FreeRTOS ™ Real-time operating system for microcontrollers
Developed in partnership with the world’s leading chip companies over a 15-year period, and now downloaded every 175 seconds, FreeRTOS is a market-leading real-time operating system (RTOS) for microcontrollers and small microprocessors. Distributed freely under the MIT open source license, FreeRTOS includes a kernel and a growing set of libraries suitable for use across all industry sectors. FreeRTOS is built with an emphasis on reliability and ease of use.
Why FreeRTOS?
Trusted kernel
With proven robustness, tiny footprint, and wide device support, the FreeRTOS kernel is trusted by world-leading companies as the de facto standard for microcontrollers and small microprocessors.
Accelerate time to market
With detailed pre-configured demos and Internet of Things (IoT) reference integrations, there is no need to determine how to setup a project. Instantly download, compile, and get to market faster.
Broad ecosystem support
Our partner ecosystem provides a breadth of options including community contributions, professional support, as well as integrated IDE and productivity tools.
Features
Tiny, power-saving kernel
Scalable size, with usable program memory footprint as low as 9KB. Some architectures include a tick-less power saving mode
Support for 40+ architectures
One code base for 40+ MCU architectures and 15+ toolchains, including the latest RISC-V and ARMv8-M (Arm Cortex-M33) microcontrollers
Modular libraries
A growing number of add-on libraries used across all industries sectors, including secure local or cloud connectivity
IoT Reference Integrations
Take advantage of tested examples that include all the libraries essential to securely connect to the cloud
MIT licensed, with options
FreeRTOS can be used for any purpose under its MIT license. Our strategic partner also provides commercial licenses, and safety certification.
FreeRTOS partners
Latest posts
- Ensuring the Memory Safety of FreeRTOS Part 2
In Part 1, we discussed how FreeRTOS is addressing an important source of security issues — buffer overflows — by ensuring the memory safety of the TCP/IP, ARP, DHCP, DNS, and HTTPS header parsing in the FreeRTOS+TCP TCP/IP stack. We described how we’re using an automated reasoning technique, software model checking, and how the level […]
Read more… - Using FreeRTOS on ARMv8-M Microcontrollers
[Also see the page that describes how to set ARM Cortex-M interrupt priorities when using FreeRTOS.] ARM introduced TrustZone to the Cortex-M series of microcontrollers with the ARMv8-M architecture. TrustZone is an optional security extension that enables two security domains within a single processor. Cortex-M cores (including the Cortex-M33 and Cortex-M23) that include TrustZone use […]
Read more… - FreeRTOS V10.3.1 Now Available and LTS Development Underway
We are excited to share the following updates with you: FreeRTOS V10.3.1 is now available for immediate download. V10.3.1, among other things, enhances our memory protection unit (MPU) ports for both ARM v7-M and ARM v8-M cores, and extends RISC-V support to include a new IAR port. With this release, we are also officially switching […]
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