fd vs find vs ripgrep: I Created 10,000 Files to Settle This Debate

fd vs find vs ripgrep: I Created 10,000 Files to Settle This Debate

TL;DR: fd is ~2.5x faster than find for filename searches, rg demolishes grep by ~3x for content searches, and find + grep combined lose on every single benchmark I ran. But there's a catch: both fd and rg skip hidden files by default, which can bite you if you're not paying attention. Here are the receipts.

Why I Did This

Every time someone posts a shell one-liner using find on Reddit, there's always that guy in the comments: "jUsT uSe fD, iT's fAsTeR." Then someone else chimes in with "actually ripgrep can do that too."

I got tired of the anecdotes. I wanted numbers. Real ones. On real files. So I fired up WSL, generated 10,900 files across 1,506 directories (~143 MB of mixed content), and ran actual benchmarks with hyperfine. No synthetic microbenchmarks, no "I feel like X is faster" — just cold, hard terminal output.