Radare2 vs smali/baksmali: Side-by-Side Comparison (2026)
Features, pricing, ratings, and pros & cons — compared head-to-head.
Radare2 is a free malware analysis tool. smali/baksmali is a free malware analysis tool. Compare features, ratings, integrations, and community reviews side by side to find the best malware analysis fit for your security stack.
CST VerdictBased on our analysis of available product data, here is our conclusion:
Security researchers and red teamers who need to analyze malware and firmware will find Radare2 invaluable for its scriptable disassembly and its command-line efficiency across Linux, Windows, and macOS without licensing friction. With 22,210 GitHub stars and active development, the community-driven framework covers binary analysis end-to-end: disassembly, debugging, and patching all in one tool. Skip this if your team needs GUI-first workflows or expects vendor support; Radare2 has a steep learning curve and rewards operators who think in assembly and Python, not point-and-click analysts.
Android security teams and red teamers doing malware analysis need smali/baksmali because it's the only tool that reliably converts Dalvik bytecode back to human-readable assembly, something closed-source decompilers routinely botch on obfuscated samples. The 6,608 GitHub stars reflect actual usage across threat intelligence shops and forensics labs where the open-source codebase lets you patch it when vendors' tools fail. This isn't for buyers wanting a polished UI or one-click threat scoring; you're reading assembly code by hand and the learning curve is real.
