What is DuckStation used for?

DuckStation is a PlayStation 1 emulator for Windows, Linux and macOS focused on playability, accuracy and speed, with hardware renderers and a Qt front end. It is a good fit for playing PS1 games on a PC, and running retro games on handhelds and Linux boxes.

Is DuckStation open source?

Yes. DuckStation is open source under a custom licence. Its source code is on GitHub at stenzek/duckstation and is written mainly in C++.

Yes. DuckStation is open source, so the software itself is free to use under the terms of its own licence.

Can I self-host DuckStation?

Yes. DuckStation can be self-hosted on your own server or infrastructure.

What are some alternatives to DuckStation?

Similar open-source tools in the Games & Emulation category include RetroArch, Cemu and RPCS3. SaaS products in the same category include BacklogShuffle, BlueStacks and Boosteroid.

Is DuckStation actively maintained?

Yes. The most recent commit to DuckStation was on 2 October 2026. The project has 11k stars on GitHub.

DuckStation: open-source games & emulation

About DuckStation

DuckStation is a simulator and emulator of the Sony PlayStation console, focusing on playability, speed and long-term maintainability. The goal is to be as accurate as possible while still running well on low-end devices, and the developers discourage hack options, so the default configuration should handle all playable games.

It provides a full-featured Qt front end and a fullscreen interface for TVs based on Dear ImGui. Other capabilities include a CPU recompiler for x86-64, ARM and RISC-V, hardware renderers using D3D11, D3D12, OpenGL, Vulkan and Metal, upscaling and texture filtering, PGXP geometry correction, a texture replacement system and a multi-threaded software renderer.

A PS1 or PS2 BIOS image is required to start the emulator and is not distributed with it, so users must dump one from their own console. Builds are published for Windows 10 and 11, Linux as AppImages and macOS. The project is written in C++, and its license is stated in the repository.

Key features

PlayStation 1 emulation
Hardware renderers for D3D, OpenGL, Vulkan, Metal
Upscaling and texture filtering
PGXP geometry precision correction
Qt front end and TV-style fullscreen UI
CPU recompiler for several architectures

Good fit for

→Playing PS1 games on a PC
→Running retro games on handhelds and Linux boxes

Built with: C++
Tags: emulator; playstation; ps1; gaming; vulkan; retro-gaming; cross-platform

DuckStation: questions and answers

What is DuckStation used for?: DuckStation is a PlayStation 1 emulator for Windows, Linux and macOS focused on playability, accuracy and speed, with hardware renderers and a Qt front end. It is a good fit for playing PS1 games on a PC, and running retro games on handhelds and Linux boxes.
Is DuckStation open source?: Yes. DuckStation is open source under a custom licence. Its source code is on GitHub at stenzek/duckstation and is written mainly in C++.
Is DuckStation free?: Yes. DuckStation is open source, so the software itself is free to use under the terms of its own licence.
Can I self-host DuckStation?: Yes. DuckStation can be self-hosted on your own server or infrastructure.
What are some alternatives to DuckStation?: Similar open-source tools in the Games & Emulation category include RetroArch, Cemu and RPCS3. SaaS products in the same category include BacklogShuffle, BlueStacks and Boosteroid.
Is DuckStation actively maintained?: Yes. The most recent commit to DuckStation was on 2 October 2026. The project has 11k stars on GitHub.