A cPanel full-account backup contains much more than the public website directory. The archive can include home-directory data and account metadata used to reconstruct the cPanel account at the server level.
Examples include website files, mail data stored under the account, database information, SSL-related account data, domain configuration metadata, and other cPanel account files. The exact internal layout can change between cPanel versions.
cPanel specifically warns developers not to treat the backup tarball's internal structure as a permanent integration API. For normal recovery, use supported cPanel/WHM restore tools when possible and treat manual archive extraction as a recovery technique rather than an application interface.
