entries from a solid archive, the speed of opening very large archives, and the extraction performance for the TAR family of formats, while the command line parameters have kept growing, so people who drive the tool from scripts are looked after as well. Windows 11 and Windows 10 are officially supported, and the earlier 8 line is still covered.

The other thing worth saying is what an archive is for in an age of cloud drives. A compressed folder is a single object that can be copied, mailed or put on a shelf and opened a decade later without a service standing in between, and that independence is the point. The program has stayed in use because it treats that object as something to be protected rather than merely squeezed.

Who it is for

Anyone who wants one archiving tool that is complete, steady and generous about formats will find this a mainstream answer. The 40-day trial is long enough to judge it on real work rather than on a demo, individuals and businesses can buy a licence as their use requires, and long-term users get the benefit of updates that have not stopped for three decades. The official site carries the details.