# Rars

6 Hacker News commenters recommended Rars and 2 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 1 of 13 months.

**Verdict:** Free open-source Rust implementation of RAR, valued as the broadest open source option. Caveat: slow in edge cases and likely has bugs.

## Why people recommend it

- Works in most cases (2 comments): "But it works in the majority of cases. There's likely some nasty bugs hiding in there." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48130713)) "It's not fast and it's not pretty, but it works." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48126676))

## What people warn about

- Slow, especially in edge cases (2 comments): "way too slow in edge cases (unlikely with Rust but you never know), leaking temporary files, having security holes" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48128256)) "It's not fast and it's not pretty, but it works." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48126676))
- Possible bugs and security holes (2 comments): "way too slow in edge cases (unlikely with Rust but you never know), leaking temporary files, having security holes" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48128256)) "But it works in the majority of cases. There's likely some nasty bugs hiding in there." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48130713))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [Zstandard (zstd)](https://hackerapproved.com/p/zstd.md): 111 recommend
- [Brotli](https://hackerapproved.com/p/brotli.md): 24 recommend
- [gzip](https://hackerapproved.com/p/gzip.md): 23 recommend
- [tar](https://hackerapproved.com/p/tar.md): 19 recommend
- [NNCP](https://hackerapproved.com/p/nncp.md): 15 recommend

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "Rars", https://hackerapproved.com/p/rars/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).