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O3DE
Open 3D Engine - Professional game engine
As of 30 August 2026, O3DE is free to use. Open 3D Engine (O3DE) is a free, open-source 3D engine built for creating game content. Softwr lists it under Game Development. O3DE is made by Linux Foundation, launched in 2021, available on Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS.
Overview
What O3DE does
Open 3D Engine (O3DE) is a free, open-source 3D engine built for creating game content. It is modular, scalable, and supports multiple platforms.
What people use it for
- Building 3D games and simulations on an open source Apache-licensed engine
- Robotics and industrial simulation using O3DE Gems
- Projects that need full engine source access with no royalty
Related searches
The honest half
Where it falls short
Concrete and checkable, so you can decide whether any of them matter to you. This is the half of a review a vendor will not write about O3DE.
- Minimum hardware is a quad-core 2.5 GHz x86 CPU with SSE 4.1, 16 GB RAM and a DirectX 12 or Vulkan GPU with 2 GB VRAM and Shader Model 6.2
- Raytracing features require Shader Model 6.3
- Disk space required is 40 GB using the prebuilt installer and 100 GB or more when building from source
- Building the engine from source needs 2 GB of RAM per build thread on top of normal system requirements
- On Windows the editor requires Windows 10 version 20H2 or later plus Visual Studio 2019 16.11.x, 2022 17.3.x or 2026 18.0.x with the Game development with C++ workload
- The only primary Linux distribution for the editor is Ubuntu 22.04 LTS, and Ubuntu on 64-bit ARMv8 is experimental
- Linux builds need CMake 3.30.0 or later, which is newer than the 3.22 shipped by default with Ubuntu 22.04
- Wayland support is experimental, requires building from source, and is limited to the Game Launcher with no editor support until O3DE moves to Qt6
- Linux requires a long list of additional apt library packages to be installed before building
Cross-shopped
What people choose instead of O3DE
Each pairing was judged by two reviewers asking whether a buyer would genuinely weigh the two against each other. The ones that failed were deleted rather than published.
- O3DEvsUnity
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- O3DEvsAseprite
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- O3DEvsGodot Engine
Godot Engine: Free and open-source 2D and 3D game engine
Pricing
What O3DE costs
Taken from the vendor's own pricing page. Prices move, so check before you buy.
Free
Free
- Full engine
- Modular architecture
- Cross-platform
- C++ support
- Physics engine
- Audio support
Capabilities
Features
3D graphics rendering
Modular architecture
Physics engine
Audio system
Animation tools
Particle effects
Material system
Lighting system
Visual scripting
C++
Integration with C++
Python
Integration with Python
Lua
Integration with Lua
Answered, with sources
Questions people ask
Each answer names the page it came from, so you can check it rather than take our word for it.
Is O3DE free to download and use?
Yes, O3DE is completely free and open source, available for download at no cost under continuous development.
SourceHow is O3DE funded if it is free?
O3DE is supported through optional donations and member organization contributions rather than user licensing fees.
SourceBehind it
Who makes O3DE
- Company
- Linux Foundation
- Based in
- Community-driven
Keep looking
Where to go from O3DE
- O3DE alternativesEvery product people weigh against it
- O3DE pricingPlans, floors and what the tiers exclude
- O3DE badgesWhich rules it meets, and the figure behind each
- All Game Development softwareThe full category
- Best Game Development softwareThe shortlist, and how it was cut
Best Game Development software for
Compare O3DE with
- Unity
- Godot Engine
- DragonBones
- Aseprite
- CryEngine
- Clickteam Fusion
- FMOD
- Stride
- Cascadeur
- Mixamo
- Armory3D
- Cocos Creator
- Bevy
- Buildbox
- Cocos2d-x
- CryEngine
- Clickteam Fusion
- Cocos Creator
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Softwr does not host reviews and shows no star rating for O3DE, because a rating we did not collect is not ours to publish. What is here is the pricing and platform detail from the vendor’s own pages, limitations we could state concretely, and alternatives a reviewer confirmed people weigh against it. Tell us if any of it is wrong.
More on O3DE
O3DE alternatives
What people switch to, and what they give up
O3DE pricing
Every tier, and where the cost actually lands
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