# wolfSSL

14 Hacker News commenters recommended wolfSSL and 7 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 6 of 13 months. It meets the Hacker Approved badge rule.

**Verdict:** Recommended for responsive maintainer support, reasonable commercial licensing, and a transparent approach to vulnerabilities. Critics cite its CVE history, many configuration options, and defaults that are not spec-compliant.

## Why people recommend it

- Responsive maintainer support (2 comments): "The maintainer always answered within minutes, which I find quite impressive" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47001387)) "it was pretty good support from them" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47355277))
- Reasonable price and commercial licensing (2 comments): "wolfSSL also sells commercial licenses so it's not like they're going uncompensated for their work" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47001862)) "The price was very reasonable as well." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47361955))
- Named among major alternative TLS libraries (2 comments): "there's RustTLS, GnuTLS, BoringSSL, LibreSSL, WolfSSL, NSS, and AWS-LC that come to mind immediately" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47490131)) "compared to WolfSSL, LibreSSL, BoringSSL, etc." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45936232))

## What people warn about

- Extensive history of CVEs (2 comments): "crypto code from "all the CVEs" WolfSSL" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47513666)) "an extensive portfolio of CVEs" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47780537))
- Many options; defaults not spec-compliant (2 comments): "WolfSSL has many, many options. Accepting the defaults is not sufficient IME." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47017553)) "it allows for and defaults to spec-noncompliant behavior" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47029514))
- Evasive replies in issue tracker (2 comments): "he has the gall to open with "Sorry I missed your replies (life gets busy)"" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47004230)) "This game of stalling / obfuscating via the issue tracker gets very old." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47001674))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [rustls](https://hackerapproved.com/p/rustls.md): 13 recommend
- [BearSSL](https://hackerapproved.com/p/bearssl.md): 6 recommend

## Cite as

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