Stellar Data Recovery Review – Pros, Cons & Pricing

Probably everyone has had a situation when they accidentally deleted a file (it doesn’t matter whether it was from the system disk of your Mac or some external drive), emptied the trash and then realized it was a fatal mistake, right? Backups can save the day in such cases, but when they aren’t available, the only real option is to turn to data recovery software. But how do you choose the right tool among the endless list of options Google throws at you? Our team at 7 Data Recovery Experts set out to answer that question by testing the most popular recovery solutions on the market. This time, it’s Stellar Data Recovery’s turn.

Why Stellar? When you search for a data recovery tool, Stellar usually shows up near the top. On its website, the company boasts about 3 million users and a 98.6% recovery rate. Still, if you check Reddit or other forums, the feedback is far less uniform — plenty of users share mixed experiences with the software.

To cut through the noise, we decided to run our own Stellar Data Recovery software review. In this article, you’ll find our test results from real-world data loss scenarios, a breakdown of the tool’s pros and cons, pricing analysis, and how it compares to competitors. By the end, you’ll have a clear answer to the question: what is Stellar Data Recovery really worth?

Quick Overview of Stellar Data Recovery

Stellar Data Recovery works well for recovering common file types, like photos and documents, especially from flash drives, memory cards, solid state drives, also traditional hard disks. However, restoring data after deletions on your computer’s main drive isn’t always successful, which we’ll discuss further below.

We liked that Stellar includes extra modules such as the ability to create byte-to-byte disk backups and restore from them, which is necessary when working with logically corrupted devices or highly sensitive SD cards. There’s also SpeedUpMac, a utility for scanning your Mac for junk files and clearing up storage space. On the other hand, the developers chose to split some tools into separate products instead of integrating them directly into the main interface, as it is realized in one of their competitors — Disk Drill. For example, Stellar Photo Recovery, Stellar Data Recovery for iPhone, Stellar File Eraser, Stellar Drive Monitor, and Stellar Data Recovery for Android (and several other extras) are all standalone applications.

With a starting price of $69.99 per year for the Standard edition (and higher for Professional and Technician tiers), the program doesn’t deliver enough value for the cost. It’s best suited for recovering basic file formats from external drives after permanent deletion.

Technical Details About Stellar Data Recovery

So, what is Stellar Data Recovery? It’s the company’s flagship cross-platform recovery tool designed by Stellara software company, which has been active in the software market since 1993. Over the years, Stellar built a reputation in data care, expanding from recovery tools to utilities for file repair, secure erasure, and even drive monitoring. With that kind of background, the company positions itself as a long-time player in the industry rather than a newcomer.

💬 Before we get into our Stellar Data Recovery review, let’s walk through the main specifications and see what the program actually offers on paper.

Platform, File System, and File Type Support

Stellar Data Recovery is only available for Windows and macOS. Unlike some competitors that have extended their coverage to Linux, Stellar’s developers have not announced any plans to expand beyond these two operating systems. This limitation makes the tool less versatile for users who work across multiple platforms.

When it comes to supported file systems, the official product page doesn’t provide much detail, which is unusual considering how important this information is for anyone preparing to recover files. You need to look into the developer’s Knowledge Base to find a proper list. According to that documentation, Stellar supports APFS, HFS+, HFS, NTFS, FAT, FAT16, FAT32, and exFAT. While this covers the most common formats for macOS and Windows devices, the lack of transparent presentation raises questions about how much the developer expects users to research before purchase.

File type support is presented in a broad-stroke fashion. Stellar categorizes recoverable data into Images & Graphics, Movies & Videos, Documents, Archives, Audio & Music, Mails & Other Files. The issue is that there’s no detailed master list of supported formats. Only a handful of examples are shown in each category, leaving you unsure whether your specific file type will be recoverable until you actually run a scan. The program does allow you to add custom file types by providing sample files, but that requires extra work from the user instead of clarity up front.

One more point worth noting is Stellar’s approach on Apple silicon (M1/M2/M3/M4) Macs. The company claims the software works on these devices, and disabling SIP (System Integrity Protection) is recommended for better results. However, even with SIP disabled, Stellar cannot perform a deep scan of the system disk. For that level of access, macOS requires a kernel extension (kext), and Stellar doesn’t provide one. This means system-level recovery on newer Macs remains more limited than what some competitors can offer.

Supported Devices and Recovery Capabilities

On the official site, Stellar lists support for hard drives, macOS devices, SSDs, external drives, USB sticks, and SD cards. In reality, the program works the same way as most recovery tools: if the device mounts as a storage volume, it can be scanned. If it connects through MTP or something similar (like many phones do), Stellar won’t see it.

One change that came with the latest big update is the ability to scan an entire physical device even if it has no partition or if the file system is badly damaged. Earlier, this wasn’t possible — you could only choose a partition with a recognizable file system. Now, you can point Stellar at the whole drive.

