Everything vs Recoll

Everything is a Windows search engine for finding files and folders by filename. It indexes names rather than file contents and generally builds its database in a few seconds, then updates results in real time as file systems change. Search syntax includes Boolean operators, wildcards, file types, and location filters. The index can cover local, removable, and network locations. A content: function can search inside files, but content is not indexed, so those searches are slow. The maker says the name cache stays local and is not sent remotely; its support page describes the client as offline, without user data collection or telemetry. It reports that a fresh Windows 11 installation with about 250,000 files uses about 35 MB of RAM and less than 14 MB of disk space. An HTTP Server plug-in allows browser searches and file access, while ETP/FTP supports access from Everything or an FTP client. The HTTP server uses Basic authentication without TLS, and the maker advises against exposing it directly to the internet. NTFS indexing requires the Everything service or running as administrator. The freeware plan costs nothing; business and enterprise use requires a site license.

Recoll is free desktop search software that finds documents by their contents and file names. It indexes many common document formats and compressed files, including email attachments nested inside archives. Search supports Boolean queries, phrases, proximity, wildcards, and filters for file type or directory tree. Indexing can run periodically as a batch job or continuously for real-time updates. Users can search through a Qt desktop interface, a web browser, the command line, GNOME Shell, KDE KIO, or KRunner; the browser interface queries a Recoll index. A Python 3 extension can query or update that index. Recoll can index PDF attachments and annotations, extract custom XMP metadata, and apply OCR to image-only PDFs using Tesseract or ABBYY FineReader. It supports multiple languages and UTF-8, and users can choose a stemming language at query time. Linux and source are free under the GPL. A contribution is requested for the Windows binary, but no amount is stated. Some formats on Linux and macOS need external applications or libraries, and the Windows port lacks some features, including multithreaded execution.