# Bugzilla

9 Hacker News commenters recommended Bugzilla and 12 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 6 of 13 months.

**Verdict:** Free, actively maintained bug tracker that teams adapt into a general work-item tracker. Main caveat: setup and configuration take real effort.

## Why people recommend it

- Works as a generic work-item tracker (2 comments): "I use Bugzilla as sort of a generic work-item tracker, TBH" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49793420)) "it already had a bit of the Jira going on" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47942435))

## What people warn about

- Hard to configure and set up (2 comments): "getting it running was painless -- but there was a ton of effort in getting it configured" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47942689)) "Setting that up was a bit of a pain, and it didn't integrate well with anything" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47941511))
- Dated, complex to use (3 comments): "My reaction was to ask that we switch to some software that didn't act like it was a 13 year old nerd." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49042591)) "too big/complex for pretty much every company I ever worked in" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47947533)) "Grafana is to Datadog what Bugzilla is to Linear." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45845895))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [Linear](https://hackerapproved.com/p/linear.md): 148 recommend
- [Jira](https://hackerapproved.com/p/jira.md): 128 recommend
- [git-bug](https://hackerapproved.com/p/git-bug.md): 36 recommend
- [GitHub Issues](https://hackerapproved.com/p/github-issues.md): 29 recommend
- [Epiq](https://hackerapproved.com/p/epiq.md): 19 recommend

## Cite as

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