Wokwi alternatives, and which one fits a classroom

Wokwi is an excellent browser simulator for makers, and for many projects the honest answer is to keep using it. The alternatives worth knowing are Mokxi, free in the browser with analog parts and a class workflow; SimulIDE, free, open source and offline; Tinkercad Circuits, for young beginners with blocks; and Proteus, a paid desktop tool for engineering courses.

We make Mokxi, so we have a stake. Every claim about another tool comes from the sources at the bottom, each with the date we last checked it. The circuit above depends on analog parts behaving like real ones, which a digital-only simulation cannot model: four buttons share one analog pin through a ladder of 10k resistors. Hold the second button and the Uno reads 511, and prints “key 2: D”.

Three reasons come up most. A teacher needs a class workflow around the simulator. A circuit has analog parts that must behave like the ones on a bench: a request to simulate resistor dividers has been open on Wokwi’s tracker since 2021. Or a project needs two microcontrollers talking to each other, also an open request there since 2021. Some free-plan users also report waits for a busy build server.

A teacher with thirty students needs more than a simulator that runs. It has to open on the machines the school has, which in many US schools means managed Chromebooks where nothing can be installed. Students have to start without a long sign-up, every student has to begin from the same starter circuit, and the teacher has to see who is stuck while the lesson is still going. Then the work has to come back in one place, checked the same way for everyone, with feedback and a grade that goes into the gradebook.

Most simulators cover the first of those and leave the rest to a learning management system and a lot of copying links. That is the gap Mokxi’s classes fill. It is also worth checking what student work looks like on each plan: on Wokwi’s free Community plan, projects are public, and private projects need a paid plan.

Paste a public Wokwi project link on Mokxi’s import page, or drop its diagram.json and sketch, or its zip. The parts, their wiring, the sketch and its tabs come across, a part plugged into a Wokwi breadboard lands in the same holes, and a report lists what did not map and which libraries are built in or missing. Standard Arduino calls and the common library headers compile as they are. The editor’s Export menu writes a Wokwi zip back, so trying Mokxi with a class does not lock anything in.