QGIS
Hacker ApprovedGis software
Free, powerful open-source GIS desktop app for mapping and managing large spatial data. Common caveat: steep learning curve and complicated interface.
Free, powerful open-source GIS desktop app for mapping and managing large spatial data. Common caveat: steep learning curve and complicated interface.
52 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 35
- criticize it
- 17
- approval share
- 67%
Recommended in 7 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: not recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: not recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: not recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: recommended
- August 2026: not recommended
- September 2026: not recommended
- October 2026: recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Owned for 10 years
Median of the 3 owners who said how long they have had it.
Each square is one year.
Why it carries the badge
- 35 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 2.1 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
Powerful, feature-rich GIS tool
“Nothing is close to QGIS in terms of features, it deploys 1gig of open tech.”
Comment from 11 Jun 2026 in “MapComplete – Contibute to OpenStreetMaps” “qgis is the best gis software ever... i use it weekly, almost daily.”
Comment from 7 Mar 2026 in “QGIS 4.0” “QGIS is incredibly powerful.”
Comment from 7 Mar 2026 in “QGIS 4.0” - Comment from 12 Oct 2026 in “QGIS enacts moratorium on AI contributions”
Strong open-source project and team
“unique in scope for open source projects and are the centre of large, multi-decade communities”
Comment from 12 Oct 2026 in “QGIS enacts moratorium on AI contributions” “the QGIS team has a history and proven track record within the GIS community”
Comment from 12 Oct 2026 in “QGIS enacts moratorium on AI contributions” “QGIS is one of the small number of truly great open source desktop apps.”
Comment from 7 Mar 2026 in “QGIS 4.0” - Comment from 7 Mar 2026 in “QGIS 4.0”
- Comment from 12 Oct 2026 in “QGIS enacts moratorium on AI contributions”
- Comment from 7 Mar 2026 in “QGIS 4.0”
Free alternative to paid software
“this piece of (free!) software that essentially runs circles around the software we pay heavily for”
Comment from 7 Mar 2026 in “QGIS 4.0” “there are very good free alternatives like QGIS”
Comment from 11 Jun 2026 in “GeoLibre 1.0” Used for years in real work
“Qgis my beloved used it during my Masters extensively and its great. Only ever problem i had was that it did not support circular maps.”
Comment from 7 Mar 2026 in “QGIS 4.0” “all the forests i managed have a complete qgis cartography: species plots, age plots, density/volume, etc.”
Comment from 7 Mar 2026 in “QGIS 4.0” “QGIS has been a key piece of my career for the past 10 years.”
Comment from 7 Mar 2026 in “QGIS 4.0”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Complicated and hard to relearn
“While QGIS is incredible and powerful, it is too complicated sometimes”
Comment from 16 Jul 2026 in “Google Earth Desktop Client to Be Retired in 2027” “they are slow and confusing to jump back into after a period of time”
Comment from 12 Nov 2025 in “Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (Nov 2025)” “QGIS is an incredibly powerful tool, and it has caused me to swear at so many different pieces of it”
Comment from 7 Mar 2026 in “QGIS 4.0” Dated, cluttered user interface
“without just recreating the enormous QGIS GTK 2000s era UI”
Comment from 11 Jun 2026 in “GeoLibre 1.0” “this application needs an entire overhaul on its UI”
Comment from 12 Oct 2026 in “QGIS enacts moratorium on AI contributions”
What people recommend instead
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| QGISThis page | 35 | 17 | 67% | 7 | 10 yrs3 owners | Approved |
| GeoLibre | 8 | 3 | 73% | 1 | — | — |
What people said
40 of the 60 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“the underlying magic of QGIS or ArcPRO”
“this application needs an entire overhaul on its UI”
“I like QGIS better than any other GIS software I've had the misfortune of using”
“Nonetheless it's an obvious gem”
“unique in scope for open source projects and are the centre of large, multi-decade communities”
“Qgis is a pretty useful software and a great OSS project”
“This "human bottleneck" is why we have QGIS in the first place.”
“the real value of QGIS lies in it enabling managing data large complex projects”
“the QGIS team has a history and proven track record within the GIS community”
“While QGIS is incredible and powerful, it is too complicated sometimes”
“it's not always that fast: I recently looked into why drawing polygons interactively was so insanely slow”
“Nothing is close to QGIS in terms of features, it deploys 1gig of open tech.”
“It is incredible it still works in v4.”
“without just recreating the enormous QGIS GTK 2000s era UI”
“there are very good free alternatives like QGIS”
“I'm a big fan of QGIS, but doing stuff browser side is just _terribly_ convenient”
“In a seemingly endless class hierarchy of non-pythonic objects”
“Why does QGIS not show up when I type GIS?”
“all the forests i managed have a complete qgis cartography: species plots, age plots, density/volume, etc.”
“it was definitely a great open source tool”
“QGIS is the rare open source product that made great improvements in usability.”
“QGIS is one of the small number of truly great open source desktop apps.”
“QGIS is incredibly powerful.”
“this piece of (free!) software that essentially runs circles around the software we pay heavily for”
“QGIS is an incredibly powerful tool, and it has caused me to swear at so many different pieces of it”
“Together with PostGIS, it's a powerful tool.”
“QGIS has been a key piece of my career for the past 10 years.”
“I am granted the superpower of... being able to distinguish between points on both mobile and desktop.”
“Qgis my beloved used it during my Masters extensively and its great. Only ever problem i had was that it did not support circular maps.”
“Overall a very pleasant experience, and their docs are pretty good too.”
“How much better it was than the previous ones”
“It's so much lighter and so much less bloat, it's just wildly more efficient.”
“qgis is the best gis software ever... i use it weekly, almost daily.”
“Congrats to QGIS team, looking forward to native apple silicon support”
“QGIS is great. One of the truly good open source projects.”
“you can just play with hundreds of projections”
“I checked in 2025, and it's beyond 1,3 gig now”
“its learning curve is incredibly steep”
“QGIS is pretty amazing. And it is helped along by not trying to pull you into a cloud ecosystem”
“they are slow and confusing to jump back into after a period of time”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.