alternatives to

The Silver Searcher

A code-searching tool similar to ack, but faster.

ripgrep and ugrep. 2 alternatives to The Silver Searcher, in Rust, C++. Compare fit, licence, stars and the latest signed release.

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2 open source alternatives to The Silver Searcher
ToolFitStarsLicenceTermsSelf-hostedLanguageLatestLast push
ripgrepFull replacement70kUnlicenseOpen sourceNoRust15.2.02026-11-09
ugrepFull replacement3.3kBSD-3-ClauseOpen sourceNoC++v7.8.52026-11-09

Every alternative

Language
Licence

2 alternatives

ripgrepFull replacement

ripgrep recursively searches directories for a regex pattern while respecting your gitignore

Respects .gitignore like ag, usually faster on large trees.

Language
Rust
Licence
Unlicense
Stars
70k
Latest
15.2.0
Last push
2026-11-09
ugrepFull replacement

🔍 ugrep 7.8 file pattern searcher -- a user-friendly, faster, more capable grep replacement. Includes a TUI, Google-like Boolean search with AND/OR/NOT, fuzzy search, hexdumps, searches (nested) archives (zip, 7z, tar, pax, cpio), compressed files (gz, Z, bz2, lzma, xz, lz4, zstd, brotli), pdfs, docs, and more

Recursive search with grep-compatible options, plus a text UI and fuzzy matching.

Language
C++
Stars
3.3k
Latest
v7.8.5
Last push
2026-11-09

Head to head

About The Silver Searcher

Language
C
Licence
Apache-2.0
Stars
27k
Last push
2024-06-16

About The Silver Searcher →