# pv (pipe viewer)

6 Hacker News commenters recommended pv (pipe viewer) and 0 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 4 of 13 months.

**Verdict:** Free command-line tool that shows progress, transfer speed and rate limiting for data passed between programs in a pipe.

## Why people recommend it

- Shows progress bar and transfer speed (2 comments): "you can also do `pv /dev/sda > /mnt/myDisk2` to get transfer speed details" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47313294)) "pv has a progress bar and nicer syntax." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49994476))
- Rate limiting for buffer problems (2 comments): "with the --rate-limit option can be used for the buffer problems" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45886050)) "I've had good luck using pv's (pipe viewer) rate limit." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48137715))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [fzf](https://hackerapproved.com/p/fzf.md): 78 recommend
- [jq](https://hackerapproved.com/p/jq.md): 75 recommend
- [grep](https://hackerapproved.com/p/grep.md): 65 recommend
- [Atuin](https://hackerapproved.com/p/atuin.md): 63 recommend
- [GitHub CLI](https://hackerapproved.com/p/github-cli.md): 49 recommend

## Cite as

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