Lazarus
Free, open-source cross-platform IDE for Free Pascal with a visual form designer.
Recommended as a go-to tool for building native cross-platform desktop GUIs12 that produce self-contained binaries and responsive apps, and as beginner-friendly.345 One commenter found the IDE itself extremely slow,6 and another notes that Free Pascal is verbose and the LCL framework carries a lot of boilerplate.7
Why people recommend it
Native desktop GUIs · 2
Commenters use it to build cross-platform desktop apps with the native UI toolkit.
“it is very good for getting full-native (including native UI toolkit) cross-platform desktop apps”
“Lazarus which is now my go-to tool whenever I need to build a GUI for myself. Genuinely enjoy it”
Responsive apps · 2
Apps built with it are described as not laggy, and it can produce self-contained binaries that just work.
“it is very good for getting full-native (including native UI toolkit) cross-platform desktop apps”
Pleasant to use · 2
Commenters call it great, and one says it is much more pleasant than C.
“Lazarus which is now my go-to tool whenever I need to build a GUI for myself. Genuinely enjoy it”
“Lazarus is great.”
Code generation · 1
The IDE writes much of the boilerplate and offers code completion from partial declarations.
“To me, despite Lazarus writing a bunch of code itself, the projects i made using it are "human-written".”
Beginner-friendly · 1
Recommended as especially good for beginners.
“Check out Lazarus IDE, it's really good, especially for beginnerd.”
Caveats and dissent
Slow IDE · 1
One former Delphi user found Lazarus extremely slow.
“I tried Lazarus in the past, but it's extremely slow”
Verbosity · 1
Free Pascal is verbose, and the LCL framework has a lot of boilerplate.
“To me, despite Lazarus writing a bunch of code itself, the projects i made using it are "human-written".”
Niche use · 1
One commenter says Lazarus/Free Pascal does fine in some niches.
“Lazarus/Free Pascal it's doing it fine in some niches.”
Often compared with
Threads where it came up
- Free Pascal compiler now supports dynamic packages 2 mentions
- Stop Making TUIs 1 mention
- Delphi 13 Community Edition Is Now Available 1 mention
- Codeberg bans vibe coded projects 1 mention
- FreeOberon – Open-Source, Cross-Platform, Free Pascal/Turbo Pascal-Like Language 1 mention
- Delphi is 31 years old – innovation timeline 1 mention
Also written as Lazarus IDE. Data: lazarus.json. Quotes are verbatim; the verdict and theme labels are written by a model from these comments, and every clause links to its sources.
All comments 9
“Lazarus is great.”
“Lazarus & Free Pascal (https://www.lazarus-ide.org)”
“My Qt and Lazarus apps aren't laggy at all”
“it is very good for getting full-native (including native UI toolkit) cross-platform desktop apps”
“To me, despite Lazarus writing a bunch of code itself, the projects i made using it are "human-written".”
“Lazarus which is now my go-to tool whenever I need to build a GUI for myself. Genuinely enjoy it”
“I tried Lazarus in the past, but it's extremely slow”
“Lazarus/Free Pascal it's doing it fine in some niches.”
“Check out Lazarus IDE, it's really good, especially for beginnerd.”