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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 2026-09-14Owner-reviewedRevision 5
A small brass padlock resting on an open blank paper ledger on a pale oak desk

Every limit on this page comes from the vendor's own documentation, captured on 2026-09-12 with the version number where the vendor shows one, and EaseUS re-checked on 2026-09-14 after its terms were found to have moved. It is a terms comparison, not a test, and terms change without notice.

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: at least one big tool still holds part of its headline free quota behind sharing the product on social media, and EaseUS's own pages show how fast this moves: its product page granted 2 GB flat by 2026-09-14 while its own article still taught the share gate.[1][2][3]

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, with EaseUS re-checked on 2026-09-14. 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 (EaseUS re-checked 2026-09-14)
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 Free2 GB free recovery, no sharing requirement (product page, version 20.1.0); EaseUS's own article still describes 500 MB plus share to 2 GB2026-09-14; a 2026-09-12 capture found the share gate
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

Stellar's Windows page documents 1 GB by default with another 1 GB behind a share; its Mac page has no such unlock and a stricter cap instead. EaseUS is the cautionary tale for every number on this page: a 2026-09-12 capture found its free allowance starting at 500 MB and growing to 2 GB once you shared the software on Facebook or Twitter. By the 2026-09-14 re-check its product page granted 2 GB flat with no sharing requirement anywhere on it, while an EaseUS article updated 23 July 2026 still instructed readers to share to unlock the 2 GB. The practical readings: the headline number can be the post-share number, and the vendor's own pages can disagree while both are live.[1][2][3][4]

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.[5][6]

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.[3][7][6]

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.[8][9]

How to use a free tier well

Before you scan anything

  1. Check the drive's health before any scan. Clicking, grinding, repeated disconnections or any physical event mean no scan at all: scanning is reading, and reads stress a failing drive. Stop and ask a professional instead.
  2. Decide what the data is worth before choosing a tool: a handful of documents fits inside every free cap; a photo library does not.
  3. On a healthy drive, let the scan and preview run: nearly every tool lets you see what exists before any cap applies, and whether your files are found is the decision that matters.
  4. Recover to a different drive, always, whatever the tool.
  5. 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.
  6. Do not keep re-scanning to 'get around' a cap; repeated passes cost you reads on the drive and find nothing new.

What these numbers mean

Every limit on this page is a vendor's documented term, captured from the official page on 2026-09-12 (EaseUS re-checked 2026-09-14); this is a terms comparison, not a test, so it says nothing about how well any tool recovers. How well a tool works depends on the situation, and the situations where the order of operations matters more than the tool choice are covered in the guide to when software makes things worse. If a vendor changes a term after the capture dates, 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 — Free data recovery software (EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard Free). captured 2026-09-12.
  2. [2] EaseUS — How to recover 2GB data for free (EaseUS, updated 23 July 2026). captured 2026-09-12.
  3. [3] Stellar — Free data recovery software for Windows (Stellar, version 12.6.0.0). captured 2026-09-12.
  4. [4] Stellar — Free data recovery software for Mac (Stellar, version 12.7.0.0, May 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] DiskGenius — DiskGenius editions (version 6.2.0.1829, updated June 2026). captured 2026-09-12.
  7. [7] MiniTool — MiniTool Power Data Recovery editions comparison. captured 2026-09-12.
  8. [8] CGSecurity — PhotoRec. captured 2026-09-12.
  9. [9] Microsoft — Recover lost files on Windows 10/11 (Windows File Recovery). captured 2026-09-11.
  10. [10] MiniTool — MiniTool Power Data Recovery Free 13.0. captured 2026-09-12.
  11. [11] CleverFiles — Disk Drill data recovery software. captured 2026-09-12.
  12. [12] CCleaner — Recuva (CCleaner). captured 2026-09-12.

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