[2] eCos was designed for devices with memory sizes in the range of a few tens or several hundred kilobytes,[3] or for applications with real-time requirements.

eCos runs on a wide variety of hardware platforms, including ARM, CalmRISC, FR-V, Hitachi H8, IA-32, Motorola 68000, Matsushita AM3x, MIPS, NEC V850, Nios II, PowerPC, SPARC, and SuperH.

[5] Many of the laid-off staff continued to work on eCos and some formed their own companies providing services for the software.

The eCosPro real-time operating system is a commercial fork of eCos created by eCosCentric which incorporates proprietary software components.

It is claimed as a "stable, fully tested, certified and supported version",[7] with additional features that are not released as free software.