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Essential Data Recovery

Recovery software free limits, compared from official terms

What each major tool lets you recover without paying, from the vendors' own pages on one date. Three kinds of free, the social-sharing catch, and the numbers the headlines get wrong.

Written by Essential Data RecoveryPublished 2026-09-12Owner-reviewedRevision 2
A small brass padlock resting on an open blank paper ledger on a pale oak desk

Everything on this page is a vendor's documented term, captured from the official page on 2026-09-12 and labelled as such. It is not an independent test: we have not used these tools to recover data, and no scan in the world tells you how well a tool recovers. Terms change without notice; every row carries the date and version that was checked.

Free data recovery software is real, but 'free' means three different things. Most commercial tools scan and preview for free and cap what you can save, usually around 1 to 2 GB. Two tools cap per file instead of by total. And two serious options, PhotoRec and Microsoft's Windows File Recovery, have no recovery cap at all, with a command-line interface as the price. One pattern worth knowing before you compare numbers: two of the biggest tools hold part of their headline free quota behind sharing the product on social media.[1][2]

This comparison covers the free tiers of the major Windows and Mac recovery tools as documented by their own makers, captured on one date, 2026-09-12. Prices are excluded because they render differently by region and change often; where a vendor page showed GBP or USD, that was the rendering on the capture date. It does not measure recovery quality, and it does not cover tools whose official terms page could not be fetched.

The free tiers, as documented

Free-tier terms captured from official vendor pages, 2026-09-12
ToolFree allowance as documentedChecked
Disk Drill (Windows)100 MB recovery cap; scanning and preview free; paid licence for unlimited2026-09-12
EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard Free500 MB immediately, 2 GB after sharing on Facebook or Twitter2026-09-12 (page dated 23 July 2026)
Stellar Free (Windows)1 GB by default, 1 GB more via social sharing; partition/RAID/NAS recovery paid2026-09-12 (version 12.6.0.0)
Stellar Free (Mac)1 GB total, and no single file over 100 MB; no sharing unlock2026-09-12 (version 12.7.0.0, May 2026)
MiniTool Power Data Recovery Free1 GB total; server, dynamic-disk and bootable-media features paid2026-09-12 (version 13.0)
R-Studio demoFiles over 1024 KB cannot be recovered; smaller saves allowed2026-09-12 (build 191810, June 2026)
DiskGenius FreeNo numeric cap documented; restriction is 'only small files can be copied'2026-09-12 (version 6.2.0.1829)
PhotoRecFree and open source, no recovery cap2026-09-12
Windows File RecoveryFree from the Microsoft Store; command line; no recovery volume cap stated2026-09-12

The social-media catch

Two vendors document a free allowance that is larger than what you start with. EaseUS's own page describes an instant 500 MB allowance that grows to 2 GB once you share the software on Facebook or Twitter, on both Windows and Mac. Stellar's Windows page documents 1 GB by default with another 1 GB behind the same kind of share; its Mac page has no such unlock and a stricter cap instead. The practical reading: the headline number is the post-share number, and sharing is a fair price only if you are happy to do it.[3][1][2]

The limits the headlines get wrong

Two widely-repeated figures did not survive a read of the official pages. R-Studio's demo is commonly described as unable to save anything; the vendor's own download page states the only limitation is that files larger than 1024 KB cannot be recovered. DiskGenius Free is commonly quoted with a 1 GB cap; its editions page states no number at all, only the restriction that small files can be copied. Treat third-party summaries of free tiers, including this page's older cousins elsewhere on the internet, as claims to check rather than facts to trust.[4][5]

What paid tiers actually gate

The paid features cluster into the same groups across vendors, which makes the free tier easier to reason about. Encrypted-drive recovery (BitLocker), RAID and NAS volumes, Windows Server storage, bootable rescue media and file repair are paid at Stellar, EaseUS and MiniTool, and DiskGenius gates BitLocker and virtual RAID behind its small-files rule in the free edition. If your loss is a deleted folder from a healthy USB stick, the free tier of almost anything covers it; if the drive is encrypted, a server volume or a RAID member, the free tier of the commercial tools is not designed to reach it.[6][4][2]

The genuinely free options

Two tools have no cap because they are not trial editions. PhotoRec is free, open source and reads drives without writing to them, with a text interface and generated filenames as the trade. Microsoft's Windows File Recovery is free from the Microsoft Store and also command line, with Microsoft documenting its own limits: no recovery from cloud storage or network shares, and source and destination drives must be different. Both are honest tools with real limits, neither of which is a payment screen.[7][8]

How to use a free tier well

Before you scan anything

  1. Let the scan and preview run first: nearly every tool lets you see what exists before any cap applies, and whether your files are found is the decision that matters.
  2. Estimate your data size before choosing a tool: a handful of documents fits inside every free cap; a photo library does not.
  3. Recover to a different drive, always, whatever the tool.
  4. If the scan finds your files but the cap stops the save, that is the moment to decide whether the paid edition is worth it, not after another scan on a failing drive.
  5. Do not keep re-scanning to 'get around' a cap; repeated passes cost you reads on the drive and find nothing new.

What this page does not claim

No recovery was performed for this comparison, so nothing here says how well any tool recovers, on any medium, in any scenario. The site's separate guides to software that makes things worse cover the situations where the tool choice matters less than the order of operations. If a vendor changes a term after 2026-09-12, the correction link below is the right place to tell us; we publish what we fix.

When recovery software can make things worse: the situations before the tool choice.

Sources

Facts on this page are cited to the publishers’ own documentation.

  1. [1] EaseUS — How to recover 2GB data for free (EaseUS, updated 23 July 2026). captured 2026-09-12.
  2. [2] Stellar — Free data recovery software for Windows (Stellar, version 12.6.0.0). captured 2026-09-12.
  3. [3] Stellar — Free data recovery software for Mac (Stellar, version 12.7.0.0, May 2026). captured 2026-09-12.
  4. [4] DiskGenius — DiskGenius editions (version 6.2.0.1829, updated June 2026). captured 2026-09-12.
  5. [5] R-Tools Technology — R-Studio download (demo terms, build 191810, June 2026). captured 2026-09-12.
  6. [6] MiniTool — MiniTool Power Data Recovery editions comparison. captured 2026-09-12.
  7. [7] Microsoft — Recover lost files on Windows 10/11 (Windows File Recovery). captured 2026-09-11.
  8. [8] CGSecurity — PhotoRec. captured 2026-09-12.
  9. [9] CCleaner — Recuva (CCleaner). captured 2026-09-12.
  10. [10] CleverFiles — Disk Drill data recovery software. captured 2026-09-12.
  11. [11] EaseUS — Free data recovery software (EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard Free). captured 2026-09-12.
  12. [12] MiniTool — MiniTool Power Data Recovery Free 13.0. captured 2026-09-12.