- Quick specs
- Price: Free to try (40-day trial, some features disabled); $29.00 to buy (Buy it now)
- Operating system: Windows 95, Windows Me, Windows XP, Windows 2000, Windows NT, Windows 98
- Date added: December 11, 2006
- Total Downloads: 77,689,980
- Downloads last week: 310,115
- See full specifications
A newer version of WinRAR is available.
(Download doesn't provide access to previous versions of this program.)
- CNET editors' rating: stars
- Average user rating: stars out of 1366 votes
See all user reviews
CNET editors' review
Reviewed by: CNET Staff
There are plenty of solid compression utilities to choose from, but this shareware powerhouse offers the features and ease of use that might place it at the top of its category. WinRAR is easy to use, lightweight, and flexible. An intuitive interface lets you mouse over icons to see their functions and if you don't like their candy-coated appearance, you can always choose from several themes at the developer's site. The Folder Tree Panel, a recent addition to the interface, makes sifting through your directories to find files for archiving easier than ever. But once you see the size savings of a RAR archive (with a compression ratio of 8 percent to 15 percent better than the ZIP format), you'll understand why so many users and developers are making the switch from other compression apps. You might even be prepared to forgive the slightly slower decompression speeds and lack of integrated virus protection.
Beyond its good looks and right-click readiness for basic compression and unzipping, WinRAR offers unpacking support for a large number of archive formats, including ACE, BZ2, JAR, ISO, and ZIP. WinRAR's advanced features are icing on the cake, with Unicode support for international formatting, embedded file comments, repair of damaged archives, archive locking, self-extracting archives, and easy encryption. Anyone seeking an all-in-one archiving solution would be remiss to not evaluate WinRAR.
Watch the CNET video review of WinRAR:
Publisher's description
From RARLAB :WinRAR is a 32-bit Windows version of RAR Archiver, an archiver and archive manager. RAR files can usually compress content by 8 percent to 15 percent more than ZIP files can. WinRAR's main features include strong general and multimedia compression, the ability to process non-RAR archive formats, ZIP compression and decompression, support for long filenames, programmable self-extracting archives (SFX), repair of damaged archives, authenticity verification, embedded file comments, and encryption. Unicode is supported in archive filenames, allowing non-English filenames to be handled painlessly. You can manipulate the parameters of many archives at once and view a volume sequence as a single archive. WinRAR can convert other archive formats to RAR and search for specified text and files in archives.
Version 3.62 is a security update.
More popular File Compression downloads
- 390,217 downloads 1. WinRAR (32-bit)
- 128,353 downloads 2. WinZip
- 36,663 downloads 3. WinRAR (64-bit)
- 26,265 downloads 4. 7-Zip
- 14,724 downloads 5. Free RAR Extract Frog
- See all File Compression downloads
User reviews of WinRAR 3.62
- Average user rating: 4.1 stars out of 1366 votes
- My rating: 0 stars Write review
-
Showing 5 of 106 user reviewsSee all 106 user reviews
This software version | All versions -
7 out of 8 people found this review helpful
Version: WinRAR 3.62
Pros: The interface is clean, and the features are effective. It handles a lot of compression formats and is the original and defacto RAR creator/reader. The overall quality of the software along with the consistency is undeniable.
Cons: The interface is minimalistic and not too pretty. Plus why would I pay (or tolerate a nag screen) when I could get the functionality through a lot of good free compression tools like IZArc and QuickZip.
-
53 out of 78 people found this review helpful
Version: WinRAR 3.62
Pros: i found i needed this as i was downloading from P2P and some of the files where winRAR. winzip and the standard one that comes with windows does not open winRAR ..
winRAR has better compression ratio to winzip and i think it is easer to use as well..
Cons: as you have to pay for this (witch by the way i didn"t i got it off my friend)i would only get this if you really need it..
-
12 out of 16 people found this review helpful
Version: WinRAR 3.62
Pros: one of the few best file compression software you can possibly get. zip or archive most type of files to more than a dozen type of file several times smaller than the orginal size, unzip(extract)it at ease or make it self-extracting. with advanced feature like archive repairing, testing, encryption(decryption), file converting.
Cons: most of the advanced feature are disabled in after the free trail. and the nagging screen is one of the most reason some people switched to other softwares.
-
Version: WinRAR 3.62
Pros: As always, the leader of the pack, matched by none, surpassed by none.
Cons: Not free, but it's trial is pretty generous.
-
4 out of 5 people found this review helpful
Version: WinRAR 3.62
"Very Good Compression Software"
Pros: This product is a strong competitor to WinZip. It also supports its own RaR format. I've been using it for 3 years now, its stable and reliable and free.
Cons: User Interface is not very flash.
- See all 106 user reviews Write review
Submit your review
Previous Versions:
