Cheat Engine Linux vs scanmem
Cheat Engine Linux
github.comscanmem
github.comSide by side
| Figure | Cheat Engine Linux | scanmem |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | — | Free |
| Free plan | — | Yes |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| Android | — | Yes |
| Plans published | 0 | 1 |
| Spec score · Game Memory Editors | 7.3 (#10) | 7.8 (#7) |
| License | The repository identifies the project license as MIT. | The project lists GPLv3 for scanmem and LGPLv3 for libscanmem; the GameConqueror README lists GPLv3. |
| Purpose | Cheat Engine for Linux is a native C++20/Qt6 memory scanner, debugger, disassembler, and trainer toolkit. | scanmem is an interactive debugging utility for isolating and modifying a variable’s address in an executing process. |
| Scanning | Scanning supports multiple value types and comparisons, region filters, multithreaded disk-backed scans, and pointer scanning. | The v0.17 release lists snapshot and update support for string and bytearray scans. |
| Security | The README says .CETRAINER loads are size-capped, Lua breakpoint conditions are sandboxed and execution-bounded, and shellExecute and unsafe file-write functions are default-denied. | GitHub reports that the project has no security policy file and no published security advisories. |
| Support | The README asks users to report issues, which it says drive the project forward. | The README points users to man pages, the command-line help, and GameConqueror's interactive help for documentation. |
Plans
In their own words
Cheat Engine Linux
Cheat Engine Linux is a free, open-source Linux toolkit for scanning and editing process memory, debugging, disassembling, and creating trainers. It is intended for single-player games, reverse engineering, and learning. Scanning handles numeric, string, byte-pattern, binary, grouped, and custom-Lua values, plus pointer and disk-backed scans for large targets. Editing and debugging include typed memory changes, freeze modes, hardware and software breakpoints, watchpoints, single-stepping, tracing, and register and stack views. The application reads and writes Cheat Engine .CT tables and supports a broad compatible Lua API. ceserver and GDB-remote clients support remote or cross-device debugging. A Mono dissector browses Unity runtime layouts, and IL2CPP targets are detected. Prebuilt .deb and AppImage packages accompany releases. The project describes itself as young and immature, with bugs and missing features. Its MIT license is listed by the repository.
scanmem
scanmem is a free, open-source interactive debugging utility for finding and changing variable values in an executing process. It searches a process by PID and uses values observed over successive scans to narrow the possible memory addresses. The command-line tool can search for exact values, compare changed or unchanged values, find increases or decreases, take snapshots, and search strings when configured for string scans. It can monitor matches as their values change and set values for selected matches or all known matches. GameConqueror provides a graphical front end with a process finder, flexible search syntax, variable locking, and a memory browser and editor; users can choose search regions and types. The project separates the command-line frontend from libscanmem, which performs the scanning. The project describes scanmem as a Linux utility and documents an Android build using a standalone Android NDK toolchain. Linux interactive commands require libreadline and a mounted /proc filesystem, while the GUI has additional dependencies. The default scan data type is int, though the option command can change it. scanmem is GPLv3; libscanmem is LGPLv3.