If you’ve worked with IDA beyond the UI — scripting, automation, headless tasks, or custom tooling — you may have heard of idalib. For those who haven’t, it’s the programmatic interface to the IDA analysis engine, designed to let you call IDA as a library, run analysis headlessly, or integrate IDA logic into your own systems.

idalib is what teams use when they want IDA to work behind the scenes: driving custom workflows, powering automated analysis, or supporting large-scale processing without launching the full application. If you’re looking to embed IDA into your toolchain or run the decompiler at scale, idalib is the component that makes that possible.

Who uses idalib today?

Across industries, we’re seeing idalib adopted by:

• security product teams
• threat intelligence platforms
• malware analysis labs
• exploit development teams
• firmware and embedded analysis teams
• cloud analysis providers
• enterprise internal security teams

These teams use idalib to solve very different problems, but the common thread is automation, scale, and integration.

What Workflows Does idalib Power?

Today, idalib is being used for:

• Headless decompilation workers running in VMs, containers, and cloud environments
• Automated pipelines that ingest binaries and analyze them at scale
• Regression and triage systems that handle thousands of samples
• Static analysis backends behind internal tools or SaaS offerings
• Code similarity and enrichment workflows
• Integrated reverse-engineering features inside commercial products
• …

If you want detailed examples, we’ve published two relevant blogs:

• Introducing HCLI — a modern CLI for automated IDA deployments
  https://hex-rays.com/blog/introducing-hcli
• 4 Powerful Applications of idalib: Headless IDA in Action
  https://hex-rays.com/blog/4-powerful-applications-of-idalib-headless-ida-in-action

Two Ways to Use idalib and the License Type That Fits Each One

There are really two categories of idalib usage, and each one maps to a different license model. Below is a simple breakdown.

1) Personal automation, experimentation & solo workflows

 ➥ License: Standard IDA Pro (Expert or Ultimate)

This fits if you are:

• using idalib locally
• experimenting with scripts
• building personal utilities
• running small-scale headless tasks
• automating your own workflow (not a team workflow)
• working solo, on one machine or with one named license, not on servers
• not embedding IDA into a product or service

A standard IDA Pro license is designed for analysts doing their own work, including using idalib for personal automation.

As an example, you can use idalib to host the IDA MCP server with Claude, Gemini, or even local LLMs to enable Q&A-style reverse engineering. You can also use HCLI and idalib in GitHub Actions or other CI/CD solutions to develop and test personal utilities like capa or Augur.

2) Team workflows, server-side analysis, or product integration

 ➥ License: IDA Pro OEM

OEM stands for Original Equipment Manufacturer. It simply means you’re licensed to run IDA as part of another system. Like a video conferencing app embedding third-party noise-reduction tech into its platform.

This applies when idalib is:

• running on servers, VMs, clusters, or cloud workers when the output is used by multiple people
• integrated into internal platforms or dashboards
• powering features inside a commercial or closed-source product
• supporting multiple analysts or users
• used as a backend component in a service
• accessed programmatically across nodes or systems
• used by AI agents to serve multiple end-users
• … 

Once IDA Pro (via idalib) becomes part of a system, not just an individual user’s workflow, you’re in OEM territory.

Why the IDA Pro OEM License Exists & It’s (Many) Benefits

Standard IDA Pro licensing (named, computer or floating) are designed for use by individual analysts.

The IDA Pro OEM license exists for everything else: scaling, server deployments, pipelines, clusters, and product integration for multiple users.

Under the hood, an OEM deployment is essentially:

 

 ➥ idalib + a standard IDA Pro 

 

configured to operate legally and efficiently on servers or inside products.

The OEM license also includes:

• scalability for headless/server workflows
• flexible deployment (containers, VMs, cloud)
• embedding IDA’s decompiler engine in your tooling
• permission for team use and multi-user access
• the ability to integrate IDA functionality into commercial offerings
• access to all 11 decompilers (quite an upgrade if you don’t already have them!)
• direct access to our technical experts for architecture guidance
• accelerated support for setup, integration, and ideation
• collaborative product feedback and feature-proposal pathways

Build Freely: Why Development is FREE

One of the most important things about the IDA Pro OEM license is that it supports innovation rather than restricting it.

That’s why the entire development phase is free and you only move into a fee structure once you’re ready to ship, scale, or commercialize. This means that all of the following are typically free, and allow you to explore and develop without worry:

• proof-of-concepts
• prototypes
• pilots
• research projects
• dev and testing
• beta stages

What’s the fee structure? The cost of an IDA Pro OEM license will depend on your use case and we’re happy to discuss the options.

For production use, whether in a commercial product/platform or an internal workflow serving multiple users, we tailor pricing to the value IDA delivers: usage-based, revenue share, per internal seat, and per server or CPU, for example. We’re flexible and transparent, and we believe that when IDA meaningfully enables or accelerates your solution, it’s fair that Hex-Rays is appropriately compensated. Tell us about your scenario and we’ll propose a simple structure that works for both sides.

Remember, during development (and beyond), we’re here to support, consult and collaborate.  

We want you to innovate without friction. That’s the core of Build Freely.

Note: We evaluate every IDA OEM license request individually to ensure resources go to projects with a clear technical, commercial, or community path. While development access is free for most qualifying integrations, some projects may not meet the criteria for complimentary development licensing.

A Quick Note on Compliance

If you're currently using a standard IDA Pro license in a server, automated, or product-integrated setup, you may be outside the scope of your EULA. The OEM license is designed exactly for these scenarios, and moving you into the right model is simple.

Next Steps: Tell us what you’re building (or what you want to build)!

If any of this describes your workflow, or where you’d like to take it, let’s talk so we can give you more power to enhance your work.

Email us at oem@hex-rays.com or fill out the form below.