JetBrains Rider
Hacker ApprovedRanked 6 of 27 IDEs by recommenders
Developers, mostly on .NET, say it is faster and smoother than Visual Studio, especially on Linux and Mac. The most common caveat is subscription-only licensing.
54 people recommended JetBrains Rider in Hacker News comments, 12 had mixed feelings and 13 criticized it, November 2025 to October 2026.
Summary written by Claude from 52 comments. It was written before the November 2026 recount, and 50 of those comments still count.
79 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 54
- mixed feelings
- 12
- warn against or regret it
- 13
The record
Recommended in 11 of 12 months
In 34 different threads.
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: recommended
- August 2026: not recommended
- September 2026: recommended
- October 2026: recommended
Why it carries the badge
- 54 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 4.2 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 11 of 12 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
- Recommended in 34 threadsNeeds 5 or more, met.
- The biggest thread supplies 28% of its recommendersNeeds half or less, met.
The same rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. Mixed feelings count toward neither side. How the badge works
What people say about it
Reasons grouped from a sample of 40 of the 101 opinions about it, picked in proportion to how many people recommend it, have mixed feelings and criticize it. Each mark is one comment in the sample. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Faster and better than Visual Studio
“I use rider on Mac (and windows to be fair) and i think the experience is better than visual studio on windows”
Comment from 12 Nov 2025 in “.NET 10” “I have used both VS and Rider for .NET development and for me Rider beats VS by a mile.”
Comment from 23 Jul 2026 in “Escape IntelliJ: Scala and Kotlin LSPs on Emacs Eglot” “I use Rider & WebStorm daily and I find Rider is a lot faster than Visual Studio”
Comment from 19 Nov 2025 in “Google Antigravity” - Comment from 12 Nov 2025 in “.NET 10”
- Comment from 12 Nov 2025 in “.NET 10”
- Comment from 20 May 2026 in “No More JetBrains Products for Me”
Excellent for .NET and C#
“I've personally found Rider to be a great IDE for .NET development outside of Windows.”
Comment from 12 Nov 2025 in “.NET 10” “It's not a Microsoft product & is used by a large percentage of .NET devs.”
Comment from 10 Feb 2026 in “F# 10” “it's the best IDE for C#/.NET you can get on non-Windows platforms imo”
Comment from 19 Nov 2025 in “Programming the Commodore 64 with .NET” - Comment from 23 May 2026 in “dotNET (OK, C#) gets union types”
- Comment from 27 Jan 2026 in “Godot 4.6 Release: It's all about your flow”
Strong debugging and code navigation
“Debugging tools and code navigation in a proper IDE like Visual Studio or JetBrains Rider is totally different development experience”
Comment from 17 Jun 2026 in “SpaceX to buy Cursor AI coding agent operator Anysphere for $60B” “Still I take debugger in Visual studio or Rider any day instead of VSCode debugger.”
Comment from 17 Sep 2026 in “Performance Improvements in .NET 11” “Debugging and code navigation are much better in proper IDE.”
Comment from 17 Jun 2026 in “SpaceX to buy Cursor AI coding agent operator Anysphere for $60B” Works well on Linux and Mac
“I use Jet Brains Rider (free non commercial) for C# .Net projects on Linux machines”
Comment from 20 Mar 2026 in “Our Commitment to Windows Quality” “I have a much better dev experience on Linux/Rider than on Windows/VS.”
Comment from 12 Nov 2025 in “.NET 10”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Subscription-only licensing
“Rider seems neat, and I'd be happy to purchase a license, but subscription only? No thank you.”
Comment from 30 Jan 2026 in “Godot 4.6 Release: It's all about your flow” “I still use Rider, but I've stopped my All Products subscription”
Comment from 24 Oct 2026 in “ThinkRail from JetBrains” Bugs and declining quality
“I've felt the quality has gone downhill ever since I first started paying for it.”
Comment from 6 Oct 2026 in “JetBrains reports revenue growth, net financial loss for 2025” “hitting ten different bugs in Rider in a single day broke the camel's back”
Comment from 22 Sep 2026 in “JetBrains Air: A System of Products for Agentic Software Development” Slow and heavy on memory
“Rider was great for years, but last couple of years it's just become brutally slow.”
