WinRAR is now celebrating customers who actually pay

A company from the internet archives, WinRAR, based in Berlin, Germany, has been celebrating on its X channel when customers pay for its subscription product.

Fondly known for allowing you to overstay your welcome by using its product indefinitely beyond the stated 40-day trial, users have been unzipping large files with WinRAR for decades now.

By using WinRAR, you could unpack the files into folders. I personally remember doing this for things like games and large batches of photos, though it was also used for large email attachments.

In fact, generations of internet users have been unzipping files for free since the company's creation in 1993. And because the occasion of purchasing the full version was so rare, humorous memes have been created, imagining how the team would celebrate in the event of a sale.

Posts from the funny
community on Reddit

WinRAR has gotten in on the act themselves by posting on their X channel celebratory updates announcing, “There's another new member of the WinRAR family!”

There's another new member of the WinRAR family! 😍🥳😎🔥 https://t.co/Zq7caZg0ci

undefined WinRAR (@WinRAR_RARLAB) May 27, 2026

The company is seen as a lasting remnant of a particular era of the internet, one in which files were often shared on USB sticks and flash drives.

Overall, the transfer and unzipping of such files was a chore. And to make matters more stressful, market leader and competitor WinZip would strictly lock a user out of its free product.

On WinZip, this was a process you couldn’t simply bypass, facing either a choice to redownload the free version or pay around $30 a year. There was also an option of an enterprise edition, which would cost $60 per user.

For WinRAR, while the everyday user can click through the pop-up offering a paid version ($35 annually), corporations can essentially choose to use the same free version in a duplicitous manner. Alternatively, they can purchase a much cheaper batch option than WinZip, costing as little as $6-16, depending on the size of the corporation.

When organizations such as government, educational, or legal agencies need to conduct large-scale file auditing, WinRAR is a cheaper alternative than its competitor, WinZip.

Whether for the personal or corporate user, WinRAR has managed to reactivate a sense of nostalgia, as well as demonstrating a quirky sense of goodwill.

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