Awesome Reverse Engineering / Compare
Ghidra vs IDA Pro vs Binary Ninja
The three disassemblers most reverse engineers choose between, compared on price, decompilation, scripting, AI integration and security notes. Facts are from vendor pages and project repositories, checked on 2026-10-10.
| Ghidra | IDA | Binary Ninja | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Price | Free, open source (Apache-2.0) | Free tier for non-commercial use; Home, Pro and higher tiers billed annually | Free tier for non-commercial use; Personal from US$199, plus Commercial and Ultimate |
| Decompiler | Included for every supported architecture, runs locally | Free, Home and Pro Essential decompile in the cloud; Expert, Ultimate and Headless decompile locally | Free edition decompiles x86, x86-64, ARMv7 and AArch64 locally |
| Scripting | Java and Python (PyGhidra) | IDAPython (not available in IDA Free) | Python API (not in the free edition) |
| Debugger | Built in | Built in | Built in, including the free edition |
| Similarity and signatures | BSim, Function ID | FLIRT, Lumina | See vendor documentation |
| AI and MCP | Community servers: Ghidra MCP Server, GhidraMCP, ReVa; also driven by REA | Official Hex-Rays IDA MCP (IDA 9.4+ with idalib); community ida-pro-mcp | Built-in MCP server in every edition; headless use needs Commercial or Ultimate |
| Security notes | About 30 advisories from Feb to Sep 2026; stay on 12.1.4 or later; lookalike download sites exist | Never use cracked builds (a trojanised IDA 7.5 targeted researchers); a crafted database could run code until 9.3sp2 | Binary Ninja Cloud uploads binaries to the vendor |
| Strong choice when | You want a capable free tool, are learning, or need a team server on a budget | You need the widest processor support and the largest plugin ecosystem for commercial work | You want to script analysis on clean intermediate languages |
Verdict
Start with Ghidra: it costs nothing, decompiles locally and covers most work. Move to IDA when a job needs its processor coverage, plugins or a client expects it, and choose a tier that decompiles locally for confidential code. Pick Binary Ninja when you will write your own analysis on top of the tool.
See every option in Disassemblers & Decompilers and the agent integrations in AI-Assisted RE & MCP Servers.