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GNU Grep vs ripgrep-all: catalog facts
GNU Grep	ripgrep-all
Free Free software from the GNU Project with no paid tier.	Free Free and open source under the AGPL.
Linux, Command line	Windows, macOS, Linux, Command line
Installed by default on most Linux systems Thorough documentation via man, info and online manual	Searches PDFs, Office documents, EPUBs, SQLite databases and subtitles, not just text Descends recursively into archives and matches inside them
Slower on large codebases than tools like ripgrep or ugrep Does not skip ignored files or directories by default	Depends on external tools such as pandoc, poppler-utils and ffmpeg for the adapters First run over a large collection is slow until the cache is built
Downloadable app	Downloadable app
Open source	Open source
License: GPL-3.0-or-later	License: AGPL-3.0
No account needed	No account needed
Works offline	Works offline
Official website Full listing and sources Checked October 1, 2026	Official website Full listing and sources Checked September 21, 2026

Catalog facts only. Anything “not stated” is unconfirmed. Check full listings for details.