Scala recover or recoverWith

Well, the answer is clearly described in scaladocs:

  /** Creates a new future that will handle any matching throwable that this
   *  future might contain. If there is no match, or if this future contains
   *  a valid result then the new future will contain the same.
   *
   *  Example:
   *
   *  {{{
   *  Future (6 / 0) recover { case e: ArithmeticException => 0 } // result: 0
   *  Future (6 / 0) recover { case e: NotFoundException   => 0 } // result: exception
   *  Future (6 / 2) recover { case e: ArithmeticException => 0 } // result: 3
   *  }}}
   */
  def recover[U >: T](pf: PartialFunction[Throwable, U])(implicit executor: ExecutionContext): Future[U] = {

  /** Creates a new future that will handle any matching throwable that this
   *  future might contain by assigning it a value of another future.
   *
   *  If there is no match, or if this future contains
   *  a valid result then the new future will contain the same result.
   *
   *  Example:
   *
   *  {{{
   *  val f = Future { Int.MaxValue }
   *  Future (6 / 0) recoverWith { case e: ArithmeticException => f } // result: Int.MaxValue
   *  }}}
   */
  def recoverWith[U >: T](pf: PartialFunction[Throwable, Future[U]])(implicit executor: ExecutionContext): Future[U] = {

recover wraps plain result in Future for you (analogue of map), while recoverWith expects Future as the result (analogue of flatMap).

So, here is rule of thumb:

If you recover with something that already returns Future, use recoverWith, otherwise use recover.

update In your case, using recover is preferred, as it wraps the exception in Future for you. Otherwise there is no performance gain or anything, so you just avoid some boilerplate.

Using recoverWith you are asked to return a wrapped future, using recover you are asked to throw an exception.

.recoverWith # => Future.failed(t)
.recover # => throw t

I prefer using recoverWith because I think functional programming prefers returning objects than throwing exceptions which is less of a functional style, even if it's internal code block, I think it still holds..

However if I have an internal piece of code in the recovery block which might throw an exception then, in that case, rather than catching it and wrapping it with Future, or Trying it, I might as well just run this piece of code in combination with recover and it would handle the exception wrapping for you, which would make the code more readable and compact.