What is the difference between CBR and CBZ?

Only the compression inside. CBR is a RAR archive of page images, CBZ is a ZIP of the same thing. CBZ is more widely supported because ZIP is an open format.

How do I convert CBR to CBZ?

Extract the CBR with 7-Zip, then compress the images back into a ZIP and rename it to .cbz. Calibre can also convert between the two directly.

File extensions

How to open a .cbr file

Comic book RAR archive · Ebook / comics

A .cbr file is a RAR archive full of page images. A comic reader such as YACReader opens it, and renaming a copy to .rar lets 7-Zip extract the pages.

What a .cbr file actually is

CBR stands for Comic Book RAR. Like CBZ it is just an archive of numbered images, with RAR compression instead of ZIP.

That difference matters in practice: RAR is proprietary, so slightly fewer tools handle CBR than CBZ, and some readers support one but not the other.

Why it will not open

Nothing is associated with .cbr, and because it is RAR underneath, the built-in archiver on macOS will not touch it even after renaming.

Renaming it to an extension you can open will not help: changing the extension does not convert the file, it only changes what Windows tries to open it with.

Step by step

Windows

01Install a comic reader such as YACReader or CDisplayEx, both free.
02To extract the images, copy the file, rename the copy to .rar, and open it with 7-Zip.
03Calibre also reads CBR if you want it in a managed library.

macOS

01YACReader and Simple Comic both handle CBR.
02To extract, rename a copy to .rar and open it with Keka or The Unarchiver. Archive Utility cannot read RAR.

Programs that open .cbr

Our pick, in order. Every one links to the publisher's official download URL and the SHA-256 hash of the installer. Once you have downloaded it, you can check the file against our index before you run it.

If you end up downloading one of these from somewhere other than the publisher, what you can and cannot verify about that is worth two minutes.

Also registers .cbr in its manifest

Taken straight from publisher manifests. Some of these handle the format for a narrow purpose rather than as their main job.

SumatraPDFv3.6.1 · 6 hashed installers100

Common questions

What is the difference between CBR and CBZ?: Only the compression inside. CBR is a RAR archive of page images, CBZ is a ZIP of the same thing. CBZ is more widely supported because ZIP is an open format.
How do I convert CBR to CBZ?: Extract the CBR with 7-Zip, then compress the images back into a ZIP and rename it to .cbz. Calibre can also convert between the two directly.