Frequently Asked Questions

Due to many changes required to support Sidekick, you will need an active license for Binary Ninja 5.3+ to use the latest version of the Sidekick plugin that interfaces with the Sidekick service.

Sidekick is supported on Linux, macOS, and Windows Binary Ninja clients and supports all editions except the Free (formerly Demo) edition because it lacks the ability to run plugins.

In addition to the minimum requirements for Binary Ninja itself, Sidekick also requires 500 MB of additional disk space (mainly for installing dependencies).

Yes. Click here for more information.

We do not have a student or educator discount available for Sidekick at this time. Sorry!

The Sidekick plugin is free and does not require a subscription. However, many (but not all) of the features provided by the plugin do require a subscription to the Sidekick service. See this page in our Sidekick documentation for which features can be used without the Sidekick service.

Subscriptions to the Sidekick service renew automatically once you have enrolled in a plan. You do not need to take any action to renew your subscription once it runs out. If your saved payment method can't be charged after several periodic attempts, however, your plan will be canceled and deactivated.

We do not support pausing subscriptions at this time.

At any time, you may cancel your Sidekick subscription. You will continue to have access to the Sidekick service through the remainder of the time you paid for. You may un-cancel/reactivate your canceled subscription at any time before the end of the current billing cycle. Note: If your subscription remains canceled at the end of the current billing cycle, then the subscription will be deactivated and you must purchase a new subscription if you wish you obtain service again in the future.

To cancel your subscription, sign in to your Sidekick account, navigate to the Plans section, and click on the "Manage" link for your plan. On the "Manage Plan" page, click on the button to cancel your subscription.

As a United States based company, Vector 35 (and its online payment processor Fastspring) only sell to locations not excluded by sanctions. Otherwise, there are no geographic restrictions on purchasing or using Sidekick. Likewise, there is no regional pricing.

Purchase orders and invoices not generally supported as Sidekick is a subscription service, but we may offer them in specific circumstances for customers on our Custom plan. Contact us with additional details if this is a requirement for you.

Yes, for our customers on our Custom plan. Contact us for details.

Yes. Currently, Non-Commercial plans include standard usage limits, while Pro plans offer four times the standard limit and Max plans offer ten times the standard limit.

These limits are designed to accommodate the majority of users. However, you may request additional usage, which will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. For custom plans with higher limits, please contact us.

Yes. You can switch to another Sidekick plan from your account.

Plan upgrades, such as monthly to yearly changes or moves from a lower tier to a higher tier, take effect immediately and may result in a prorated charge to your payment method on file.

Plan downgrades, such as yearly to monthly changes or moves from a higher tier to a lower tier, are pending and take effect at the next billing period. Your current plan remains in effect until then.

Yes. You can change the email associated with your Sidekick account through your Binary Ninja account.

Please see this entry in the main Binary Ninja FAQ for more details. In particular, if you have a Commercial or Ultimate edition of Binary Ninja, but purchased it for features and not for commercial usage, you may still use a non-commercial Sidekick plan.

We do not offer refunds for Sidekick subscription purchases. You may cancel at any time and your plan will remain active until the last day of service you have paid for. You may renew at any time during this period.

Yes, but not all features of Sidekick can work while offline. See this page in our Sidekick documentation for which features are available while working offline.

The Sidekick plugin exposes an API for automation within the UI and also headless operations. See our documentation for more details.

An API key is used to access the Sidekick service for your plan. The Sidekick client plugin must have a valid API key to use features supported by the Sidekick service.

An API key is generated for the plan automatically after purchase.

See to our documentation.

See here.

See here.

No, the Sidekick service does not operate on the entire binary. The Sidekick plugin only sends enough information derived from the binary to the server (the "context") to complete your request. This "context" is typically the selected function and its disassembly and or IL representation, plus whatever data variables are being referenced.

Vector 35 collects the following from all Binary Ninja clients using the Sidekick plugin in online mode:

• Your IP address
• Your Binary Ninja serial
• The version and edition of Binary Ninja you're running
• The version of Python you're using to run the Sidekick plugin
• The version of the Sidekick plugin you're running
• Your OS
• Your architecture
• Any data required by a user request made inside the plugin (see this answer above for more details)

All of this can be prevented either by turning on offline mode (using the switch in the status bar), use of a firewall, or simply disabling all network settings within Binary Ninja.

See here.

We have no official bug bounty at this time. That said, we're always grateful for bug reports and encourage security reports.

Sidekick Self-Hosted uses concurrent user licenses, also known as floating licenses. These licenses are shared across a pool of users, so the limit is based on how many people are using Sidekick at the same time, rather than the total number of users who may have access. For example, if your organization has 10 concurrent licenses, many users can be authorized to use Sidekick, but only 10 can use it simultaneously.

Yes. Sidekick Self-Hosted requires a minimum purchase of three concurrent user (floating) licenses.

No. Sidekick Self-Hosted is a separate purchase and does not require Binary Ninja Enterprise. It only requires a separately purchased license for a paid edition of Binary Ninja that supports plugins (since the Sidekick client is a Binary Ninja plugin).

Hardware sizing for Sidekick Self-Hosted is driven by concurrency, context window, and tokens per second — how many analysts are using it, how much history they carry, and how much background verification you want to run — not just by raw model count.

• Floor: 96 GB VRAM, about 3 concurrent users. For example, 1x RTX 6000 Pro Blackwell comfortably hosts both GPT-OSS 120B and GPT-OSS 20B at the same time, routing tasks between them. The higher GPU memory bandwidth also helps keep interactive workloads feeling faster. This fits a single analyst or a small shared team.
• Team: 192-320 GB VRAM, about 4-10 concurrent users. For example, 2x RTX 6000 Pro Blackwell or 2-4x H100. The added memory bandwidth gives you more headroom for longer context windows under load and for background verification alongside interactive chat.
• Fleet: 640 GB+ VRAM, 20+ concurrent users. For example, a single dense node with 8x H100 or H200. This is sized for headless agent pipelines running alongside interactive analysts, with long contexts, long histories, and batch triage at throughput.

For larger deployments or custom configurations, please contact us for sizing recommendations based on your workload.

Sidekick Self-Hosted supports modern open-weight model families running on a local inference runtime. Different tasks route to different models, so generation, verification, and analysis can each use the model best suited to the job.

• Gemma 4: 4B to 31B
• Qwen 3.6: 35B-A3B (open-weight)
• GPT-OSS: 20B and 120B
• Nemotron 3: 31B to 500B

The non-GPT-OSS families listed above are examples of models you can choose to host yourself. Our deployment package currently ships with recommended GPT-OSS configurations, and you can also bring your own weights or fine-tuned models if you prefer.

Yes. During the configuration of Sidekick Self-Hosted deployment for your infrastructure, you have the option to specify your own inference server and models for Sidekick's AI-based operations so long as it conforms to the OpenAI API specification.

However, we only guarantee support for the AI-runtime that we provide, so if you encounter issues as a result of using your own inference server, we may not be able to assist.

Yes. If the cloud-based AI service supports the OpenAI API specification, then you can configure your deployment to use that service for Sidekick's AI-based operations.

Binary Ninja Sidekick is made by Vector 35, a company focused on building reverse engineering tools, video games, and video games built on top of reverse engineering tools. We're the same team that created Binary Ninja itself.

If you have an additional question that hasn't been answered here already, or if you would like further clarification on something, please contact us.