Unlock the full potential of your optimization models with industry-leading solvers. Whether you’re solving large-scale linear programs, complex nonlinear problems, or global optimization challenges, AMPL seamlessly connects you to the best solver for the job.
Gurobi
CPLEX
Xpress
Knitro
Baron
HiGHS
CBC
SCIP
Every great optimization model needs a powerful solver to transform equations into actionable decisions. Solvers are the computational engines that process your AMPL models and return the best possible solutions—whether you're optimizing costs, logistics, resources, or complex decision-making.
AMPL is designed to be solver-agnostic, meaning you can easily switch between solvers without modifying your model. Whether you're solving linear programs, nonlinear challenges, or global optimization problems, AMPL connects you to the most powerful solvers available.
For businesses and industries with high-performance demands, commercial solvers like Gurobi, CPLEX, and Xpress offer the fastest, most reliable, and scalable solutions. For research and prototyping, open-source solvers provide a free alternative.
One of AMPL’s biggest advantages is its solver-agnostic architecture, making it easy to:
AMPL MP extends AMPL’s flexibility by providing a unified solver interface, ensuring that your models can easily connect with different solvers in a programmatic, scalable way.
Commercial solvers are built for speed, scalability, and reliability—making them the preferred choice for businesses, research institutions, and industries where accuracy and performance matter. Unlike open-source solvers, commercial solvers offer:
AMPL supports all major commercial solvers, allowing you to choose the best one for your specific needs:
Gurobi
A fast and powerful solver for linear and mixed-integer optimization, widely used in industry and research.
CPLEX
A high-performance solver for large-scale linear and mixed-integer problems, known for its robust algorithms.
Xpress
An advanced solver for complex linear and mixed-integer models, offering strong performance and flexibility.
Knitro
A leading nonlinear solver designed for large-scale optimization with advanced algorithms.
Baron
A powerful global optimization solver for nonconvex problems, ensuring global optimality.
AMPL supports all major commercial solvers, allowing you to choose the best one for your specific needs:
COPT
Mosek
CONOPT
LOQO
SNOPT
MINOS
LGO
Lindo Global
Octeract
While commercial solvers are the best choice for production and enterprise, AMPL also supports free, open-source solvers for research, prototyping, and small-scale optimization.
Some popular open-source solvers available in AMPL:
CBC
HiGHS
SCIP
GCG
IPOPT
Bonmin
Couenne
Gecode
While commercial solvers are the best choice for production and enterprise, AMPL also supports free, open-source solvers for research, prototyping, and small-scale optimization.
Some popular open-source solvers available in AMPL:
Access a complete optimization application building platform with AMPL, all integrations, and free open source solvers.
AMPL works with leading solver vendors to provide flexible licensing options including single-user license, cloud-based access, or enterprise licensing.
Our resources provide you with the documentation needed to implement solvers.
Your first step in choosing a solver will be to determine which ones are applicable to the optimization problems that derive from your application. There are three broad classes of solvers to consider:
Solvers in this category are the most widely used for diverse applications throughout business, government, and research organizations.
Nonlinear solvers are used extensively in applications such as energy transmission and engineering design that have a physical component, and in advanced economic and financial modeling.
These solvers combine a variety of approaches to handle optimization problems that are difficult due to multiple locally optimal solutions, nonsmooth and discrete functions, and/or highly combinatorial or logical constraints.
We offer the best and most popular solvers, with new ones frequently added.
To provide the fastest run times and greatest reliability, we offer a selection of top commercial solvers interfaced to AMPL. We provide the same high level of licensing and technical support for these solvers as for the core AMPL product.
AMPL interfaces are included with a number of popular solvers distributed under open-source licenses. We provide links to pre compiled executables so that you can set up these free solvers quickly for use with AMPL.
Our full list of AMPL-interfaced solvers includes a variety of alternatives that may meet your needs.