There is a catch, though. On raw or damaged devices, the program only runs a signature scan. It doesn’t try to piece data together using file system metadata. That makes it less flexible than some other tools that combine both approaches. In practice, this means that yes, Stellar can look at a disk with no visible partitions, but the results may be weaker if you’re hoping to bring back a full folder structure or original filenames.

Key Features

Stellar lets you pick between a quick scan or a deep scan, but in reality this setting doesn’t change much. If you’re trying to actually recover something important, you’ll always end up doing the full run. A quick scan is faster, but the results are too limited to rely on.

One thing that does help is the option to save and load scans. Drives can take hours to go through, so being able to stop and resume later without losing progress is practical. Along with that, Stellar also lets you create a byte-to-byte backup of a device and then work on the image instead of the original media. For damaged or unstable disks this is almost a must, since it reduces the risk of pushing a failing drive over the edge during recovery.

The program can also handle encrypted storage, including FileVault on Macs. During the scan you just type in the password, and the drive is unlocked for recovery like any other. That’s a useful detail for people who keep encryption turned on by default.

In addition to recovery, there is also a SpeedUp Mac module, Find Large Files, and Find Duplicates. It’s more of a cleanup utility than a recovery tool, clearing out junk files and trying to free up some space. It doesn’t affect how the actual recovery works, but Stellar includes it as a free extra.

User Interface

The program itself looks fine. The design is simple, modern enough, and the side menu makes it easy to get around. Scan results show up in a folder-style tree, so you can click through files the same way as in Finder. Previewing files works right inside the app, so you don’t need to recover them first just to see if they’re intact.

Still, the experience isn’t as smooth as it looks at first. The device list reacts very slowly when you plug in or unplug a drive. Sometimes it feels like nothing changed at all, and then the new device finally appears after a long pause. Another weak point is when you try to stop a running task. Instead of shutting it down cleanly, the software often freezes on the stopping screen, and the only real solution is to force close Stellar. These little things can be irritating if you use the tool often.

Pricing and Editions

Stellar Data Recovery for Mac comes in three editions: Standard, Professional, and Premium. The main differences are in advanced recovery options and repair tools. Subscriptions are available for one year, but you can also buy a lifetime license. Also, many users ask, “Is Stellar Data Recovery free?”. The answer is partly yes: the free edition lets you recover up to 1 GB of data, but for anything more, you’ll need a paid plan.

Note: Prices may vary depending on the region and the currency of purchase.

Customer Support

Stellar provides both text chat and phone support, available 24 hours a day, five days a week. Having a phone line is a plus, since not all recovery software vendors offer that option. Responses are generally quick enough for basic licensing or installation questions. For more technical recovery issues, the chat tends to be the faster way to get help.

How We Measure Stellar Recovery in Our Tests

To keep our reviews consistent, we used the same evaluation scheme as in our Disk Drill review. This way, every program is tested under equal conditions, and the results can be compared fairly.

ℹ️ Our approach is based on recreating real-world data loss scenarios and checking how well the software performs in each case. We look at both the corrupted USB drive and the SD card where files were deliberately deleted. The testing covers different file types — photos, videos, documents, and audio — since recovery tools often handle these categories with varying success.

The main metrics we focus on are:

By applying this same framework across different tools, we can give a more balanced picture of where Stellar stands against competitors.

Stellar Recovery Process

To evaluate Stellar in practice, we ran it through real-world scenarios. The goal was to see how well it handles both a flash drive with a damaged file system and an SD card from a DJI drone, where files had been deliberately deleted. This gave us a mix of conditions: one where metadata was corrupted and another where fragmented video files needed to be restored. Below, we describe the process and the results step by step.

1. Installation

The installation of Stellar Data Recovery for Mac went smoothly. The setup takes only a few minutes, and the program launches without the need for extra configuration. At first start, the interface displays all available disks and storage devices connected to the system.

2. Disk Selection

For our demonstration test, we used a USB flash drive with a damaged file system. Stellar correctly showed the device in the list, including its size and status. Selecting the entire drive was possible, even though the file system could not be mounted by macOS. We also prepared an image of an SD card from a DJI drone with deleted files, to check how the program handles fragmented video recovery.

3. Scanning and Viewing Results

The scan on the flash drive took noticeably longer than with some other tools, and the program displayed a number of entries. The files had no names or folder structure, as Stellar found them by their signatures. The scan revealed photos and several video fragments on the drone’s SD card image. The preview feature worked fine for still images, but video previews were either missing or showed broken playback.

4. Recovery

From the flash drive, Stellar managed to bring back a portion of the test files. However, when it came to the drone card, the results were disappointing. The fragmented MOV videos could not be restored properly — after recovery, none of them played in any of the tested media players. Photos from the card, on the other hand, were recovered without visible issues.

5. Evaluation of Results

The final outcome of our tests was mixed. On the corrupted flash drive, about 60% of the files were recovered in a usable state, while the rest were either incomplete or corrupted. On the DJI drone card, the recovery rate for fragmented videos was 0%, as none of them played correctly after restoration. But the photos from the same card came back intact.

