Cutter vs IDA Pro

Cutter is a free, open-source reverse-engineering platform for Linux, macOS, and Windows. Its Qt and C++ interface is powered by Rizin, and releases integrate the native Ghidra decompiler without Java. Other decompiler plugin options include RetDec and JSDec; Cutter developers officially maintain RzGhidra. For navigation, it provides a full graph view and a mini-graph, while its hex view can display and modify files. A Python scripting engine supports task automation, and plugins can be written in C++ or Python. Cutter also includes emulation for automation, cryptographic algorithms, and malware analysis. Its native and remote debugger supports dynamic analysis and is marked beta. Supported architectures include 6502, ARM, AVR, Dalvik, Game Boy, Java bytecode, and many others. Cutter is licensed under GPLv3, with official downloads for all three listed operating systems. Developer and community contact options include Telegram, IRC, and Twitter.

IDA Pro is a disassembler, decompiler and debugger for analyzing processors, file formats and software. It supports disassembly for more than 60 processor families, and its debugger works with multiple targets, including remote applications. The bundled gooMBA plug-in uses algebraic and program-synthesis techniques, heuristics and an SMT solver to simplify obfuscated binaries. Automation options include the IDA C++ SDK, IDAPython API, IDAT command-line functions and the idalib headless library. Teams can work with GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket, Gitea or another Git remote, with Git LFS support for large IDB files. Private Lumina is a self-hosted add-on that restricts a knowledge base to authorized users; it exchanges function hashes and metadata rather than entire byte patterns. IDA Pro runs on Linux, macOS and Windows. The IDA Pro Essential plan costs $1,099 a year, with a one-year minimum commitment and no monthly payments. Hex-Rays states that there is no free trial and points users to IDA Free for checking basic capabilities.