Last Updated on June 4, 2023
This article spotlights alternative tools to grep.
grep is a useful command to search for matching patterns in a file. If you are a system admin who needs to scrape through log files or a developer trying to find matches in a code file, grep is a powerful command to use.
The software featured here is free and published under an open source license. All tools provide a command-line interface (CLI) unless otherwise stated.
| Alternatives to grep | |
|---|---|
| ugrep | Ultra fast grep with interactive - Top 100 TUI apps |
| ripgrep | Recursively search directories for a regex pattern - Top 100 CLI apps |
| sift | Fast and powerful alternative to grep |
| The Silver Searcher | Code-searching tool similar to ack, but faster |
| ack | grep-like source code search tool |
| CGrep | Context-aware grep for source codes |
| ngrep | grep applied to the network layer |
| vgrep | Pager for grep, git-grep, ripgrep and similar grep implementations |
| xlsxgrep | Tool to search text in XLSX, XLS, CSV, TSV and ODS files |
| bingrep | grep-like tool for binaries |
| ucg | grep-like tool specialized for searching large bodies of source code |
| pru | Pipeable Ruby |
| phpgrep | Syntax-aware grep for PHP code |
| rzgrep | grep for stuff in archives that are embedded within archives |
| skim | General-purpose fuzzy finder |
| ruplacer | Find and replace text in source files |
Have we missed any open source alternatives to grep? Please let us know!
All the CLI tools in this series.
| Alternatives to CLI tools |
|---|
| age // awk // bc // cal // cat // cd // chmod // cksum // cloc // cmp // compress // cp // cron // curl // cut // date // dd // df // diff // dig // du // fdisk // find // ftp // grep // gzip // hexdump // history // jq // kill // less // locate // ls // lsof // make // man // more // mv / ping // ps // psql // rename // rm // sed // split // ssh // strings // sudo // sysctl // tail // talk // tar // telnet // time // top // touch // traceroute // tree // uname // uniq // uptime // vi // watch // Wget // who // whois // xargs |
 Read our complete collection of recommended free and open source software. Our curated compilation covers all categories of software. The software collection forms part of our series of informative articles for Linux enthusiasts. There are hundreds of in-depth reviews, open source alternatives to proprietary software from large corporations like Google, Microsoft, Apple, Adobe, IBM, Cisco, Oracle, and Autodesk. There are also fun things to try, hardware, free programming books and tutorials, and much more. |
Instead of using grep, I use skim. It’s a neat fuzzy finder.
skim (sk) is now included. Cheers mate!