When Was the First Version of UnRAR Released?

This article examines the release history of the UnRAR utility, detailing when the initial version became available, who created it, and how it evolved alongside the proprietary RAR archive format to support cross-platform decompression.

The first version of UnRAR traces its origins to the launch of the RAR compression format in 1993. Russian software engineer Eugene Roshal created RAR and introduced the first public version, RAR 1.3, in March 1993. Alongside the primary archiver, extraction routines were developed to allow users to unpack archives without needing the full commercial suite.

The standalone UnRAR source code was first distributed in the mid-1990s, with early dedicated versions appearing around 1995. Eugene Roshal released the UnRAR source code under a freeware license that permitted anyone to compile and distribute the decompression utility freely across different operating systems, provided the code was not used to reverse-engineer the proprietary RAR compression algorithm.

In 1995 and 1996, the first widespread Unix and Linux ports of UnRAR were released. These command-line tools gave non-Windows platforms native capability to unpack .rar archives, establishing UnRAR as an essential utility in server environments, open-source operating systems, and automated file-management workflows. Since that initial rollout, UnRAR has undergone continuous updates to maintain compatibility with newer archive versions, including RAR4 and the modern RAR5 format introduced in 2013.