grep vs ripgrep: Is It Worth Switching?

grep is everywhere; ripgrep is dramatically faster on code and respects .gitignore by default.

Side by side

	grep	ripgrep (rg)
Installed by default	Yes, on every Unix system	No, needs installing
Speed on a large repo	Slow unless you exclude directories	Very fast, parallel by default
Respects .gitignore	No	Yes, automatically
Skips binary files	No, warns about them	Yes, automatically
Recursive by default	No, needs -r	Yes
Filter by file type	--include="*.py"	-t py (built-in type definitions)
Regex engine	POSIX BRE/ERE, backreferences	Rust regex: no backreferences, linear time
Output	Plain by default	Coloured and grouped by file
Typical command	grep -rn "text" .	rg text

Which one, when

Searching a codebase on your own machine

Use ripgrep

Ignores dependency directories automatically, colours the output and finishes before you notice. The default command is also two words shorter.

$ rg "DATABASE_URL"

On a server you just SSHed into

Use grep

It is already there. Installing tools on production machines to run one search is not a trade anyone should make.

$ grep -rn "timeout" /etc/nginx/

Filtering the output of another command

Use grep

Both work in pipes, but grep is the reflex and the universal one. This is the case where switching buys you nothing.

$ ps aux | grep nginx

You need a backreference in the pattern

Use grep

ripgrep's regex engine deliberately excludes backreferences to guarantee linear-time matching. For those patterns grep -E (or perl) is the tool.

$ grep -E "(\w+) \1" file.txt

Searching only one language's files

Use ripgrep

Built-in type definitions beat writing include patterns by hand, and they are correct for extensions you would forget.

$ rg -t py "def process"

Gotchas worth knowing

ripgrep skipping .gitignored files is usually what you want, but if you are looking for something in build output or logs, it will silently find nothing. Add -u to include ignored files, -uu to include hidden ones too.
grep is not slow by nature; it is slow because it dutifully scans node_modules. Excluding directories closes most of the gap.
Scripts should use grep for portability. A script that depends on rg breaks on any machine where it is not installed.
The two disagree on regex dialects at the edges. Patterns with backreferences or POSIX classes may need adjusting.
ripgrep is one binary with no dependencies, which makes it easy to drop onto a machine when you genuinely need it.

Frequently asked questions

How much faster is ripgrep really?

On a large repository with dependencies, often ten times or more: most of the win comes from not searching files it should ignore, not from raw scanning speed.

Should I alias grep to rg?

No. They differ in defaults and dialect, and scripts calling grep would break in confusing ways. Keep them as separate commands.

Are there other alternatives?

ag (the silver searcher) and ack came first and work similarly; ripgrep is generally the fastest of the three and the most actively maintained.

Does ripgrep work in pipes?

Yes, exactly like grep. In practice most people still type grep for piped filtering out of habit, and that is fine.

Full guides for both

grep

Find lines matching a pattern in files or piped input: the workhorse of text search.

find

Locate files anywhere in a directory tree by name, type, size, date, and act on them.

Put it into practice

Search text inside files

Find which files contain a word, and exactly where.

Other comparisons

rsync vs scp

Both copy files over SSH. rsync sends only what changed; scp sends everything, every time.

curl vs wget

curl is an HTTP client for talking to services; wget is a downloader for retrieving files.

sed vs awk

sed edits lines; awk understands columns. Substitution is sed, computation is awk.

symbolic link vs hard link

A symlink stores a path and can break; a hard link is a second real name for the same file.