The best debuggers, according to hackers
9 debuggers were recommended on Hacker News between November 2025 and November 2026. We rank them by how many separate people recommend each one, and 2 earn the Hacker Approved badge.
Top picks
The two most recommended debuggers with the badge. Each figure is one person. RecommendsCriticizes One comment
Advanced debugging power for Windows
People recommend it as a powerful debugger for Windows code, with deep analysis and time travel debugging, though critics find its GUI awful and hard to discover.
Pairs well with other tools
Free graphics debugger people use to step through shaders, find the pixel or vertex behind a printf, and inspect frames on many GPUs, mainly on Linux and Windows.
All 9 debuggers, ranked
Select a column heading to sort. Approval share is recommenders out of everyone who gave an opinion; the tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs. Months counts the months, out of 13, in which someone recommended it.
| Rank | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | GDB (GNU Debugger) | 29 | 16 | 64% | 10 | — | — |
| 2 | WinDbg | 14 | 3 | 82% | 7 | — | Approved |
| 3 | HyperProbe | 12 | 1 | 92% | 1 | — | — |
| 4 | RenderDoc | 10 | 1 | 91% | 4 | — | Approved |
| Tied 5 | RAD Debugger | 7 | 1 | 88% | 6 | — | — |
| Tied 5 | rr by Mozilla | 7 | 0 | 100% | 4 | — | — |
| Tied 5 | Wirebrowser | 7 | 1 | 88% | 1 | — | — |
| Tied 8 | LLDB | 5 | 5 | 50% | 4 | — | — |
| Tied 8 | Nietzschian Debugger | 5 | 3 | 63% | 1 | — | — |
How we rank
Rank is the number of separate people who recommend a product in a Hacker News comment over the past year. Someone who praises the same debugger in five threads counts once.
The badge goes to debuggers that at least 10 people recommend, with recommenders outnumbering critics at least 2 to 1, recommended in at least 4 of the 13 months.
Rankings are never for sale. We may earn a commission when you buy through our links. It never changes the order.