Rars
Shares rank 12 of 14 compression tools by recommenders
Free open-source Rust implementation of RAR, valued as the broadest open source option. Caveat: slow in edge cases and likely has bugs.
Free open-source Rust implementation of RAR, valued as the broadest open source option. Caveat: slow in edge cases and likely has bugs.
8 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 6
- criticize it
- 2
- approval share
- 75%
Recommended in 1 of 13 months
- November 2025: not recommended
- December 2025: not recommended
- January 2026: not recommended
- February 2026: not recommended
- March 2026: not recommended
- April 2026: not recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: not recommended
- July 2026: not recommended
- August 2026: not recommended
- September 2026: not recommended
- October 2026: not recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 6 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, not met.
- 3 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 1 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, not met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Works in most cases
“But it works in the majority of cases. There's likely some nasty bugs hiding in there.”
Comment from 14 May 2026 in “Rars: a Rust RAR implementation, mostly written by LLMs” “It's not fast and it's not pretty, but it works.”
Comment from 13 May 2026 in “Rars: a Rust RAR implementation, mostly written by LLMs”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Slow, especially in edge cases
“way too slow in edge cases (unlikely with Rust but you never know), leaking temporary files, having security holes”
Comment from 13 May 2026 in “Rars: a Rust RAR implementation, mostly written by LLMs” “It's not fast and it's not pretty, but it works.”
Comment from 13 May 2026 in “Rars: a Rust RAR implementation, mostly written by LLMs” Possible bugs and security holes
“way too slow in edge cases (unlikely with Rust but you never know), leaking temporary files, having security holes”
Comment from 13 May 2026 in “Rars: a Rust RAR implementation, mostly written by LLMs” “But it works in the majority of cases. There's likely some nasty bugs hiding in there.”
Comment from 14 May 2026 in “Rars: a Rust RAR implementation, mostly written by LLMs”
Other compression tools people recommend
The four most recommended other compression tools, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Zstandard (zstd) | 111 | 14 | 89% | 12 | — | Approved |
| Brotli | 24 | 18 | 57% | 7 | — | — |
| gzip | 23 | 13 | 64% | 8 | — | — |
| tar | 19 | 13 | 59% | 11 | — | — |
| RarsThis page | 6 | 2 | 75% | 1 | — | — |
What people said
7 of the 9 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“But it works in the majority of cases. There's likely some nasty bugs hiding in there.”
“it is the most broad open source version available”
“way too slow in edge cases (unlikely with Rust but you never know), leaking temporary files, having security holes”
“on succes I tried with rar but failed”
“this is a really cool project”
“How would you know it's not encumbered in any way?”
“It's not fast and it's not pretty, but it works.”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.