CARLA
CARLA SimulatorCARLA is an open-source simulator for autonomous driving research, built on Unreal Engine, for developing, training and validating driving systems. It supplies open urban maps, buildings and vehicles, configurable sensor suites and environmental conditions, and a Python API for controlling every actor. It is developed at the Computer Vision Center of the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona.
Openness
3 medium confidence- license
- MIT(CARLA code)+CC-BY(CARLA assets, version not stated)
- source
- public(builds against Epic's Unreal Engine, under Epic's own terms)
- core features withheld
- no
CARLA's own code is MIT and its maps, buildings and vehicles are under a Creative Commons attribution license. The engine underneath is Epic's Unreal Engine, which has its own terms and is reached through an Epic Games account. CC-BY restricts neither who may use it nor at what scale, so the license tier is permissive_non_osi.
- https://raw.githubusercontent.com/carla-simulator/carla/HEAD/LICENSE recorded 2026-09-26
LICENSE: MIT License, "Copyright (c) 2024 Computer Vision Center (CVC) at the Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona (UAB)".
- https://raw.githubusercontent.com/carla-simulator/carla/HEAD/README.md recorded 2026-09-26
README licenses: "CARLA specific code is distributed under the MIT License. CARLA specific assets are distributed under the CC-BY License."; "Unreal Engine 5 follows its own license terms", and building needs the CARLA fork of Unreal Engine reached through a linked Epic Games account.
- https://ungh.cc/repos/carla-simulator/carla/files/ue5-dev recorded 2026-09-26
Full listing of the ue5-dev branch, 2,219 paths; no enterprise, ee or commercial path.
Adoption
3 low confidenceGitHub stars on the simulator's repository. The only package channel is the Python client, whose installs count scripts talking to a server rather than simulators running.
- https://repos.ecosyste.ms/api/v1/hosts/GitHub/repositories/carla-simulator%2Fcarla recorded 2026-09-26
Repository record for carla-simulator/carla: 14,434 stargazers.
Capability
3 low confidenceCARLA renders a full city on a game engine, with configurable sensors under changing weather and light, which is what testing a driving stack needs. Each server runs a single world, so it has none of the parallel throughput of MuJoCo's or Isaac Lab's GPU builds.
- https://raw.githubusercontent.com/carla-simulator/carla/HEAD/README.md recorded 2026-09-26
README: "developed from the ground up to support development, training, and validation of autonomous driving systems ... open digital assets (urban layouts, buildings, vehicles) ... supports flexible specification of sensor suites and environmental conditions"; Unreal Engine 5.5 branch; recommended NVIDIA RTX 3070 or better.
Verified 2026-09-26