# Blender 298 Hacker News commenters recommended Blender and 81 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 12 of 13 months; owners who said how long report a median of 15 years (10 owners). It meets the Hacker Approved badge rule. **Verdict:** A free, open-source 3D suite that rivals expensive commercial tools, with a much-improved interface and Python scripting, though it still has a steep learning curve. ## Why people recommend it - Free pro-level commercial software alternative (5 comments): "What is has really accomplished in terms of "the industry standard" has, from my POV, been preventing a proprietary system from becoming the standard." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48968056)) "this is a real pro-level piece of free and open software that's equivalent to thousands and thousands of dollars in closed-source commercial software" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48911240)) "Blender itself is a tool that made 3D accessible to thousands of people who previously had to pay for expensive licenses" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47939830)) - Interface vastly improved recently (6 comments): "it's been vastly improved in recent years. If you lost interest in 3D art because of Blender's bad UX in the past, I recommend you give it another shot." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48009723)) "the Blender developers finally listened to reason, admitted they made a mistake, and switched the left and right mouse button behavior" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47215861)) "it's ultimately much better at actual 3d than AE is, and the recent improvements to the interface have made it a lot more usable" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47772542)) - Replaces After Effects and Premiere (4 comments): "it's ultimately much better at actual 3d than AE is, and the recent improvements to the interface have made it a lot more usable" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47772542)) "With the recent improvements to the compositor and the editor, it has even replaced the last piece of Adobe software" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48967018)) "my partner and I have had great luck replacing AfterEffects and Premiere with Blender and DaVinci Resolve" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47671580)) - Scriptable via Python API (3 comments): "It's been really helpful for taking existing FBX files and handing them off to the agent + Python Blender API to analyze the geometry, convert to GLBs, etc." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47937506)) "it doesn't try to force the whole program to be in the command line, only the part where the command line is actually useful" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48001933)) "I was effective in blender within seconds because it allowed me to directly translate my actions to code" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48194127)) ## What people warn about - Steep learning curve, unintuitive UI (6 comments): "Blender was infuriatingly counterintuitive; for example, it used the right mouse button instead of the left to select objects." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46823055)) "highly complex, mostly unintuitive user interface that requires training and has a steep learning curve" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49329771)) "I remember opening Blender for the first time years ago and thinking it had the steepest learning curve of any software I'd ever used." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48007161)) - Weak large-studio pipeline and USD support (4 comments): "Blender has seen more success than most open source art tools but it still seems to be relegated to individuals and small studios" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45915996)) "Blender's limited support for the Universal Scene Description format is an immediate showstopper for most medium size to large studios." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46828594)) "Blender falls over in the pipeline department. It's a constantly changing API that doesn't allow for the extensibility needed" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45974468)) - Slows down on heavy scenes (2 comments): "Undo takes ages and freezes up everything, modifiers start lagging mouse movement as soon as you have more than a handful of polygons" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49397512)) "The issue is that at a certain scene scale Python becomes the performance bottleneck if that's all you can use." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45977025)) ## Alternatives hackers recommend - [Autodesk Maya](https://hackerapproved.com/p/maya.md): 18 recommend - [SketchUp](https://hackerapproved.com/p/sketchup.md): 16 recommend - [Akse3D](https://hackerapproved.com/p/akse3d.md): 6 recommend - [Cartesian AI 3D Modeling](https://hackerapproved.com/p/cartesian-ai-3d-modeling.md): 6 recommend ## Cite as Hacker Approved, "Blender", https://hackerapproved.com/p/blender/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).