EmulatorJS vs KRetro
EmulatorJS
emulatorjs.orgKRetro
apps.kde.orgSide by side
| Figure | EmulatorJS | KRetro |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | — |
| Free plan | Yes | — |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| Web | Yes | — |
| Linux | — | Yes |
| iOS | Yes | — |
| Android | Yes | — |
| Self-hosted | Yes | — |
| Plans published | 1 | 0 |
| Spec score · Emulation Frontends | 8.1 (#7) | 6.8 (#23) |
| Maker | The site credits @ethanaobrien and @allancoding. | KDE e.V. is a registered non-profit organization representing the KDE Community in legal and financial matters. |
| Purpose | EmulatorJS is a web-based frontend for RetroArch that lets users embed an emulator in a website. | KRetro is a Libretro frontend for playing retro console games with a ROM and Libretro core. |
| Support | The project directs users to report issues on GitHub and include browser console logs and the version they use. | The page links to a KDE forum for help and KDE's bug tracker to report bugs. |
Plans
In their own words
EmulatorJS
EmulatorJS is a free, open-source frontend for RetroArch that lets a site owner embed an emulator in a web page. The project provides a code generator, and says the resulting embed can be added with a few lines of code. EmulatorJS uses RetroArch’s libretro cores to run games. Its supported systems documentation includes NES, Nintendo 64, PlayStation, PSP, Sega systems, and Commodore systems, though the project warns that this list may be out of date. Built-in options allow customization, and multiple languages are supported. The project describes EmulatorJS as a library or plugin rather than a standalone website, and it does not provide a Docker container. A public CDN offers paths labeled stable, latest, and nightly. The listed platforms are web, Android, iOS, and self-hosted. Pages must be served through a web server; opening an HTML file directly is unsupported. Threaded cores may improve performance, but need SharedArrayBuffer enabled through COOP and COEP response headers. The 4.3.0-pre release is marked as a prerelease and is discouraged for production use where stability is needed.