Abstract. Pulsation frequency of the cup-burner flame was determined by means of experimental investigations and numerical simulations. Simplified chemical kinetics was successfully implemented into a laminar fluid flow model applied to the complex burner geometry. Our methodical approach is based on the monitoring of flame emission, fast Fourier transformation and reproduction of measured spectral features by numerical simulations. Qualitative agreement between experimental and predicted oscillatory behaviour was obtained by employing a two-step methane oxidation scheme.