Comment from 28 Sep 2026 in “JetBrains Air: A System of Products for Agentic Software Development”
Other IDEs people recommend
The four most recommended other IDEs, 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 | Mixed | Criticize | Approval | Months | Had for | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| JetBrains IDEs | 154 | 58 | 129 | 54% | 12 | 10 yrs33 people | — |
| IntelliJ IDEA | 141 | 47 | 93 | 60% | 12 | 10 yrs17 people | — |
| Microsoft Visual Studio | 106 | 41 | 146 | 42% | 12 | 10 yrs10 people | — |
| Delphi | 92 | 23 | 38 | 71% | 12 | — | Approved |
| JetBrains RiderThis page | 54 | 12 | 13 | 81% | 11 | — | Approved |
Also compared with Xcode, Lazarus IDE, Eclipse IDE and JetBrains PyCharm.
What people said
40 of the 101 opinions about it, picked in proportion to the three counts, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“it isn't unusual to have RustRover, Rider, Webstorm, and Intellij open at the same time”
“I still use Rider, but I've stopped my All Products subscription”
“I still use Rider, but I just don't think faster intellisense/linting matters to me nowadays.”
“I've felt the quality has gone downhill ever since I first started paying for it.”
“Rider was great for years, but last couple of years it's just become brutally slow.”
“hitting ten different bugs in Rider in a single day broke the camel's back”
“until they started pushing their AI tools while not letting you bring your own models”
“Still I take debugger in Visual studio or Rider any day instead of VSCode debugger.”
“until then, it becomes a tool only the primary / interactive agent sessions can access”
“I have used both VS and Rider for .NET development and for me Rider beats VS by a mile.”
“I've been using that for C++ Unreal development and absolutely love it.”
“Debugging tools and code navigation in a proper IDE like Visual Studio or JetBrains Rider is totally different development experience”
“Debugging and code navigation are much better in proper IDE.”
“Rider is definitely the most equivalent to full Visual Studio though.”
“Rider is the replacement, unless they are doing really specific (like WinUI2/UWP”
“Rider is just faster than Visual Studio and that's enough”
“No major complains. It takes some time to get going but after that it is mostly smooth sailing.”
“it's been such a stable product for decades of excellent development, but the world moves on.”
“It'll still try to tab-complete patterns it thinks it recognizes, rarely with what I intend.”
“I use Jet Brains Rider (free non commercial) for C# .Net projects on Linux machines”
“It's not a Microsoft product & is used by a large percentage of .NET devs.”
“Rider seems neat, and I'd be happy to purchase a license, but subscription only? No thank you.”
“Even hot reload works really well without losing the running game state.”
“honestly it's been amazing and worked seamlessly with everything I've thrown at it (especially Godot”
“It integrates really well with Rider too, which is the C# IDE I use.”
“few years ago I remember thinking Rider is one of the best softwares I used”
“failed to gain attention from JetBrains for months and years on their issue tracker”
“I go out of my way to personally pay for PyCharm Professional, DataGrip, Rider, and others”
“it may be the most satisfying dev experience I’ve had in my career”
“I use Rider & WebStorm daily and I find Rider is a lot faster than Visual Studio”
“you will want to use an editor like vscode, Rider or Visual Studio itself”
“it's the best IDE for C#/.NET you can get on non-Windows platforms imo”
“From the start I recommended installing Rider, VS, or VSCode, and that's eventually what worked”
“the whole system was the most joyous developer experience I think I have ever had”
“I've personally found Rider to be a great IDE for .NET development outside of Windows.”
“I use rider on Mac (and windows to be fair) and i think the experience is better than visual studio on windows”
“Pick literally any Visual Studio feature. Rider does it better.”
“in my experience it's far more performant, has a far smoother UX”
“I have a much better dev experience on Linux/Rider than on Windows/VS.”
“Not in Rider or other tools, which require just the single file.”
Counts come from 1,791,911 Hacker News comments labeled by Claude, November 2025 to October 2026, with data through October 31, 2026. Counts updated 2 Nov 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.