# Esp32sim

11 Hacker News commenters recommended Esp32sim and 1 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 1 of 13 months.

**Verdict:** Runs real ESP32 firmware in the browser, free and open source, so developers can test embedded projects without hardware. Critics say parts of the code look AI-generated.

## Why people recommend it

- Runs real ESP32 firmware in browser (3 comments): "Where I can see this coming handy is instead of a "functional simulator" to actually have real firmware running for each mobile or back-end dev and CI/CD runner." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50133189)) "This emulator is actually pretty cool — especially since it’s based on an ESP32" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50134463)) "This is the first thing I started looking for when I started gathering ESP32s." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50140869))
- Useful for embedded projects (4 comments): "This is the first thing I started looking for when I started gathering ESP32s." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50140869)) "This is awesome, I will certainly use it for some of my recent embedded work." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50141134)) "This is very interesting! I have a handful of uses for this already" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50173942))
- Free and open source (2 comments): "make your cool esp32 software demoable on GitHub pages for free" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50139024)) "OSS and the price? It may be vibe coded but the price is free." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50132692))

## What people warn about

- Code looks AI-generated (2 comments): "gigantic, poorly-formatted AI-slop paragraphs" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50132445)) "It’s also a predictor of the level of slop in a project" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50132643))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [Velxio](https://hackerapproved.com/p/velxio-2-0.md): 21 recommend
- [Wokwi](https://hackerapproved.com/p/wokwi.md): 6 recommend
- [Simantic](https://hackerapproved.com/p/simantic.md): 5 recommend

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "Esp32sim", https://hackerapproved.com/p/esp32sim/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).