# IDA Pro 25 Hacker News commenters recommended IDA Pro and 7 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 9 of 13 months. It meets the Hacker Approved badge rule. **Verdict:** People recommend it for fast, accurate analysis of unusual binaries, a strong debugger and heavy scripting support. The most common caveat is that it is expensive for hobbyists. ## Why people recommend it - Scriptable, strong typing and tooltips (5 comments): "There are just too many nice features like Type tooltips, automagic mechanisms and one click operations" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50151289)) "I have a custom IDA Python-based CLI that lets LLMs trivially call into IDA's Python APIs from CLI" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48791817)) "IDA is heavily scriptable so the LLM usually ends up interacting rather interesting ways" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46853793)) - Fast, accurate analysis of unusual binaries (4 comments): "IDA excels because it has been developed for a gazillion years against patterns found in common binaries and has an extremely fast, ergonomic UI and an awesome debugger." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47035979)) "They are as good as it gets when it comes to not choking on unusual binaries." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46591364)) "IDA is much faster and less resource-intensive than Ghidra" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47043385)) - Outperforms Ghidra on several points (3 comments): "A lot of data shows IDA Pro is significantly better than Ghidra" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49114808)) "Ida is far far better at interrupting tasks/crash recovery." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47036793)) "IDA is much faster and less resource-intensive than Ghidra" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47043385)) - Good for DOS executables (2 comments): "It's a good disassembler for DOS applications and helps me navigate what I'm looking at" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47070239)) "is the last Freeware version able to handle DOS executeables" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47062321)) ## What people warn about - Too expensive for hobbyists (2 comments): "Useless for hobbyists unless pirated, but reasonable if it's your job." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49203372)) "It's not worth the price for hobbyists." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47036089)) - Decompiler bugs, corruptible database (2 comments): "basically all being IDA decompilation bugs" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49164251)) "IDA's C++ API is really easy to misuse and corrupt a DB" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48791852)) - Licensing costs add up (2 comments): "the fact that you have to pay extra for every single decompiler" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47036232)) "try getting a license for IDA Pro" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48977286)) ## Alternatives hackers recommend - [Ghidra](https://hackerapproved.com/p/ghidra.md): 80 recommend - [GhidraMCP](https://hackerapproved.com/p/ghidra-mcp.md): 30 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 - [Kampala](https://hackerapproved.com/p/kampala.md): 7 recommend ## Where to get it - [Visit the official site](https://hex-rays.com/ida-pro) ## Cite as Hacker Approved, "IDA Pro", https://hackerapproved.com/p/ida-pro/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).