Windows Grep Alternatives

Windows Grep has been discontinued. Similar apps include grepWin, which is free and open source. Other options are grep, dnGREP, SearchMyFiles and AstroGrep. File Search Utilities like Windows Grep are a crowded field, with more than 25 alternatives for Windows, Linux, Mac and the web.

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Alternatives
Windows Grep alternatives page was last updated

Alternatives list

  1. grepWin icon
     76 likes

    grepWin is a simple search and replace tool which can use PCRE regular expressions to search for strings of text within files. grepWin adds an entry to the shell context menu to easily search selected folders.

    38 grepWin alternatives

    Cost / License

    Application type

    Since

    • Since 2009

    Platforms

    • Windows
    • PortableApps.com
    • Chocolatey
    Good alternative?
     
  2. grep icon
     40 likes

    grep is a command-line utility for searching plain-text data sets for lines matching a regular expression.

    48 grep alternatives

    Cost / License

    • Free
    • Open Source

    Application type

    Since

    • Since 2012

    Platforms

    • Mac
    • Windows
    • Linux
    • Haiku
    • Linux Mobile
    Good alternative?
     
  3. dnGREP icon
     42 likes

    dnGrep allows you to search across files with easy-to-read results. Search through text files, Word documents, PDFs, and archives using text, regular expression, XPath, and phonetic queries. dnGrep includes search-and-replace, whole-file preview, right-click search in File...

    63 dnGREP alternatives

    Cost / License

    • Free
    • Open Source

    Application type

    Since

    • Since 2010

    Platforms

    • Windows
    Good alternative?
     
  4. SearchMyFiles icon
     35 likes

    SearchMyFiles is a non-indexing portable alternative to the standard "Search For Files And Folders" module of Windows. It allows you to easily search files in your system by wildcard, by last modified/created/last accessed time, by file attributes, by file content...

    121 SearchMyFiles alternatives

    Cost / License

    • Free
    • Proprietary

    Application type

    Since

    • Since 2010

    Platforms

    • Windows
    Good alternative?
     
  5. AstroGrep icon
     33 likes

    AstroGrep is A Microsoft Windows GUI File Searching (grep) utility. Features include regular expressions, versatile printing options, stores most recent used paths and has a "context" feature which is very nice for looking at source code.

    43 AstroGrep alternatives

    Cost / License

    • Free
    • Open Source

    Application type

    Since

    • Since 2009

    Platforms

    • Windows
    Good alternative?
     
  6.  4 likes

    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

    46 ugrep alternatives

    Cost / License

    Application type

    Since

    • Since 2025

    Platforms

    • Linux
    • Homebrew
    • MacPorts
    • Termux
    • BSD
    • FreeBSD
    • OpenBSD
    • NetBSD
    • Alpine Linux
    • Chocolatey
    • Windows
    Good alternative?
     
  7. TextSeek icon
     10 likes

    TextSeek is a professional full-text desktop search tool for Windows and MacOS. It supports PDF, Word, Excel, Powerpoint, RTF and other formats.

    114 TextSeek alternatives

    Cost / License

    • Freemium
    • Proprietary

    Application type

    Since

    • Since 2018

    Platforms

    • Mac
    • Windows
    Good alternative?
     
  8. Find and Replace (FNR) is an open source tool to find and replace text in multiple files.

    Cost / License

    • Free
    • Open Source (MIT)

    Since

    • Since 2011

    Platforms

    • Windows
    Good alternative?
     
  9. FAR is a simple tool for search and replace operations over multiple files. You can apply ordinary "word by word" replacement, or choose to use fully featured regular expressions.

    31 FAR - Find And Replace alternatives

    Cost / License

    • Free
    • Open Source

    Application type

    Since

    • Since 2011

    Platforms

    • Mac
    • Windows
    • Linux
    Good alternative?
     
  10. Indexed search tool enabling file and email discovery across local, shared, and network paths. Supports Office, PDF, and web formats. Outlook integration with preview windows and search result highlights. Features include filters, customizable indexing, and enterprise support.

    94 Lookeen Desktop Search alternatives

    Cost / License

    • Paid
    • Proprietary

    Application type

    Since

    • Since 2009

    Platforms

    • Windows
    • Microsoft Outlook
    Good alternative?
     
  11. Silver Searcher is a code search tool similar to ack that claims to be much faster. It's implemented in C and has some extra features such as ignoring files per .hignore, .gitignore contents.

    Cost / License

    Application type

    Since

    • Since 2016

    Platforms

    • Mac
    • Linux
    • BSD
    Good alternative?
     
  12. Search files with smart queries as with Google, replace simple or multiline text in multiple files. The batch replace operation easily updates hundreds of different links in several files. Extremely fast, easy to use, with excellent help.

    40 Advanced Find and Replace alternatives

    Cost / License

    • Paid
    • Proprietary

    Application type

    Since

    • Since 2010

    Platforms

    • Windows
    Good alternative?
     
12 of 40 Windows Grep alternatives