Comparison of hex editors

Short description: None

This article has multiple issues. Please help improve it or discuss these issues on the talk page. (Learn how and when to remove these template messages)

This article possibly contains original research. Please improve it by verifying the claims made and adding inline citations. Statements consisting only of original research should be removed. (August 2025) (Learn how and when to remove this template message)

|

(Learn how and when to remove this template message)

The following is a comparison of notable hex editors.

## Contents

* 1 General
* 2 Features
* 3 See also
* 4 Notes
* 5 References
* 6 External links

## General

| GUI  | Console | Software license | Latest stable version  | Latest release date  | Windows  | Macintosh  | Linux

|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|

HxD | Yes  | No  | Proprietary freeware  | 2.5.0.0  | 2021  | Win95, WinNT4 and up  | No  | No
010 Editor | Yes  | No  | Proprietary | 16.0.2  | 2025  | Yes  | Yes  | Yes
beye | No  | Yes  | GPL-2.0-only or GPL-3.0-only | 6.1.0  | 2009  | Yes  | Yes  | Yes
Cheat Engine | Yes  | No  | Proprietary freeware  | 7.2  | 2021  | Yes  | Yes, ver. 6.2  | No
GNU Emacs | Yes  | Yes  | GPL-3.0-or-later | 29.1[1] | 2023  | Yes  | Yes  | Yes
FlexHex | Yes  | No  | Proprietary freeware for personal use  | 2.7  | 2018  | Windows XP and up  | No  | No
Hiew | No  | Yes  | Proprietary | 8.81  | 2024  | Yes  | No  | No
ImHex | Yes  | Yes  | GPL-2.0-only | 1.35.4  | 2024[2] | Yes  | Yes  | Yes
VEDIT | Yes  | Yes  | Proprietary | 6.24.2  | 2015  | Yes  | No  | No
UltraEdit | Yes  | No  | Proprietary | 26.10 (Windows)
18.0 (Linux / Mac OS X)  | 2019
2018  | Yes  | Yes  | Yes
WinHex | Yes  | No  | Proprietary | 21.0  | 2023  | Win95 and up  | No  | No
Vim | Yes  | Yes  | Vim  | 9.1.0[3] | 2024  | Yes  | Yes  | Yes

## Features

Template:Sort-under

| Maximum file size  | Partial file loading  | Disk sector editing  | Process memory editing  | Data inspector  | Bit editing | Insert

delete
bytes  | Character encodings(ao) | Search Unicode | File formats | Disassembler | File compare  | Find in files  | Bookmarks  | Macro  | Text editor

|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|

HxD | 8 EiB[4] | Yes  | Windows 9x/NT and up  | Yes  | Yes  | Yes  | Yes  | ANSI, ASCII, OEM, EBCDIC, Macintosh  | Yes  | No  | Individual instructions only  | Yes  | No  | Yes  | No  | No
010 Editor | 8 EiB  | Yes  | Yes  | WinNT only  | Yes  | Yes  | Yes  | ANSI, OEM, Unicode, UTF-8, EBCDIC, Custom  | Yes  | 300 [5] | Yes  | Yes  | Yes  | Yes  | Yes  | Yes
beye | 8 PiB | Yes  | No  |  |  | Yes  | Yes  | ANSI, EBCDIC, ASCII, Macintosh  | Yes  | 29 [6] | AVR, Java, x86, i386, x86-64, ARM/XScale, PowerPC, PPC64  |  |  | Yes  | No
Emacs | 2.3 EB[7][8][9][10] | No  | Unknown  | No  | No  | No  | No  | Yes  | Yes[11] | Unknown  | No  | No  | Unknown  | Unknown  | Yes[12] | Yes
FlexHex | Yes  | Yes  |  | Yes  | Yes  | Yes  | ANSI, OEM, UTF-16  | Yes  | 2 [13][14] | No  | Yes  | No  | Yes  |  | No
Hiew | Yes  | WinNT only  |  | Yes  | Yes  | Yes  | ASCII, OEM, Unicode, custom  | Yes  | No  | x86, x86-64, MMX, SSE 4.2, 3DNow! \- all assembler, ARM |  | Yes  | Yes  | Yes
VEDIT | Yes  | DOS version only  |  | No  | Yes  | Yes  | ANSI, OEM, EBCDIC, ASCII, custom  | No  | No  | No  | Yes  | Yes  | Yes  | Yes  | Yes
UltraEdit | >4 GiB  | Yes  | No  | No  | No  | No  | Yes  | ANSI, OEM, EBCDIC, ASCII, Mac, Unix, UTF-8  | Yes  | No  | No  | Yes  | Yes  | Yes
WinHex | Yes  | Yes  |  | Yes  | Yes  | Yes  | Partial support of these formats: ANSI, UNICODE, OEM, UTF-8/UTF-16, EBCDIC, ASCII | Yes  | 44 [15][16] | Only x86 Intel opcodes  | Yes  | Yes and replace  |  | Yes[17] | No
vim | Limited by RAM  | No  | No  | No  | No  | Yes[18] | Yes  | ASCII, ISO-8859, DOS (OEM), UTF-8, UTF-16, partial EBCDIC (compilation required), unicode  | Yes  | No  | No  | Yes[19] | No  | Plug-in[20] | Yes  | Yes
ImHex | Unlimited  | Yes  | Yes  | Yes  | Yes  | Yes  | Yes  | ANSI, OEM, Unicode, UTF-8, EBCDIC, Shift-JIS, Custom  | Yes  | 143 [21] | Yes  | Yes  | Yes  | Yes  | Yes  | No
| Maximum file size  | Partial file loading  | Disk sector editing  | Process memory editing  | Data inspector  | Bit editing | Insert

