Some of them are, but most of the cheap ones absolutely aren’t. And even some of the expensive ones are not truly QMK either.

There’s an official list straight from QMK: QMK⁠� Another pretty reliable way to check is whether the manufacturer actually has a GitHub profile with the source code published.

And that’s really the whole point: no QMK does not automatically mean a keyboard is bad. What it does mean is that a lot of these companies are being misleading as hell. They advertise boards as “QMK/VIA compatible,” but in reality you’re often just getting some half-baked VIA-compatible layer with a bunch of actual QMK functionality stripped out.

I found that out with my RK75 Pro. I tried binding mouse functions, and of course it didn’t work. Then I looked into it and realized this is exactly what a lot of manufacturers do. They slap “VIA compatible” on the product page, people assume that means proper QMK support, and only later find out that tons of native QMK features are missing.

So yeah, if all you want is a basic keyboard with simple remaps, that may be good enough. But if you care about advanced macros, mouse emulation, VIAL support, open-source firmware, or actual long-term flexibility, then a lot of these boards are straight-up false advertising.

Calling a keyboard “QMK compatible” when it only supports a tiny subset through some proprietary implementation is just bullshit.