GnuCOBOL (formerly OpenCOBOL) is a free, modern COBOL compiler. GnuCOBOL implements a substantial part of the COBOL 85, COBOL 2002 and COBOL 2014 standards and X/Open COBOL, as well as many extensions included in other COBOL compilers (IBM COBOL, MicroFocus COBOL, ACUCOBOL-GT and others).

GnuCOBOL translates COBOL into C and compiles the translated code using a native C compiler.

Build COBOL programs on various platforms, including GNU/Linux, Unix, Mac OS X, and Microsoft Windows. GnuCOBOL has also been built on HP/UX, z/OS, SPARC, RS6000, AS/400, along with other combinations of machines and operating systems.

While being held to a high level of quality and robustness, GnuCOBOL does not claim to be a “Standard Conforming” implementation of COBOL.

GnuCOBOL passes over 9600 of the NIST COBOL 85 test suite tests and over 750 internal checks during build.