Disk Drill’s free Mac edition, Disk Drill Basic, lets you scan a drive and preview what it finds. To recover ordinary deleted files you need Disk Drill PRO, which is a paid lifetime license or a yearly subscription (as of October 2026). Reco is free in full: scanning, previewing and recovering, with no limit on how many files or how much data, and no license key.
Disk Drill is the more established product, with a long list of extra tools and support for older versions of macOS. Reco needs macOS 26 or later. If your Mac runs macOS 26 and you want to get files back without paying, Reco is the straightforward choice. If your Mac is older, Disk Drill (or the free PhotoRec) is the one that will run.
At a glance
| Reco | Disk Drill for Mac | |
|---|---|---|
| Price to recover files | Free, no limit | Disk Drill PRO: lifetime license or one-year subscription. Check the current price on cleverfiles.com |
| Free version | Everything: scan, preview, recover, every tool | Scan and preview. Recovery of files protected beforehand by its data protection is free |
| macOS | macOS 26 or later | macOS 10.15 to 26 (Disk Drill 6.3); older versions for older Macs |
| Other platforms | Mac only | Mac and Windows (one PRO license covers both) |
| Before you save | Previews, plus how intact each file is | Previews (Quick Look in the free edition) |
| Video repair | Fix a Video, free (needs a working clip from the same camera) | Advanced Camera Recovery for camera, drone and dashcam footage (Disk Drill 6) |
| Drive image for failing drives | Copy first | Byte-to-byte backup |
| Drive health (SMART) | Drive Check-up | S.M.A.R.T. monitoring |
| Phone recovery | No | iPhone, iPad and Android |
Disk Drill details are from cleverfiles.com, as of October 2026. Plans and limits change, so check their site before you decide.
What Disk Drill does well
Disk Drill is a polished, mature app. CleverFiles says it has been on the market for 16 years, and it’s widely reviewed. Beyond recovery, the free edition includes extra disk tools: S.M.A.R.T. monitoring, byte-to-byte backups of a disk or partition, a bootable recovery USB drive, and space and cleanup tools. Its data-protection feature, Guaranteed Recovery, keeps track of files you delete so they can be restored for free later, as long as it was turned on before the loss.
It also reaches further than Reco in a few places. It runs on Windows as well as Mac, it can recover from iPhone, iPad and Android devices, and CleverFiles says it can reconstruct 400+ file types. Disk Drill 6, released in June 2025, added Advanced Camera Recovery for video and photos from cameras, drones and dashcams. And it runs on Macs as old as macOS 10.15, with older versions available for older systems.
Where Reco is different
- Free with no limit. Scanning, previews, recovering, video repair and every tool cost nothing. There’s no license key, no subscription and no file-count or size cap. Instead of a price, you’re asked, if you want, to give to the Mersal Foundation, a charity paying for medical care in Egypt. None of it goes to Reco.
- Read-only, always. Reco opens the drive it scans read-only and never writes to, repairs or formats it. It won’t save recovered files back onto that drive unless you choose Save here anyway… after a clear warning.
- Names and folders. Original names and folders come back where the drive still remembers them, and dates are kept where they survive.
- Honest about each file. Every result shows how intact it is. Damaged files are graded as damaged.
- Video repair included. Fix a Video repairs a clip that won’t play, such as one cut off when a camera or drone lost power, on your Mac. It needs a working clip recorded by the same camera with the same settings as a pattern. Nothing is uploaded.
- Wipe as well as recover. Forget for Good writes zeros over a whole exFAT, FAT32 or Mac OS Extended drive, card or USB stick, then formats it with the same name. On a 1 TB drive we tested, a full deep scan afterwards found 0 files.
- Private. No account, no uploads, no analytics. The only network request is the check for app updates.
Which one should you use?
Use Reco if your Mac runs macOS 26 or later and you want to recover files without paying or counting megabytes. Scan, check the previews, and save what you need to a different drive.
Use Disk Drill if your Mac runs an older version of macOS, if you also need Windows or phone recovery, or if you already turned on its data protection before the loss, since protected files can be recovered with the free edition.
Whichever you choose, the first steps are the same: stop using the drive, don’t install anything onto it, and save recovered files somewhere else. See what to do right after you delete something.
What no app can do
No recovery app, free or paid, can bring back data that has been overwritten. On a Mac’s built-in SSD, TRIM usually erases deleted data soon after you delete it, so any app will find little there. SD cards, USB sticks and most external hard drives don’t do this, which is why recovery from them works much better. If macOS can’t see the drive at all, not even in Disk Utility, no software can read it, and a data recovery lab is the next step.
Questions
Is Disk Drill free on Mac?
As of October 2026, Disk Drill Basic for Mac is free to scan and preview. CleverFiles says recovering ordinary deleted files needs Disk Drill PRO; files you protected beforehand with its data-protection feature can be recovered for free.
Is there a free alternative to Disk Drill for Mac?
Yes. Reco is free in full: scanning, previews, recovering, video repair and every tool, with no file-count or size limit and no license key. It needs macOS 26 or later. PhotoRec is also free and open source, but runs in Terminal and doesn’t keep most file names.
Does Disk Drill work on older Macs than Reco?
Yes. As of October 2026, Disk Drill 6.3 supports macOS 10.15 through 26, and CleverFiles offers older versions for older systems. Reco requires macOS 26 or later.
Which one recovers more files?
We haven’t run a side-by-side test, so we won’t claim one. Results depend mostly on the drive: what was written since, and whether it’s an SSD that uses TRIM. Both let you preview before you save, so you can see what each finds on your own drive.