delete
bytes  | Character encodings(ao) | Search Unicode | File formats | Disassembler | File compare  | Find in files  | Bookmarks  | Macro  | Text editor

## See also

* Comparison of HTML editors
* Comparison of integrated development environments
* Comparison of text editors
* Comparison of word processors

## Notes

ao: ANSI is the Windows character set, OEM is the DOS character set. Both are based on ASCII.

## References

1. ↑ "GNU Emacs". https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/.
2. ↑ "Releases · WerWolv/ImHex". https://github.com/WerWolv/ImHex/releases.
3. ↑ "Vim 9.1 released : Vim online". https://www.vim.org/vim-9.1-released.php.
4. ↑ HxD features
5. ↑ "010 Editor - Binary Template Repository". SweetScape Software Inc.. https://www.sweetscape.com/010editor/repository/templates/.
6. ↑ "beye / Code / [r238 /newtwindow-branch/src/plugins/bin/"]. https://sourceforge.net/p/beye/code/HEAD/tree/newtwindow-branch/src/plugins/bin/.
7. ↑ "GNU Emacs 23.2 NEWS -- history of user-visible changes.". https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/NEWS.23.2.
8. ↑ "Buffers". https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/emacs/Buffers.html. "A buffer's size cannot be larger than some maximum, which is defined by the largest buffer position representable by Emacs integers. This is because Emacs tracks buffer positions using that data type. For typical 64-bit machines, this maximum buffer size is 2^{61} - 2 bytes, or about 2 EiB. For typical 32-bit machines, the maximum is usually 2^{29} - 2 bytes, or about 512 MiB. Buffer sizes are also limited by the amount of memory in the system."
9. ↑ "Does Emacs have problems with large files?". https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/efaq/Problems-with-very-large-files.html.
10. ↑ "GNU emacs manual - Narrowing". https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/emacs/Narrowing.html.
11. ↑ "Special Input for Incremental Search". https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/emacs/Special-Isearch.html.
12. ↑ "Bookmarks". https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/emacs/Bookmarks.html.
13. ↑ "User-defined Data Fields". Inv Softworks LLC. http://www.flexhex.com/product/tour/data_fields.phtml.
14. ↑ The file "FlexHEX\Structures\Disk.fsd" of FlexHex 2.71 installation contains example parsers for FAT and NFTS file system headers
15. ↑ "Additional Templates for WinHex & X-Ways Forensics". X-Ways Software Technology AG. https://www.x-ways.net/winhex/templates/index.html. lists ~30 formats.
16. ↑ WinHex 20.6 release package "winhex.zip" contains 14 template files with ".tpl" suffix with parsers for various storage system formats.
17. ↑ WinHex: Scripting
18. ↑ :help eval
19. ↑ vimdiff
20. ↑ vim-bookmarks
21. ↑ "ImHex-Patterns". https://github.com/WerWolv/ImHex-Patterns.

## External links

* "Harry's Windows Hex Editor Review" (July 2002). harrymnielsen.tripod.com. Retrieved October 15, 2019.

0.00

(0 votes)

Original source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison of hex editors. Read more

|

Retrieved from "https://handwiki.org/wiki/index.php?title=Software:Comparison_of_hex_editors&oldid=4138011"