# SPICE

8 Hacker News commenters recommended SPICE and 3 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 5 of 13 months.

**Verdict:** Free, open-source circuit simulator that electronics engineers use to model analog behaviour before building. Critics note weak security history and that it wasn't built for programmers.

## Why people recommend it

- Standard tool for analog circuit simulation (4 comments): "a 50-year-old open-source program used to design every computer you've ever used" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49675586)) "it's the thing every analog EE uses to simulate their circuits" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49675113)) "still very important to people who have to design electronics" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49675154))
- Free, open-source, maintained for decades (2 comments): "maintained at a loss for many years, and is now (still) open source and available to everyone to use as they wish" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49674932)) "a 50-year-old open-source program used to design every computer you've ever used" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49675586))

## What people warn about

- Flaky and not built for programmers (2 comments): "SPICE wasn't built for programmers in mind" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49234028)) "a flaky spice based terminal" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47466600))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [Diode](https://hackerapproved.com/p/diode.md): 17 recommend
- [LTspice](https://hackerapproved.com/p/ltspice.md): 10 recommend
- [ngspice](https://hackerapproved.com/p/ngspice.md): 5 recommend

## Cite as

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