ripgrep vs grep
grep is the POSIX standard — available everywhere, battle-tested, and reliable. ripgrep is the modern replacement — dramatically faster, developer-friendly, and smarter by default.
Quick Verdict
For interactive developer use, ripgrep wins in every measurable way — it's 5–40× faster, smarter about which files to search, and more ergonomic. The only reason to prefer grep is when you need POSIX portability in scripts that run on systems where you can't install ripgrep. If you control the environment, use ripgrep.
Feature Comparison
| Feature | ripgrep | grep (GNU) |
|---|---|---|
| Speed (large codebase) | ✅ Fastest | 🐢 ~8× slower |
| Respects .gitignore | ✅ Yes (default) | ❌ No |
| Skips hidden files | ✅ Yes (default) | ❌ No |
| Skips binary files | ✅ Yes (default) | ⚠️ Sometimes |
| Unicode support | ✅ Always on | ⚠️ Locale-dependent |
| PCRE2 regex | ✅ With -P | ✅ With -P (GNU) |
| File type filtering | ✅ -t flag | ❌ Manual globs only |
| Compressed file search | ✅ With -z | ❌ No |
| Single binary | ✅ Yes | ✅ Yes |
| JSON output | ✅ --json | ❌ No |
| Config file | ✅ .ripgreprc | ⚠️ GREP_OPTIONS (deprecated) |
| POSIX compliant | ❌ No | ✅ Yes |
| Actively maintained | ✅ Yes | ✅ Yes |
Speed
On the Linux kernel source tree (regex pattern, ~75k files), ripgrep completes in 0.082 s vs grep's 0.671 s — roughly 8× faster. On patterns with more matches or larger corpora the gap often grows wider.
See the full benchmarks page for detailed data across different patterns and corpus sizes.
When to use each
Use ripgrep when:
- ✓Searching code repositories
- ✓You want smart defaults (skip node_modules, dist, etc.)
- ✓Speed matters on large codebases
- ✓You want file-type filtering (
-t py) - ✓You want JSON output for scripting
- ✓Daily interactive terminal use
Stick with grep when:
- →Writing POSIX-portable shell scripts
- →Searching on systems where you can't install ripgrep
- →You specifically need POSIX ERE or BRE syntax
- →Embedded systems or minimal environments
Command Equivalents
Most grep commands have a direct ripgrep equivalent. One key difference: ripgrep searches recursively by default, so you rarely need to specify a path.
| Task | ripgrep | grep |
|---|---|---|
| Basic search | rg 'pattern' | grep -r 'pattern' . |
| Case-insensitive | rg -i 'pattern' | grep -ri 'pattern' . |
| Show line numbers | rg -n 'pattern' | grep -rn 'pattern' . |
| Word boundary | rg -w 'word' | grep -rw 'word' . |
| Invert match | rg -v 'pattern' | grep -rv 'pattern' . |
| Count matches | rg -c 'pattern' | grep -rc 'pattern' . |
| List matching files | rg -l 'pattern' | grep -rl 'pattern' . |
| Context (3 lines) | rg -C 3 'pattern' | grep -rC 3 'pattern' . |
| Only Python files | rg -t py 'pattern' | grep -r --include='*.py' 'pattern' . |
| Exclude directory | rg -g '!dist' 'pattern' | grep -r --exclude-dir=dist 'pattern' . |
| Fixed string (no regex) | rg -F 'literal.string' | grep -rF 'literal.string' . |
| Search hidden files | rg -. 'pattern' | grep -r 'pattern' . |
Migration Tips
Switching from grep to ripgrep is straightforward. Most flags are identical or near-identical.
The main adjustment is that ripgrep is recursive by default — you don't need -r or a path argument.
# grep habit → ripgrep equivalent
# grep -rn 'pattern' .
rg 'pattern' # -r and . are implicit
# grep -rni 'pattern' .
rg -i 'pattern' # -r and -n are default
# grep -rl 'pattern' .
rg -l 'pattern'
# grep -r --include='*.py' 'pattern' .
rg -t py 'pattern' # much more ergonomic
# grep -r --exclude-dir=node_modules 'pattern' .
rg 'pattern' # node_modules already excluded via .gitignore