The Silver Searcher
Shares rank 11 of 15 code search tools by recommenders
Developers recommend it as a fast command-line code search tool that works the way they expect, with good performance on modern systems.
Developers recommend it as a fast command-line code search tool that works the way they expect, with good performance on modern systems.
8 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 6
- criticize it
- 2
- approval share
- 75%
Recommended in 6 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: not recommended
- March 2026: not recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: not recommended
- June 2026: not recommended
- July 2026: not recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: recommended
- October 2026: not recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 6 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, not met.
- 3 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 6 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Intuitive, works as expected
“Being able to use them intuitively trumps ubiquity, speed or features.”
Comment from 23 Dec 2025 in “Snitch – A friendlier ss/netstat” “fd, rg and ag all work how I expect them to work”
Comment from 25 Dec 2025 in “Snitch – A friendlier ss/netstat” Fast on modern systems
“you will get better performance out of a modern grep like ag or rg”
Comment from 13 Aug 2026 in “Single log line is 49KB+ (ext4) / 110KB+ (btrfs) of systemd-journald disk writes” “so far nothing beats rg/ag after the data has been moved into RAM”
Comment from 2 Apr 2026 in “The future of code search is not regex – 100x faster than ripgrep” “They are very fast on a modern system with SSD.”
Comment from 16 Jan 2026 in “Can You Disable Spotlight and Siri in macOS Tahoe?”
Other code search tools people recommend
The four most recommended other code search tools, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ripgrep | 122 | 18 | 87% | 12 | — | Approved |
| ast-grep | 21 | 3 | 88% | 9 | — | Approved |
| Semble | 20 | 7 | 74% | 4 | — | Approved |
| Graft (Claude Code hooks) | 13 | 4 | 76% | 4 | — | Approved |
| The Silver SearcherThis page | 6 | 2 | 75% | 6 | — | — |
What people said
10 of the 11 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“it is indispensable for me”
“you will get better performance out of a modern grep like ag or rg”
“But specific datasets i'll use ag/rg.”
“so far nothing beats rg/ag after the data has been moved into RAM”
“I tried fixing ag around the time Ripgrep was first published”
“the project has felt largely abandoned for a few years now”
“the code had some rather stupid design decisions that prevented it”
“They are very fast on a modern system with SSD.”
“fd, rg and ag all work how I expect them to work”
“Being able to use them intuitively trumps ubiquity, speed or features.”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.