<story><title>Hex-rays is moving to a subscription model</title><url>https://hex-rays.com/blog/hex-rays-is-moving-to-a-subscription-model/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>PragmaticPulp</author><text>As alternative tools like Ghidra or even some of the cheaper options like Hopper become more popular, I suspect Hex-Rays recognizes that corporate licenses are their bread and butter. From a business perspective it makes sense to squeeze as much out of these companies as they can get away with. The subscription costs are only a fraction of an annual salary.&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately this leaves the hobbyist and individuals behind. ~$1K&amp;#x2F;year isn&amp;#x27;t out of the realm of what I pay for other tools, but it&amp;#x27;s really hard to justify it when I can open Ghidra and get 95% of the way there without the subscription model.&lt;p&gt;IDA really is great for handling edge cases and obscure architectures, but I hope this last switch-up by Hex-Rays pushes even more developer attention toward improving the open-source alternatives.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>nekitamo</author><text>By squeezing out hobbyists and individuals, they&amp;#x27;re shooting themselves in the foot over the long term.&lt;p&gt;The only reason any corporation I worked for purchased IDA Pro licenses was because I recommended it. The only reason I recommended it is because I could (barely) afford a personal license, and play with it in my own time.&lt;p&gt;Going forward they&amp;#x27;re going to miss out on this word-of-mouth marketing, which I expect will negatively affect sales expansion going forward.</text></comment>
<story><title>Hex-rays is moving to a subscription model</title><url>https://hex-rays.com/blog/hex-rays-is-moving-to-a-subscription-model/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>PragmaticPulp</author><text>As alternative tools like Ghidra or even some of the cheaper options like Hopper become more popular, I suspect Hex-Rays recognizes that corporate licenses are their bread and butter. From a business perspective it makes sense to squeeze as much out of these companies as they can get away with. The subscription costs are only a fraction of an annual salary.&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately this leaves the hobbyist and individuals behind. ~$1K&amp;#x2F;year isn&amp;#x27;t out of the realm of what I pay for other tools, but it&amp;#x27;s really hard to justify it when I can open Ghidra and get 95% of the way there without the subscription model.&lt;p&gt;IDA really is great for handling edge cases and obscure architectures, but I hope this last switch-up by Hex-Rays pushes even more developer attention toward improving the open-source alternatives.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>jjoonathan</author><text>Long ago, when I got my first paycheck, I &amp;quot;went legit&amp;quot; and bought licenses for TextMate, Sublime, and IDA. Long story short, HexRays took my $1000 and never gave me a working version of their software. Bastards. I&amp;#x27;m so glad there is an alternative now.&lt;p&gt;To this very day, whenever I&amp;#x27;m stuck slogging through the build or debug process of a Ghidra plugin that has a more mature alternative in the IDA universe, I occasionally let a tiny bit of that resentment bubble to the surface to propel me across the finish line.</text></comment>