Tiny C Compiler
Hacker ApprovedShares rank 5 of 18 c compilers by recommenders
Small, free C compiler that builds lean Windows and Win32 programs with no dependencies. Critics note it has had no release in about eight years.
Small, free C compiler that builds lean Windows and Win32 programs with no dependencies. Critics note it has had no release in about eight years.
22 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 20
- criticize it
- 2
- approval share
- 91%
Recommended in 7 of 13 months
- November 2025: not recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: not recommended
- May 2026: not recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: recommended
- August 2026: not recommended
- September 2026: not recommended
- October 2026: not recommended
- November 2026: recommended (month in progress)
Why it carries the badge
- 20 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 10 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
Small download, lean Windows builds
“TCC is my go-to for keeping builds lean. on windows specifically, you get a functional C compiler in a few hundred KB”
Comment from 8 Feb 2026 in “Tiny C Compiler” “TCC supports win32 and is less than a meg download and as an added bonus supports linux very well thanks to wine.”
Comment from 22 Mar 2026 in “Windows native app development is a mess” No dependencies on Windows
“TCC is my go-to for keeping builds lean. on windows specifically, you get a functional C compiler in a few hundred KB”
Comment from 8 Feb 2026 in “Tiny C Compiler” “No dependencies, no fiddling around with libwhater-1.0.dll or stuff like that when on Windows”
Comment from 7 Feb 2026 in “Tiny C Compiler” Works well on Windows and Win32
“TCC supports win32 and is less than a meg download and as an added bonus supports linux very well thanks to wine.”
Comment from 22 Mar 2026 in “Windows native app development is a mess” “it built and ran ok on windows 10, with tcc”
Comment from 14 Jun 2026 in “Windows 1.0 and the WinAPI, 40 Years Later” “TCC with win32 is a fantastic target”
Comment from 1 Nov 2026 in “Memdoor: A team of 5 Qwen3.8-27B models beats Fable 5 on LiveCodeBench Hard” Hackable, easy to embed
“Very hackable, easy to compile to WASM for some interesting in-browser compilation”
Comment from 7 Feb 2026 in “Tiny C Compiler” “One of the coolest tricks is using tcc to compile "on demand."”
Comment from 8 Feb 2026 in “Tiny C Compiler”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
No release in eight years
“there has not been any release for _8 years_, and the website is the same one at the top of this conversation”
Comment from 7 Feb 2026 in “Tiny C Compiler” “Sad but not surprised to see it's no longer maintained (8 years ago!).”
Comment from 7 Feb 2026 in “Tiny C Compiler” Hard codebase to maintain
“It sometimes feel the code id one big unittest including all nasty C edge cases.”
Comment from 16 Jun 2026 in “John Carmack on Fabrice Bellard” “too much of a burden to maintain”
Comment from 21 Apr 2026 in “Kefir C17/C23 Compiler”
Other c compilers people recommend
The four most recommended other c compilers, 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fil-C | 160 | 60 | 73% | 13 | — | Approved |
| Claude's C Compiler | 39 | 83 | 32% | 5 | — | — |
| Visual C++ | 29 | 17 | 63% | 12 | — | — |
| Tiny C Compiler (TCC) | 22 | 3 | 88% | 9 | — | Approved |
| Tiny C CompilerThis page | 20 | 2 | 91% | 7 | — | Approved |
What people said
21 of the 25 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“TCC with win32 is a fantastic target”
“I can't even articulate why I love it so much that this works”
“It sometimes feel the code id one big unittest including all nasty C edge cases.”
“it built and ran ok on windows 10, with tcc”
“too much of a burden to maintain”
“TCC supports win32 and is less than a meg download and as an added bonus supports linux very well thanks to wine.”
“I doubt anyone will manage to beat Fabrice Bellard”
“the coolest thing about tcc is that it is developed successfully wiki-style”
“TCC is my go-to for keeping builds lean. on windows specifically, you get a functional C compiler in a few hundred KB”
“One of the coolest tricks is using tcc to compile "on demand."”
“No dependencies, no fiddling around with libwhater-1.0.dll or stuff like that when on Windows”
“It produced human-readable C code so it was very easy to get going”
“Still this is pretty cool.”
“Used in the impressive Guix bootstrap.”
“it works really really well”
“there has not been any release for _8 years_, and the website is the same one at the top of this conversation”
“Seems like a good way to get students to write C rather than GNU C.”
“Very hackable, easy to compile to WASM for some interesting in-browser compilation”
“There is an actively maintained fork with RISC-V support and such”
“Sad but not surprised to see it's no longer maintained (8 years ago!).”
“somewhere on the order of ~10x faster than Clang -O0”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.