Author of ripgrep here. It really just depends. The way I like to characterize `git grep` (at present) is that it has sharp performance cliffs. ripgrep has the

Author of ripgrep here. It really just depends. The way I like to characterize `git grep` (at present) is that it has sharp performance cliffs. ripgrep has them too, to be sure, but I think it has fewer of them. If you're just searching for a simple literal, `git grep` is decently fast: $ git remote -v origin git@github.com:torvalds/linux (fetch) origin git@github.com:torvalds/linux (push) $ git rev-parse HEAD f1fcbaa18b28dec10281551dfe6ed3a3ed80e3d6 $ time LC_ALL=en_US.UTF-8 git grep -c -E 'PM_RESUME' Documentation/dev-tools/sparse.rst:3 Documentation/translations/zh_CN/dev-tools/sparse.rst:3 Documentation/translations/zh_TW/sparse.txt:3 arch/arm/mach-omap2/omap-secure.h:1 arch/arm/mach-omap2/pm33xx-core.c:1 arch/x86/kernel/apm_32.c:1 drivers/input/mouse/cyapa.h:1 drivers/mtd/maps/pcmciamtd.c:1 drivers/net/wireless/intersil/hostap/hostap_cs.c:1 drivers/net/wwan/t7xx/t7xx_pci.c:15 drivers/net/wwan/t7xx/t7xx_reg.h:7 drivers/usb/mtu3/mtu3_hw_regs.h:1 include/uapi/linux/apm_bios.h:1 real 0.215 user 0.421 sys 1.226 maxmem 161 MB faults 0 $ time rg -c 'PM_RESUME' drivers/mtd/maps/pcmciamtd.c:1 drivers/net/wwan/t7xx/t7xx_reg.h:7 drivers/net/wwan/t7xx/t7xx_pci.c:15 drivers/net/wireless/intersil/hostap/hostap_cs.c:1 drivers/usb/mtu3/mtu3_hw_regs.h:1 drivers/input/mouse/cyapa.h:1 arch/x86/kernel/apm_32.c:1 Documentation/translations/zh_CN/dev-tools/sparse.rst:3 Documentation/translations/zh_TW/sparse.txt:3 Documentation/dev-tools/sparse.rst:3 arch/arm/mach-omap2/pm33xx-core.c:1 arch/arm/mach-omap2/omap-secure.h:1 include/uapi/linux/apm_bios.h:1 real 0.078 user 0.259 sys 0.577 maxmem 15 MB faults 0 But if you switch it up and start adding regex things to your pattern, there can be substantial slowdowns: $ time LC_ALL=C git grep -c -E '\w{5,}\s+PM_RESUME' Documentation/dev-tools/sparse.rst:1 Documentation/translations/zh_CN/dev-tools/sparse.rst:1 Documentation/translations/zh_TW/sparse.txt:1 real 5.704 user 55.671 sys 0.585 maxmem 207 MB faults 0 $ time LC_ALL=en_US.UTF-8 git grep -c -E '\w{5,}\s+PM_RESUME' Documentation/dev-tools/sparse.rst:1 Documentation/translations/zh_CN/dev-tools/sparse.rst:1 Documentation/translations/zh_TW/sparse.txt:1 real 24.529 user 4:34.42 sys 0.753 maxmem 211 MB faults 0 $ time LC_ALL=en_US.UTF-8 git grep -c -P '\w{5,}\s+PM_RESUME' Documentation/dev-tools/sparse.rst:1 Documentation/translations/zh_CN/dev-tools/sparse.rst:1 Documentation/translations/zh_TW/sparse.txt:1 real 1.372 user 16.980 sys 0.647 maxmem 211 MB faults 1 $ time rg -c '\w{5,}\s+PM_RESUME' Documentation/translations/zh_CN/dev-tools/sparse.rst:1 Documentation/dev-tools/sparse.rst:1 Documentation/translations/zh_TW/sparse.txt:1 real 0.082 user 0.226 sys 0.612 maxmem 18 MB faults 0 In the above cases, ripgrep has Unicode enabled. (It's enabled by default irrespective of locale settings. ripgrep doesn't interact with POSIX locales at all.)