diff --git a/src/host/buildvm.c b/src/host/buildvm.c
index ec99e501..6c505cf3 100644
--- a/src/host/buildvm.c
+++ b/src/host/buildvm.c
@@ -10,7 +10,7 @@
 ** _building_ LuaJIT. There's no point in distributing or installing it.
 ** Only the object code generated by this tool is linked into LuaJIT.
 **
-** Caveat: some memory is not free'd, error handling is lazy.
+** Caveat: error handling is lazy.
 ** It's a one-shot tool -- any effort fixing this would be wasted.
 */
 
@@ -524,6 +524,20 @@ int main(int argc, char **argv)
   }
   fclose(ctx->fp);
 
+  // cleanup
+  free(ctx->code);
+  free(ctx->glob);
+  for(int i=0; i<=ctx->nsym; i++) {
+    free((void*)ctx->sym[i].name);
+  }
+  free(ctx->sym);
+  for(int i=0; i<ctx->nrelocsym; i++) {
+    free((void*)ctx->relocsym[i]);
+  }
+  free(ctx->relocsym);
+  free(ctx->bc_ofs);
+  free((void*)ctx->beginsym);
+
   return 0;
 }