How fast Anything is, measured, and how to measure it yourself. The numbers are a snapshot from one machine on one day, not a promise.
Machine: Intel Core Ultra 9 285K (24 cores), 128 GB RAM, WD_BLACK SN850X NVMe SSD with ext4 on LUKS, 120 Hz display, Linux Mint 22.3 (X11, Cinnamon). Measured on 2026-10-11 with Anything 0.1.0.
cargo run --release -p anything-core --example bench| Query | Matches | Time |
|---|---|---|
| (empty: everything) | 4,999,999 | 2.1 ms |
r |
2,318,476 | 10.7 ms |
rechnung |
191,300 | 7.7 ms |
*.pdf |
430,153 | 7.2 ms |
rechnung*.pdf |
15,744 | 6.8 ms |
rechnung *.pdf |
52,078 | 7.2 ms |
日本 |
17,680 | 6.6 ms |
zzzz (nothing) |
0 | 7.1 ms |
Sorting by path or size instead of name costs the same: sort orders are kept ready in the index. Building an index of 5 million entries takes 2.1 s and 260 MB.
ANYTHING_BENCH=1 cargo run --release -p anything-guiEvery time runs from the action to the end of the first frame that shows its result.
| Action | Median | Worst |
|---|---|---|
| Typing a character | 18.5 ms | 22.4 ms |
| Deleting a character | 18.4 ms | 19.7 ms |
| Re-sorting all 5 million | 20.7 ms | 21.0 ms |
| Showing the hidden window | 9.9 ms | 15.3 ms |
| Scrolling, 600 frames | 8.3 ms per frame (120 fps) | 0 dropped frames |
| Dragging the scroll bar, 240 frames | 8.3 ms per frame (120 fps) | 0 dropped frames |
The frame rate is the display's.
| Entries on all local disks | about 3.3 million (5.5 million with caches and node_modules) |
| Full scan at service start, 5.5 million entries | 3.2 s |
Search from the command line (any), end to end |
about 10 ms |
| Memory of the service | about 0.45 GB, up to 0.6 GB at times |
| CPU while programs keep writing in the home folder | about 1 % of one core |
| Memory of the window while it uses the service | about 330 MB |
Try it without indexing anything: ANYTHING_DEMO=1 anything --show searches 5
million made-up entries.