These results suggest that while Stellar can handle basic scenarios like recovering standard documents and images, it struggles significantly with more complex cases such as fragmented video recovery — an area where some competitors have an edge.

Value Per Dollar in Stellar Data Recovery

The question after testing any recovery tool is whether the price matches the results. Stellar’s free version lets you actually recover up to 1 GB of data, which is enough to restore a handful of documents or photos but not practical for larger jobs. Beyond that limit, you need to purchase one of the paid editions.

🔎 The paid plans scale mainly by extra features: Standard covers basic recovery, Professional adds partition recovery and system disk support, while Premium includes repair tools for damaged photos and videos. In our tests, however, the recovery quality didn’t fully match the pricing. On the corrupted flash drive, Stellar brought back only around 60% of files, and on the DJI drone card, fragmented videos failed entirely. At nearly $90 per year for the Professional edition (or $149 for lifetime), that level of performance feels overpriced compared to alternatives.

To illustrate, we estimated the effective cost per MB of usable data. On our 4 GB flash drive test, Stellar managed to recover about 2.4 GB. At the Professional license price of $89.99 per year, this comes out to roughly $0.04 per MB. Disk Drill, tested under the same conditions, managed nearly complete recovery at about half that effective cost.

Overall, Stellar’s prices place it in the mid-range of the market, but the recovery rates don’t fully justify the cost. It can be worth it if your goal is to restore a few standard file types and you value the 1 GB free tier for smaller tasks. For heavier or more complex recoveries, the return on investment looks less favorable.

Stellar Users’ Feedback

Real users often give mixed feedback on Stellar. Some praise its usability and support, while others criticise licensing, performance, or repair features. Below are a few Stellar Data Recovery reviews.

“Purchased Stellar to recover deleted photos and videos … a mixture of corrupted and working files.” — user on Reddit

“Software does not perform as expected. I purchased the software to repair them … they are asking for $99 additionally for each file.” — another user on Reddit

On more formal review sites, the tone is often more balanced:

Macworld notes that Stellar “is a good program that’s able to dig deep to help reconstruct and recover deleted data, but there are a few bugs (crashes, activation issues, nag-upgrade prompts).”

HandyRecovery, in their Stellar Data Recovery Professional review, calls the tool “easy to use … but it’s slow, and the recovery performance is nothing to write home about.”

TechRadar praises its “highly customizable searches, a huge file-type library, and deep scan abilities,” while cautioning that “deep scans are slow.”

On Trustpilot, users often mention positive experiences with support: “Good customer service … he helped guide me through some troubleshooting procedures when the recovered file was not working.”

Overall, feedback on Stellar shows a clear divide. Users generally appreciate the clean interface, the ability to recover standard file types, and the availability of support. At the same time, there are repeated complaints about slow scans, extra costs for advanced repairs, and inconsistent recovery results — especially for video files. Taken together, Stellar is seen as a capable but not flawless tool, better suited for simple recovery jobs than for complex or professional scenarios.

Competitors vs Stellar Data Recovery

Stellar Data Recovery competes with several well-known tools in the market. To put it into perspective, we compared it against Disk Drill, EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard, and R-Studio. Each of these tools has its strengths, but the differences become clear once you look closely at features, performance, and pricing.

Looking at this table, Disk Drill clearly comes out ahead as a balanced all-rounder. Stellar is competitive in terms of supported systems and the free 1 GB recovery option, but its recovery rate in our tests was far weaker, especially with video files. EaseUS offers a higher file-type count, but its annual subscription model quickly becomes more expensive than Disk Drill’s lifetime license. R-Studio remains the top choice for data recovery professionals who need advanced RAID capabilities, but its steep learning curve and technical focus make it impractical for most regular users.

Verdict

Stellar Data Recovery for Mac is not a bad program, but it clearly has limits. The interface looks good and is easy enough to figure out, and for basic jobs — like restoring photos or documents from an external drive — it usually does the job. The option to save scans, make a disk image, and even unlock FileVault volumes with a password are handy. The free 1 GB recovery is also more than what some other tools give.

When you start using it more seriously, the weak spots show up. Scans on big drives take a long time, the device list reacts slowly, and if you try to stop a scan the program sometimes just hangs. The bigger problem is recovery quality. On our flash drive with a broken file system, only about 60% of the files came back usable. On the DJI drone card, none of the fragmented videos worked after recovery — they were all broken, even though the photos restored fine.

The price makes this harder to recommend. Around $90 per year, or $149 for a lifetime license, puts it in the same range as Disk Drill. But Disk Drill gave us much stronger results in the same tests. R-Studio is more for pros, and EaseUS has its own limits, but both offer something that Stellar doesn’t.

So, Stellar is fine if you only need to get back a few simple files, especially photos or documents. For anything more complex, it doesn’t feel worth the money.

🌟 Final Rating: 6.8 / 10 (★★★☆☆)

📌 Best for: basic file recovery on external drives.

📌 Avoid if: you need reliable video recovery or want the best value for the price.