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radare2 vs IDA Free: catalog facts
radare2	IDA Free
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Best for: Command-line reverse engineering framework and binary analysis toolkit	Best for: Students and hobbyists learning reverse engineering on x86 binaries
Free The software is free under its open-source licence. Hosting, hardware and external services are separate.	Free Free for non-commercial use; paid IDA Home and IDA Pro editions add more features and commercial rights.
Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, Command line	Windows, macOS, Linux
It disassembles, emulates, debugs and patches binaries across a very wide set of architectures, and scripts through r2pipe from most languages.	Same core disassembler as the commercial IDA Includes a decompiler for x86 and x86-64 Runs on Windows, macOS and Linux
The command syntax is famously steep, and individual plugins carry different licences.	Not licensed for commercial use Only x86 and x86-64 are supported Decompilation runs in the cloud and needs a connection
Downloadable app	Downloadable app
Open source	Not open source
License: LGPL-3.0	License: Proprietary
Not stated if an account is needed	Not stated if an account is needed
Not stated if it works offline	Needs internet
Official website Full listing and sources Sources for radare2 github.com/radareorg/radare2 Catalog checked September 22, 2026	Official website Full listing and sources Sources for IDA Free hex-rays.com/ida-free Catalog checked September 23, 2026

“Not stated” means we have not confirmed it. Features can vary by device and plan.

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