Software · Consoles, homebrew & emulation

86Box

86Box is a console and retro computer emulator, available on Windows and Linux.

Completely free
Windows and Linux
Open source
No account

Ad-supported exit link (Clictune): an intermediate page may show for a few seconds before the official website. Direct link to the website, no intermediate page

Download from the official source

Link to the official download page, ad-supported (Clictune): an intermediate page may show for a few seconds. Direct link to the download

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Geographic availability: No geographic restriction found in our sources; availability is not checked country by country.

Technical details

Pricing: Completely freeconfirmed by Flathub, Winget (Windows Package Manager)
License: GPL-2.0+ — Open source (copyleft)confirmed by Flathub, Winget (Windows Package Manager)
Open source: Yes
Commercial use: Yesconfirmed by Flathub, Official plan pages (pricing, licence, terms), Winget (Windows Package Manager)
Account required: Noconfirmed by Winget (Windows Package Manager)
Credit card required: Noconfirmed by Flathub, Winget (Windows Package Manager)
Watermark: Not applicable
Ads: not documented
Platforms: Windows and LinuxEstablished by Linux: Flathub · Windows: Winget
Publisher: 86Box developers
Latest version: 6.0 (28 January 2026)
Latest activity: 1 November 2026
Source code: github.com/86box/86box

At a glance

86Box is completely free: it is open source software, and every feature is available without paying or subscribing.

Its licence (GPL-2.0+) is a copyleft open source licence: you may use, study, modify and redistribute it, including commercially; modified versions must keep the same licence.

Strengths

Open source code
No account needed
Commercial use allowed

About

86Box is a hypervisor and IBM PC system emulator that specializes in running old operating systems and software designed for IBM PC systems and compatibles from 1981 through fairly recent system designs based on the PCI bus. It supports various models of PCs, graphics and sound cards, and CPUs. To use 86Box you will need to dump BIOS ROMs for each machine you want to emulate.

Description from Flathub — AppStream (Flathub)

Sources and checks

Facts collected from Flathub (credit card, publisher, licence, free status, platforms, commercial use, version) — 9 November 2026
Facts collected from Official plan pages (pricing, licence, terms) (commercial use) — 8 November 2026
Facts collected from Winget (Windows Package Manager) (credit card, account, source code, publisher, licence, free status, platforms, commercial use, version) — 6 November 2026
Last technical check: 6 November 2026
Description from Flathub — AppStream (Flathub)

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