You Can’t Recover Deleted Files? Try These Shocking 1 & 2 Ranked Data Recovery Apps (Free & Paid!)

Recuva is a budget-friendly data recovery champion for hard drives and thumb drives, with a free tier and basic features. Stellar offers superior data recovery for hard drives, especially with its excellent customer support, but with a higher price tag. Both struggle with recovering deleted files from solid-state drives.

CONTENTS: You Can’t Recover Deleted Files?

• Affordable data recovery: Recuva vs Stellar
• Stellar vs Recuva: Features for cost
• Recuva: Budget basic, Stellar: Perfect recovery
• Stellar: HDD king, Recuva: Thumb drive hero
• Stellar: Great support, HDD best; Recuva: Easy, some success
• Free recovery: Stellar (1GB HDD), Recuva (unlimited)
• Recuva cheaper, Stellar better support

If you’re seeking reliable yet affordable data recovery software, Stellar Data Recovery and Recuva Professional are great options to consider. Both offer free and paid versions that can help you scan and recover lost files.

I’ve recently reviewed their top subscription plans, including hands-on tests and customer service experiences, to assist you in making an informed choice.

Recuva Professional stands out for its low cost, priced at just $25 per year, and it’s sometimes available for even less. It’s developed by the same company behind CCleaner, with bundle deals available if you need PC cleanup software as well.

You Can’t Recover Deleted Files? In comparison, Stellar’s lowest-cost Data Recovery Standard plan, priced at $60 annually, may seem expensive, but it’s quite affordable given it includes live chat support. If you frequently need file recovery, the average cost of $5 per month isn’t significantly higher than Recuva Professional’s $2 per month.

Recuva Professional is the only data recovery subscription plan from CCleaner, whereas Stellar offers three tiers. The $90-per-year Stellar Data Recovery Professional plan includes lost partition restoration, and for an additional $10, Stellar Data Recovery Premium provides advanced photo and video repair tools.

As a budget-friendly app, Recuva Professional offers basic features. It can find and restore most files from hard disk drives (HDDs), but it only recovered 158 of the 163 files I lost. Additionally, it replaced some filenames with computer-generated codes.

You Can’t Recover Deleted Files? In contrast, Stellar Data Recovery Premium performed perfectly in my tests. It restored every lost HDD file, retained the original filenames, and re-created the original folder structure.

Recovering data from solid-state drives (SSDs) is challenging but not impossible. While EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard Pro, which is not part of this comparison, is one of the few apps that can recover some lost SSD files, both Stellar Data Recovery Premium and Recuva Professional failed my SSD tests. This is one of the reasons HDDs are better than SSDs for long-term storage.

Stellar Data Recovery Premium supports many types of drives but couldn’t find a lost partition on my old thumb drive. Recuva Professional, on the other hand, detected the thumb drive and restored several files.

Both apps have their strengths and weaknesses. Stellar Data Recovery Premium restored more files with greater accuracy for HDDs, but Recuva Professional successfully restored the thumb drive partition that Stellar couldn’t.

One of Stellar Data Recovery Premium’s greatest strengths is its excellent customer service. I received technical support via live chat in under a minute. Stellar’s support is available 24/7 on weekdays, and every paid plan includes access to this service.

Recuva Professional only offers email support, and it took over a day to get a response to my question. Additionally, the online support documents are quite limited.

You Can’t Recover Deleted Files? Trustpilot ratings support my assessment. Stellar Data Recovery averages 4.7 stars from nearly 4,000 reviews. While Recuva Professional isn’t rated on Trustpilot, CCleaner, the company behind it, has a 4.4-star rating, which might offer some reassurance. I found Recuva’s support good but significantly slower than Stellar’s service.

Both apps are user-friendly. You select the drive to scan, and the results appear in a list. You can preview a file before recovery. If you see the desired file in the preview for Stellar Data Recovery or a status indicating excellent recoverability in Recuva Professional, successful file restoration is likely. If not, you can reach out to customer service.

Stellar support suggested trying advanced photo recovery, a feature I hadn’t noticed. While this was helpful, Stellar Data Recovery Premium still couldn’t restore my lost SSD files.

It’s hard to beat free, and Stellar Data Recovery allows up to 1GB of lost files recovery, working best with HDDs. To save more files, you’ll need a subscription. Long HD videos can easily exceed the limit, but for photos, documents, and text files, 1GB is quite generous.

Recuva’s free app doesn’t have a data recovery cap, but you’ll need a subscription to access drives within a virtual machine.

Neither company offers customer support for the free tier, so if you can’t find the answers you need in the online help documents or community forums, you’ll have to subscribe.

You Can’t Recover Deleted Files? While Stellar’s customer support is impressive and justifies the higher subscription prices, the special features of Data Recovery Premium didn’t perform any better in my testing than Stellar’s Data Recovery Standard.

Recuva Professional nearly matched Stellar’s HDD recovery quality at less than half the price of Stellar Data Recovery Standard. Neither passed my SSD tests, but Recuva Professional successfully restored the thumb drive.

If you’re comfortable with Recuva’s slower support, it offers a much better deal than any of the Stellar Data Recovery subscription plans.

Overall, if I had to choose between subscription plans, I’d pick Recuva Professional. However, there are other options available. We have a guide to the best data recovery software, and it’s worth exploring to find the best fit for your needs.