[feznyng]

Echoing IDA but its pricing is a huge PITA if you’re using it in a hobbyist capacity i.e. you don’t have an employer willing to pay for it. Could opt for the home version but that’s a yearly cost and you have to use their cloud decompiler. Ghidra’s your best bet if you want something FOSS and community-driven although not as great at decompilation.

[mdaniel]

Not only the pricing by itself, every story that I've heard about normal people trying to actually give them money is that they actually don't want to sell it to anyone other than big players

That said, depending on ones needs they do actually offer a slimmed down IDA Free: https://hex-rays.com/ida-free

I actually use AUR to more-or-less track its releases https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/ida-free

[D4Ha]

Hexrays used to be difficult to deal with if you want to purchase IDA Pro for the first time, due to their software getting leaked online.

They have eased the procedure to buy from them, but from time to time they'll ask you to fill out your info with national ID/passport (they say its because they don't want to sell their software to individuals under sanctions). This is despite them being based in Belgium (not the US).

For any serious work IDA Pro is highly suitable (the customization and scripting, loader examples and processor plugins...etc), on the other hand for side projects and basic security research Binary ninja and ghidra can go along way.