# netcat

19 Hacker News commenters recommended netcat and 2 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 6 of 13 months. It meets the Hacker Approved badge rule.

**Verdict:** Small, fast tool for raw TCP and UDP connections, widely used for probing ports and as a telnet replacement. Caveat: it does not handle telnet options or drive a PTY.

## Why people recommend it

- Probing ports, replacing telnet (4 comments): "The modern replacement for telnet used in the "probe a port" fashion is nc/netcat." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46969981)) "There's always nc hostname 23 unless you need authentication" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46969927)) "A more "proper" tool for that is netcat" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46968611))
- Small and fast over TCP or UDP (3 comments): "It's small, quick, and can send or receive over TCP or UDP." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46975814)) "Not useful very often, but fast and kind of cool" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46861551)) "much faster than going over ssh" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49418040))
- Better than base telnet (2 comments): "the ones above are basically far better direct telnet alternatives" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46970023)) "Netcat or socat, both of which are far better than base Telnet" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46969977))
- Around for decades, stable (2 comments): "Netcat has been around for a long, long time now." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46969989)) "this has been fine working since the 80s" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48884877))

## What people warn about

- Does not handle telnet options or PTYs (3 comments): "I don't believe you can get netcat to drive a PTY" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46970414)) "Using netcat results in showing Unicode replacement symbols, instead of answering to telnet options." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46972693)) "still don't serves me when I actually want to use telnet" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46985706))

## Cite as

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