Cost / License
- Free
- Open Source (GPL-3.0)
Platforms
- Mac
- Linux
- Flathub
- Flatpak
- Homebrew
- MacPorts


GNU Radio is described as 'Free & open-source software development toolkit that provides signal processing blocks to implement software radios. It can be used with readily-available low-cost external RF hardware to create software-defined radios, or without hardware in a simulation-like' and is an app in the development category. There are more than 10 alternatives to GNU Radio for a variety of platforms, including Linux, Mac, Windows, Android and BSD apps. The best GNU Radio alternative is Gqrx, which is both free and Open Source. Other great apps like GNU Radio are Simulink, Universal Radio Hacker, SigDigger and SDR#.


Simulink® is a block diagram environment for multidomain simulation and Model-Based Design. It supports simulation, automatic code generation, and continuous test and verification of embedded systems.



The Universal Radio Hacker (URH) is a software for investigating unknown wireless protocols.



SigDigger is a Qt5 digital signal analyzer written in C/C++ that runs in GNU/Linux, macOS and Windows. SigDigger uses its own DSP library (sigutils) and a realtime signal analysis library (Suscan) to distribute load, and supports most SDR devices in the market thanks to SoapySDR.

SDR# (SDRSharp) is a popular, simple, fast and extensible Software Defined Radio program written from scratch in C# to experiment new Digital Signal Processing techniques and push the Microsoft .NET Framework to its limits.

SDR++ is an open source, cross platform, C++ based GUI general receiver program for various SDRs including the RTL-SDR. Since it's alpha release in mid 2020, it has undergone huge amount of development, and is quickly becoming the main program of choice for many users due to...

inspectrum is a tool for analysing captured signals, primarily from software-defined radio receivers.




Baudline is a time-frequency browser designed for scientific visualization of the spectral domain. Signal analysis is performed by Fourier, correlation, and raster transforms that create colorful spectrograms with vibrant detail.




A graphical application for showing the Fast Fourier Transformation (FFT) as graph and waterfall diagram of the radio spectrum retrieved by Software Defined Radio (SDR) devices supported by GrOsmoSDR. Plugins enable demodulating a selected signal.


Turn any mobile phone or tablet into an affordable and portable software defined radio scanner with spectrum analyser. Listen and record live on air FM stereo radio stations with RDS, weather reports, emergency stations, taxi traffic, airplane communications, audio of analogue...

HDSDR is a freeware Software Defined Radio (SDR) program for Microsoft Windows 2000/XP/Vista/7/8/8.1/10. Typical applications are Radio listening, Ham Radio, SWL, Radio Astronomy, NDB-hunting and Spectrum analysis.



