ncdu
Hacker ApprovedThe most recommended of 7 disk usage analyzers
Terminal disk usage analyzer that shows where space goes and is available in most distro repos; critics say scans can be slow, including unwanted paths.
Terminal disk usage analyzer that shows where space goes and is available in most distro repos; critics say scans can be slow, including unwanted paths.
23 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 22
- criticize it
- 1
- approval share
- 96%
Recommended in 7 of 13 months
- November 2025: not recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: not recommended
- February 2026: not recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: not recommended
- July 2026: recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: not recommended
- October 2026: recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it carries the badge
- 22 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 22 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 7 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Shows where disk space goes
“Filelight / ncdu are my friends for finding random 30GB directories containing cached models.”
Comment from 3 Aug 2026 in “Qwen3.8-Max: A New Bar for Coding and Cowork” “a visual disk usage analyzer terminal tool which saved me countless times”
Comment from 22 Mar 2026 in “Yorhel, founder of the Visual Novel Database (vndb.org) has passed away” “It helps you visualize where most disk space is getting used up”
Comment from 7 Apr 2026 in “Running Out of Disk Space in Production” Preferred over other disk tools
“I'd still prefer ncdu for most cases”
Comment from 6 Jul 2026 in “Show HN: BloomDisk – free open-source alternative to paid Mac disk analyzers” “sometimes ncdu is better for me”
Comment from 22 Aug 2026 in “Stop Making TUIs” “kind of does this but better”
Comment from 21 Aug 2026 in “Small, native web tricks worth remembering” Saves time finding large directories
“Filelight / ncdu are my friends for finding random 30GB directories containing cached models.”
Comment from 3 Aug 2026 in “Qwen3.8-Max: A New Bar for Coding and Cowork” “a visual disk usage analyzer terminal tool which saved me countless times”
Comment from 22 Mar 2026 in “Yorhel, founder of the Visual Novel Database (vndb.org) has passed away” “So it saved me a lot of time”
Comment from 25 Mar 2026 in “VNDB founder Yorhel has died” Good terminal interface
“good showcases how a TUI reduces mental load and are superior to browsers and / or other GUI tools”
Comment from 13 Mar 2026 in “TUI Studio – visual terminal UI design tool” “is great if you are okay with the command line”
Comment from 2 Mar 2026 in “Anthropic Cowork feature creates 10GB VM bundle on macOS without warning” “ncdu is really good in the terminal”
Comment from 25 Jul 2026 in “Harddrive Is Probably Full”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Slow scans, including unwanted paths
“ncdu, though slower, is very useful and is usually available on distro repos”
Comment from 7 Apr 2026 in “Running Out of Disk Space in Production” “Seems to be wasting a lot of time scanning `/run/user/1000/doc` from Flatpak.”
Comment from 5 Oct 2026 in “Ncdu: An Updated Fork” “1 minute vs 1 second for my entire”
Comment from 5 Oct 2026 in “Ncdu: An Updated Fork”
Other disk usage analyzers people recommend
The four most recommended other disk usage analyzers, 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 | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ncduThis page | 22 | 1 | 96% | 7 | — | Approved |
| Leaves | 16 | 0 | 100% | 1 | — | — |
| WizTree | 12 | 0 | 100% | 6 | — | Approved |
| GrandPerspective | 11 | 0 | 100% | 5 | — | Approved |
| WinDirStat | 11 | 2 | 85% | 5 | — | Approved |
What people said
17 of the 25 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“So that will exclude other partitions mounted which is e.g. completely useless on my storage server.”
“Seems to be wasting a lot of time scanning `/run/user/1000/doc` from Flatpak.”
“this uses 32 threads and should be much faster”
“1 minute vs 1 second for my entire”
“sometimes ncdu is better for me”
“kind of does this but better”
“Filelight / ncdu are my friends for finding random 30GB directories containing cached models.”
“ncdu is really good in the terminal”
“I've used "ncdu" to visualize my restic backups by writing a script that generates the ncdu data format”
“I'd still prefer ncdu for most cases”
“It helps you visualize where most disk space is getting used up”
“ncdu, though slower, is very useful and is usually available on distro repos”
“So it saved me a lot of time”
“a visual disk usage analyzer terminal tool which saved me countless times”
“good showcases how a TUI reduces mental load and are superior to browsers and / or other GUI tools”
“Your friend is called ncdu and can be used as follows”
“is great if you are okay with the command line”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.