unicorn-engine/unicorn
Some data may be outdated — see provenance labels.
Unicorn CPU emulator framework (ARM, AArch64, M68K, Mips, Sparc, PowerPC, RiscV, S390x, TriCore, X86) observed · 2026-10-02
Health v2 · maintenance only
67/100
- Activity 92
- Release rhythm 16
- Longevity 100
How is this computed?
round(0.45*activity + 0.35*rhythm + 0.20*longevity); archived -> min(score, 10) — computed 2026-10-21. Adoption (stars, forks) is never an input.
- gap_med: 103.5
- age_days: 4079
- days_rel: 406
- days_push: 53
- n_releases_24m: 3
Adoption not part of the score
9388 stars · 1547 forks observed · 2026-10-02
What it is AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, 2026-08-29, confidence not recorded
Unicorn is a lightweight, multi-architecture CPU emulator framework based on QEMU, supporting ARM, ARM64, M68K, MIPS, PowerPC, RISC-V, SPARC, S390x, TriCore, and x86. It provides a clean architecture-neutral C API with bindings for many languages, JIT-based high performance, and fine-grained instrumentation hooks.
Use cases
- emulate raw machine code without an OS or executable context
- build malware analysis and reverse-engineering tools
- fuzz firmware and binary code across CPU architectures
- instrument CPU execution and memory accesses with custom hooks
- emulate ARM or x86 shellcode in a security research script
- run multiple emulated CPU architectures concurrently in one process
When to choose
- you need to emulate CPU instructions from raw binary code without a full system image
- you need multi-architecture support behind one architecture-neutral API
- you need dynamic instrumentation hooks on execution and memory events
- you need thread-safe emulation of multiple CPUs in one program
- you want bindings for Python, Rust, Go, Java, .NET, and more
When to avoid
- you need to run a full operating system or emulate devices/peripherals - use QEMU instead
- you need a ready-made emulator application rather than an embeddable library
- you require a permissive license - Unicorn is GPLv2
Facets
library · maturity stable
simulation security reverse-engineering developer-tools security reverse-engineering developer-tools simulation windows cross-platform python go rust jvm dotnet cpp c cpu-emulator qemu-based jit instrumentation multi-architecture arm x86 mips riscv fuzzing-support linux macos
6 sources
- readme: https://github.com/unicorn-engine/unicorn · fetched 2026-10-02 · c7e58da94d42
- homepage: http://www.unicorn-engine.org · fetched 2026-08-29 · 686d29cc682e
- site_page: https://www.unicorn-engine.org/docs · fetched 2026-08-29 · 3f8c23e16ae6
- site_page: https://www.unicorn-engine.org/docs/beyond_qemu.html · fetched 2026-08-29 · 33fc2d0659d9
- site_page: http://www.unicorn-engine.org/docs/tutorial.html · fetched 2026-08-29 · 943fb03ed4ac
- site_page: https://www.unicorn-engine.org/changelog · fetched 2026-08-29 · 69748bb2e9fe
Member repositories
| Repository | Role | Health v2 |
|---|---|---|
| unicorn-engine/unicorn | main | 67 |
For agents
markdown · JSON · MCP: product_card(name="unicorn-engine/unicorn")
Data as of 2026-10-19T08:05:51.212177+00:00 · Report a problem