Bugzilla
Ranked 7 of 9 issue trackers by recommenders
Free, actively maintained bug tracker that teams adapt into a general work-item tracker. Main caveat: setup and configuration take real effort.
Free, actively maintained bug tracker that teams adapt into a general work-item tracker. Main caveat: setup and configuration take real effort.
21 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 9
- criticize it
- 12
- approval share
- 43%
Recommended in 6 of 13 months
- November 2025: not recommended
- December 2025: not recommended
- January 2026: not recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: not recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: not recommended
- July 2026: recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: recommended
- October 2026: not recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 9 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, not met.
- 0.7 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, not met.
- Recommended in 6 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
Works as a generic work-item tracker
“I use Bugzilla as sort of a generic work-item tracker, TBH”
Comment from 21 Sep 2026 in “MCP was always a bad idea?” “it already had a bit of the Jira going on”
Comment from 28 Apr 2026 in “Before GitHub”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Hard to configure and set up
“getting it running was painless -- but there was a ton of effort in getting it configured”
Comment from 29 Apr 2026 in “Before GitHub” “Setting that up was a bit of a pain, and it didn't integrate well with anything”
Comment from 28 Apr 2026 in “Before GitHub” Dated, complex to use
“My reaction was to ask that we switch to some software that didn't act like it was a 13 year old nerd.”
Comment from 24 Jul 2026 in “Nothing works and everyone is euphoric” “too big/complex for pretty much every company I ever worked in”
Comment from 29 Apr 2026 in “Before GitHub” “Grafana is to Datadog what Bugzilla is to Linear.”
Comment from 7 Nov 2025 in “OpenTelemetry: Escape Hatch from the Observability Cartel”
Other issue trackers people recommend
The four most recommended other issue trackers, 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Linear | 148 | 66 | 69% | 12 | 4 yrs6 owners | Approved |
| Jira | 128 | 399 | 24% | 12 | 10 yrs7 owners | — |
| git-bug | 36 | 9 | 80% | 8 | — | Approved |
| GitHub Issues | 29 | 28 | 51% | 11 | — | — |
| BugzillaThis page | 9 | 12 | 43% | 6 | — | — |
What people said
20 of the 22 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“bugzilla still relies on perl's non-existing tainting of hash keys”
“Incredible that nobody has forked the project simply to implement a working search.”
“they do 'clever matching', so wedding matches weds”
“I use Bugzilla as sort of a generic work-item tracker, TBH”
“I had to use an old version of Bugzilla.”
“My reaction was to ask that we switch to some software that didn't act like it was a 13 year old nerd.”
“Almost all the data was lost every time, no one bothered with migration”
“Can be easily extended and unneeded fields can be disabled via template.”
“The ticketing system you have (jira? Bugzilla) is not designed for discussion of the acceptance criteria”
“too big/complex for pretty much every company I ever worked in”
“getting it running was painless -- but there was a ton of effort in getting it configured”
“it already had a bit of the Jira going on”
“Setting that up was a bit of a pain, and it didn't integrate well with anything”
“at least bugzilla is actively maintained”
“Creating an account on bugzilla is much easier than on the same github, and it is also used in many projects”
“Come on, you need to make a whole account in Bugzilla for you to report bugs?”
“Just set up a Bugzilla instance and a cgit frontend”
“None of the Bugzilla cases still exist”
“I had to hack on Bugzilla to customize it for our start-up.. Back in the day BEFORE they added a lot of end-user customization... UGH..”
“Grafana is to Datadog what Bugzilla is to Linear.”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.