Which AVR emulator do you think is the best?

Question

Arduino

I want to deal with the AVR emulator at my leisure.
1. Interested primarily in free emulators (not necessarily open source).
2. The possibility of automated work with IO ports and clock control is important (so as not to miss anything).
3. The ability to debug is desirable, but not required. Assembler, or maybe C. Or even Arduino.
I searched on the Internet, there are practically no discussions, or they are very old. I realized that Proteus is the coolest, but it costs a lot of money. There is also Emulare, but it has not been developed for 2 years. This is exactly the emulator, i.e. works with hex.
Most of the other products are not emulators, but simulators: Fritzing, Simulavr, Simulide, Avrora, Amctools.

Answer 1

in AVR Studio. It's free. At least. when I worked with the AVR, was. And it allows you to emulate, among other things, the peripherals of your controllers.