ripgrep

BurntSushi/ripgrepReviewed by AI

What it does

ripgrep (the command is `rg`) looks for a word or a pattern inside every file of a folder and prints the lines it finds. It skips what your .gitignore lists, hidden files and binary files unless you ask otherwise, and it can limit the search to one kind of file, read inside compressed files and handle other text encodings. It is one small program of about 2 MB with ready downloads for Windows, macOS and Linux, and it is also in most package managers. There is no window: everything happens in the terminal with flags.

How easy it is to install

C · install 1 or 2 tools · Windows

Windows C
macOS C
Linux C

On every system it is one 2 MB ready file with nothing else to install: on Windows `winget install BurntSushi.ripgrep.MSVC` or the zip from the releases page, on macOS `brew install ripgrep`, on Linux `sudo apt-get install ripgrep` or the .deb. The grade stays at C because it has no window at all, so you have to work in the terminal and learn flags such as `rg -tpy foo` or `rg -uuu`. Rust is only needed if you choose to compile it yourself with `cargo build --release`.

Numbers on GitHub

Stars: 69,598on Oct 31, 2026
Downloads: 68,537,1012,147,252 this week
Growth: +121stars in 5 days

Stars over time

Facts

Runs on: Windows, macOS, Linux
You need to install: Nothing extra
To build from source: Rust
Disk space: 2 MB–5 MB · from the installer
Accounts or keys: None
Cost: Free · Free; COPYING says the code is dual-licensed under the Unlicense and MIT, which puts almost no conditions on reuse.
License: Unlicense (Permissive)
Last update: Oct 27, 2026

Risk signals (3)

Infoterminal only no window
README, Installation: "The binary name for ripgrep is rg." Every example in the README is a command line such as `rg -n -w '[A-Z]+_SUSPEND'`. There is no graphical interface, only an unofficial web playground linked from the README.
AI review
Infocan run other programs you configure
README: ripgrep "supports arbitrary input preprocessing filters which could be PDF text extraction, less supported decompression, decrypting, automatic encoding detection and so on". That means it will run the command you put in a configuration file or flag, so a shared configuration file is worth reading before use.
AI review
Infolatest release is older than the code
The last release is 15.2.0 from 2026-07-15 while the last commit is from 2026-10-27, so recent changes are only in the source. The version your package manager offers may also be older still, which the README says about Debian stable.
AI review

Evidence is shown in its original language.

What Radar could not check

The real speed on your computer and your files: the README's own tables show cases where it is only slightly faster, and one pattern that takes over 15 seconds
Whether the prebuilt file you download includes the optional PCRE2 engine needed for `-P`, since that is a build choice
Which version your package manager installs, which can be older than 15.2.0
Whether a configuration file you inherited from someone else changes the default search behaviour