Binary Ninja
Hacker ApprovedRanked 5 of 9 reverse engineering tools by recommenders
Recommended for understanding large binaries, with strong IR access and scripting; critics find its free version limited and its feature set narrow for security work.
Recommended for understanding large binaries, with strong IR access and scripting; critics find its free version limited and its feature set narrow for security work.
18 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 13
- criticize it
- 5
- approval share
- 72%
Recommended in 5 of 13 months
- November 2025: not recommended
- December 2025: not recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: not recommended
- April 2026: not recommended
- May 2026: not recommended
- June 2026: not recommended
- July 2026: recommended
- August 2026: not recommended
- September 2026: recommended
- October 2026: recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it carries the badge
- 13 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 2.6 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 5 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Handles large binaries well
“At this point I much prefer Binary Ninja for the task of building up an understanding of large binaries”
Comment from 16 Feb 2026 in “Ghidra by NSA” “I much prefer Binary Ninja for the task of building up an understanding of large binaries”
Comment from 16 Feb 2026 in “Ghidra by NSA” “They are as good as it gets when it comes to not choking on unusual binaries.”
Comment from 12 Jan 2026 in “This game is a single 13 KiB file that runs on Windows, Linux and in the Browser” - Comment from 26 Jan 2026 in “DDD was a great debugger – what would a modern equivalent look like today?”
Multiple IRs accessible to scripts
“The decompilation into other representations like Binary Ninjas IR have been a godsend”
Comment from 28 Jul 2026 in “Zig's Incremental Compilation Internals” “BN has multiple IRs that are easily accessible both in the UI and to scripts”
Comment from 16 Feb 2026 in “Ghidra by NSA” Easy to explore, few surprises
“Binary Ninja seems way ahead in terms of UX, as a hobby reverser.”
Comment from 16 Feb 2026 in “Ghidra by NSA” “binary ninja is very easy to explore and has many fewer surprises”
Comment from 17 Feb 2026 in “Ghidra by NSA”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Too many limitations for security
“has too many limitations especially for the most common use case which is security”
Comment from 16 Feb 2026 in “Ghidra by NSA” “there are so many limitations”
Comment from 17 Feb 2026 in “Ghidra by NSA”
Other reverse engineering tools people recommend
The four most recommended other reverse engineering tools, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ghidra | 80 | 20 | 80% | 13 | — | Approved |
| GhidraMCP | 30 | 11 | 73% | 10 | — | Approved |
| IDA Pro | 25 | 7 | 78% | 9 | — | Approved |
| REA Reverse-Engineer Anything | 14 | 9 | 61% | 2 | — | — |
| Binary NinjaThis page | 13 | 5 | 72% | 5 | — | Approved |
What people said
18 of the 20 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“It also worked well with Radare2 or binary ninja”
“if you look it up to the binary ninja MCP it will just do it lol”
“it does gross things to make binja use system libraries for better integration, which right now breaks some extensions”
“The decompilation into other representations like Binary Ninjas IR have been a godsend”
“binja code mode can be useful”
“there are so many limitations”
“binary ninja is very easy to explore and has many fewer surprises”
“It's basically 'VS Code' UX with dark mode.”
“BN has multiple IRs that are easily accessible both in the UI and to scripts”
“has too many limitations especially for the most common use case which is security”
“Binary Ninja seems way ahead in terms of UX, as a hobby reverser.”
“I much prefer Binary Ninja for the task of building up an understanding of large binaries”
“The limited free version doesn't cut it unfortunately”
“At this point I much prefer Binary Ninja for the task of building up an understanding of large binaries”
“Binary Ninja supports some of them as well, highly recommend.”
“all of them display code on the level of "C with classes" from early 00s”
“Especially if you have large binaries!”
“They are as good as it gets when it comes to not choking on unusual binaries.”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.