# Frida

5 Hacker News commenters recommended Frida and 0 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 4 of 13 months.

**Verdict:** Free toolkit people use to bypass certificate pinning and trace app behavior, often as a check against an original app's traffic.

## Why people recommend it

- Bypasses certificate pinning easily (2 comments): "there are several Frida scripts that patch common pinning implementations" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47796322)) "Frida can usually un-pin those pretty easily." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50192323))
- Traces useful as verification harness (1 comments): "use Frida traces from the original as a verification harness" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48988985))

## What people warn about

- Sometimes a hassle to use (1 comments): "Even that can be a hassle sometimes." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47596587))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [Ghidra](https://hackerapproved.com/p/ghidra.md): 80 recommend
- [GhidraMCP](https://hackerapproved.com/p/ghidra-mcp.md): 30 recommend
- [IDA Pro](https://hackerapproved.com/p/ida-pro.md): 25 recommend
- [REA Reverse-Engineer Anything](https://hackerapproved.com/p/rea-reverse-engineer-anything.md): 14 recommend
- [Binary Ninja](https://hackerapproved.com/p/binary-ninja.md): 13 recommend

## Cite as

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