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Linda Probe vs Recoll

Recoll and Probe both search document contents. Recoll is a strong candidate if open source or several operating systems matter to you. This comparison relies on the competitor’s public site as of 30 October 2026.

Choose Recoll if

You want GPL-licensed software with Linux, Windows and macOS versions. Recoll searches contents and names, including archive members and email attachments. Some formats may need external text extraction tools; its Windows download is self-contained.

Recoll also supports OCR of image-only PDFs using external OCR tools, image metadata indexing, and configurable image OCR. Its author documents experimental semantic search separately. These features do not establish equivalence to Probe’s photo search by description or example.

Choose Linda Probe if

You use Windows and want the file workflow shown below, with previews and manual tags in Free. Pro adds local OCR, search by meaning and photo search by description or example. Try the tools with your own documents before choosing.

Recoll: GPL source code; Linux, Windows, macOS; Contents, archives, email attachments; PDF OCR with external tools; image metadata and configurable image OCR. Linda Probe: Windows only; Pro: local OCR for scans; Pro: search by meaning.
Both tools support scan OCR through different workflows. Probe’s OCR and meaning-based search require Pro.

What Linda Probe does not offer

It is closed source and runs only on Windows 10 and 11. The free edition covers file names and exact words only. OCR and meaning-based search require Probe Pro, unlocked with a paid or gift licence key. The installer is not code-signed yet, so Windows SmartScreen may warn. OCR can make mistakes on poor scans and handwriting.

Linda Probe search window in English, with file results and a document preview.
File results and document preview in Linda Probe.

Price

Linda Probe Free is for personal, non-commercial use. Probe Pro Personal costs USD 10 once for one named user on up to 3 devices; Team costs USD 30 once for up to 10 named users on 20 devices. These cover the purchased version and fixes; future major versions or models may require payment. Organization costs USD 500 per year for one organization at one site on up to 200 devices and renews automatically until cancelled. Taxes and the final total appear before payment. Personal and Team include a full refund on request within 14 days.

Recoll is free on Linux. For Windows, the author recommends a small contribution but offers a download link by email without payment. No fixed contribution amount was confirmed on that page.

We did not confirm an equivalent to Probe’s photo search by description or example in these Recoll pages. We have not tested feature parity.

Download Linda Probe

About Linda Probe

Official sources read for this comparison: Recoll · Recoll on Windows · Recoll features · Recoll image OCR · Recoll semantic search.