Compare software

Best for: Reverse engineering a binary when you need a decompiler and cannot pay for IDA

Best for: Command-line reverse engineering framework and binary analysis toolkit

Free and open source under Apache 2.0, released by the NSA.

The software is free under its open-source licence. Hosting, hardware and external services are separate.

• A genuinely capable decompiler producing C-like output, free and open source
• Very wide processor instruction set and executable format support
• Built for teams, with shared projects and version tracking
• Extensible with Java or Python, and scriptable for automated analysis

• It disassembles, emulates, debugs and patches binaries across a very wide set of architectures, and scripts through r2pipe from most languages.

• The project warns that some versions have known security vulnerabilities
• Java-based, and the interface shows it
• A steep learning curve even for people who know assembly
• Distributed as a portable archive rather than an installer, and needs a JDK

• The command syntax is famously steep, and individual plugins carry different licences.

• Official website
• Full listing and sources

Sources for Ghidra

• github.com/NationalSecurityAgency/ghidra

Catalog checked September 21, 2026

• Official website
• Full listing and sources

Sources for radare2

• github.com/radareorg/radare2

Catalog checked September 22, 2026