# Iroh Hacker Approved page: https://hackerapproved.com/p/iroh/ 89 people recommended Iroh in Hacker News comments, 19 had mixed feelings and 25 criticized it, November 2025 to October 2026. It was recommended in 9 of 12 months, in 23 threads. It does not meet the Hacker Approved badge rule. 58 of the 89 people who recommend it commented in one thread, “Iroh 1.0”. **Verdict:** An open-source, QUIC-based library for direct, encrypted peer-to-peer connections with hole punching and self-hostable relays; critics find its docs and marketing unclear about what it does. Summary written by Claude from 53 comments. Claude agents reviewed it against the quotes on 2 Nov 2026. ## Why people recommend it - Easy P2P connectivity across networks (6 comments in the sample): "appears pretty good for "just get edge device / node connectivity to work" when you don't want end users to bother with networking shenanigans" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49428664)) "if you want to do anything with p2p in 2026 you’re going to hard pressed than to find a better option than Iroh" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48554748)) "For environments where you want people to access your local instance, I believe Iroh will be a game changer." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48548011)) - Fully open source, self-hostable relays (5 comments in the sample): "You can have elaborate Iroh-based projects entirely based on the OSS components without losing features and without paying anything." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48561574)) "Iroh is free-to-use, permissively licensed, relays are self-hostable, and it's all fully open source for all necessary components." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48553212)) "you could deploy pretty extensive Iroh-based software without ever having a financial relationship with number0" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48553315)) - Built on QUIC and existing standards (4 comments in the sample): "a creative way to leverage all the work the major cloud vendors have poured into QUIC for p2p connections" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48551807)) "we try to use existing IETF standards (QUIC, TLS) as much as possible instead of reinventing the wheel" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48543654)) "Iroh gets the benefit of having been designed and built from the ground up, based on quic." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48544163)) - Small footprint for embedded devices (3 comments in the sample): "If you work on native mobile apps or embedded devices, iroh will be better since it is pretty frugal." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48544851)) "I like Iroh objective of keeping it's footprint small enough to run on low powered devices" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48556048)) "It's a demo of how easy it is to make even an ESP32 device available globally with iroh." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48870496)) ## What people warn about - Docs and marketing don't explain it (5 comments in the sample): "The current stuff about dialling is pretty incomprehensible, as shown by the many confused comments here." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48552596)) "This page is basically useless in explaining what Iroh is or does and why I should care." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48543011)) "From a marketing standpoint, for a technical audience, I think it should be quicker." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48547970)) - Unclear security implications (3 comments in the sample): "This is great for simplicity, but having Stun Turn and Signaling live in the same server would make it harder to secure." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48544204)) "I definitely see the value! But I'm not confident I can tell whether there are e.g., security implications" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48544998)) "there seems to be no mention of ddos mitigation or shorter routes due to infrastructure" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48545468)) - Overlaps with Tailscale for many uses (2 comments in the sample): "Looking at the use cases, right now I don't see anything that cannot be done with Tailscale" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48543998)) "it just moves the dependency from tailscale's relay servers to iroh's relay servers" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49383369)) - Traffic relayed through their servers (1 comment in the sample): "Last I checked this project also automatically forwards traffic through their servers when direct connections fail" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49966640)) ## The badge A product earns the Hacker Approved badge when at least 10 people recommend it, recommenders outnumber critics at least 2 to 1 (mixed feelings count toward neither side), it was recommended in at least 4 of the 12 months and in at least 5 different threads, and no single thread supplies more than half of the people who recommend it. Health and money products are never badged. ## Cite as Hacker Approved, "Iroh", https://hackerapproved.com/p/iroh/ (89 recommend, 19 mixed, 25 criticize; Hacker News comments, November 2025 to October 2026). Counts updated 2 Nov 2026, with data through October 31, 2026.