# BearSSL

6 Hacker News commenters recommended BearSSL and 0 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 3 of 13 months.

**Verdict:** Free C TLS library people praise as well documented; the main caveat is that it is beta quality and lacks TLS 1.3 support.

## Why people recommend it

- Very well documented (1 comments): "probably the best documented cryptographic library I've come across" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50055061))
- Works when run under a VM (1 comments): "Doable, I did it under VM, it worked" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46022117))

## What people warn about

- Beta quality, no TLS 1.3 (1 comments): "it claims beta quality with the latest release in 2018, doesn't support TLS 1.3" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47001449))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [wolfSSL](https://hackerapproved.com/p/wolfssl.md): 14 recommend
- [rustls](https://hackerapproved.com/p/rustls.md): 13 recommend

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "BearSSL", https://hackerapproved.com/p/bearssl/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).