dtSearch Desktop vs Open Semantic Desktop Search
dtSearch Desktop
dtsearch.comOpen Semantic Desktop Search
opensemanticsearch.orgSide by side
| Figure | dtSearch Desktop | Open Semantic Desktop Search |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | $102.08/mo | Free |
| Free plan | — | Yes |
| Free trial | Yes | — |
| Open source | — | Yes |
| Web | — | Yes |
| Windows | Yes | Yes |
| macOS | — | Yes |
| Linux | — | Yes |
| API | — | Yes |
| Self-hosted | — | Yes |
| Plans published | 2 | 3 |
| Spec score · Desktop Search Software | 8.2 (#6) | 8.5 (#2) |
| File formats | The product line supports searching PDF, Microsoft Office, email and nested attachments, compressed archives, web data, and other listed formats. | Supported content includes office documents, spreadsheets, PDFs, email, CSV, images, photos and video formats. |
| Intended users | The company describes use across enterprise document and email search, legal research, e-discovery, forensics, government, finance, recruiting, and medical records. | The desktop virtual machine is described for single users, while the separate server installation is aimed at organizations and research teams. |
| Purpose | dtSearch Desktop provides instant searching of desktop-accessible files. | Free open-source desktop search software for full-text search, exploratory search, text analytics and text mining across large document sets. |
Plans
dtSearch Desktop
- dtSearch Desktop — single user license$249, paid once
- dtSearch Desktop — annual single individual user “investigative” license$1,225 a year
Open Semantic Desktop Search
- Open Semantic Desktop SearchFree
- Open Semantic Desktop SearchFree
- Open Semantic Search ServerPriced on request
In their own words
dtSearch Desktop
dtSearch Desktop has no write-up on Specifiction yet; its figures are above.
Open Semantic Desktop Search
Open Semantic Desktop Search is free, open-source software for full-text and semantic search, text analytics and mining across large document sets. Its desktop edition comes as a virtual machine appliance for import into VirtualBox; configured shared folders point to documents, and indexing starts when the machine launches. Search supports wildcards, Boolean AND/OR/NOT and fuzzy matching. Multilingual semantic search uses a thesaurus to find synonyms, narrower terms and aliases, while stemming helps find other word forms. Interactive facets group metadata such as authors, organizations, people, dates, tags and document types. Previews can display PDFs, extracted text, table rows and images. Analysis tools include date charts, word clouds, word lists, network graphs and interactive maps. OCR can recognize text in images and scanned PDFs. Connectors include files, feeds, websites, SQL databases, MediaWiki and IMAP email. The desktop appliance is for a single user; a separate server installation is aimed at organizations and research teams. The multilingual virtual machine image is a 4 GB download, and the German desktop image is listed as coming soon.