# ESP32

190 Hacker News commenters recommended ESP32 and 35 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 12 of 13 months; owners who said how long report a median of 5 years (3 owners). It meets the Hacker Approved badge rule.

**Verdict:** A cheap microcontroller with Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, strong docs and many examples, often preferred over a Raspberry Pi when no OS is needed; battery projects can struggle with power draw.

## Why people recommend it

- Very cheap and widely available (12 comments): "if you're just trying to interface a bunch of pins to a usb port you can buy a pack of 3 USB-C ESP32s on amazon for like twenty bucks now" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49922551)) "Super cheap from China and you can find them with all sorts of cool form factors with lipo battery chargers, screens, etc." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46549279)) "only those are guaranteed to have a lot of software support, documentation, easy availability on aliexpress etc. for cheap" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49327877))
- Lighter alternative to Raspberry Pi (7 comments): "Love ESP boards, and with Raspberry pi pricing though the roof, I'm hoping more will discover the love of getting the job done on a 10mm2 package." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47626290)) "Almost everything that is unique to a Pi compared to an x86 mini PC seems like it makes more sense with an ESP device." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48314455)) "They're the perfect alternative to a Raspberry Pi because they have WiFi, Bluetooth, lots of GPIO, and decent compute." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48969909))
- Surprising compute for the price (5 comments): "Espressif in particular has pushed MCUs up to a new level where it's become viable to run a designed-from-scratch web server" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47332351)) "They're the perfect alternative to a Raspberry Pi because they have WiFi, Bluetooth, lots of GPIO, and decent compute." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48969909)) "the ESP32 is offering CPU power on par with many of the embedded-x86 SOCs that powered some of the early wifi routers" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48316442))
- Great docs, SDKs and examples (4 comments): "the ESP32 comes with top notch documentation and SDKs that will make beginners at least want to stay with Espressif's modified RTOS for a while" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48381068)) "only those are guaranteed to have a lot of software support, documentation, easy availability on aliexpress etc. for cheap" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49327877)) "esp32 are really nice: hundreds of code examples that do what you want without having to read too many pages" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45895320))

## What people warn about

- Power-hungry for battery projects (7 comments): "ESP32 has inherent sleep issues and before their latest chip (c6 I think) 'deep sleep' was really a gpio- or rtc- triggered boot followed by a power off." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45839785)) "an esp32 on an 1100mah battery will last years on deep sleep, and about a day with wifi on and in high power modes." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47882488)) "It's not going to be as good on battery power but the barrier to entry for people wanting to tinker is really low." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47885399))
- Security and vendor dependence concerns (4 comments): "every single company I've worked which took security seriously (medical implants, critical safety industry) not only banned their use on our designs" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47626077)) "Anything that's got wireless/bluetooth integrated is probably backdoored already, but the esp32 certainly has been" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46241766)) "ESPs are great, but their hobbyist ecosystem ultimately relies on the goodwill of a Chinese company" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45985696))
- Limited processing power and bandwidth (3 comments): "An ESP32 mesh doesn't have nearly enough capacity to handle all the messages and multimedia flying around" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47354334)) "the ESP32 is fairly limited in a lot of ways due to the limited processing power and IO bandwidth" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50066568)) "I found that the ESP32 and its whole WiFi stack (?) were slowing the device down." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46007651))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [Arduino boards](https://hackerapproved.com/p/arduino.md): 81 recommend
- [Raspberry Pi Pico](https://hackerapproved.com/p/raspberry-pi-pico.md): 72 recommend
- [Raspberry Pi RP2040](https://hackerapproved.com/p/rp2040.md): 29 recommend
- [ESP32-S3](https://hackerapproved.com/p/esp32-s3.md): 26 recommend
- [STM32 microcontroller](https://hackerapproved.com/p/stm32.md): 25 recommend

## Where to get it

- [See price on Amazon](https://www.amazon.com/s?k=ESP32+development+board+Espressif&tag=hackerapprove-20) (affiliate link)
- [Official site](https://www.espressif.com/)

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "ESP32", https://hackerapproved.com/p/esp32/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).