RIOT VS zephyr

Compare RIOT vs zephyr and see what are their differences.

zephyr

Primary Git Repository for the Zephyr Project. Zephyr is a new generation, scalable, optimized, secure RTOS for multiple hardware architectures. (by zephyrproject-rtos)
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RIOT zephyr
40 62
5,499 11,893
1.0% 3.3%
9.9 10.0
8 days ago 5 days ago
C C
GNU Lesser General Public License v3.0 only Apache License 2.0
The number of mentions indicates the total number of mentions that we've tracked plus the number of user suggested alternatives.
Stars - the number of stars that a project has on GitHub. Growth - month over month growth in stars.
Activity is a relative number indicating how actively a project is being developed. Recent commits have higher weight than older ones.
For example, an activity of 9.0 indicates that a project is amongst the top 10% of the most actively developed projects that we are tracking.

RIOT

Posts with mentions or reviews of RIOT. We have used some of these posts to build our list of alternatives and similar projects. The last one was on 2024-07-04.

zephyr

Posts with mentions or reviews of zephyr. We have used some of these posts to build our list of alternatives and similar projects. The last one was on 2025-03-11.
  • What Makes Code Hard to Read: Visual Patterns of Complexity (2023)
    4 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 11 Mar 2025
    > I meant the goal of your function needs to be grasped within a reasonable amount of time. This works for every codebase.

    It really doesn't though. Here's a function of mine. It's maybe 40 lines of logic, so medium-scale. It's part of an intrusive red/black tree implementation for Zephyr. I'm fairly proud of how it turned out, and think that this code is awfully readable given its constraints.

    No human being is going to understand fix_extra_red() without having already read and understood the rest of the file, and coming to it with an understanding of the underlying algorithm. Certainly I can't. I can't even get started on maintaining this code that I originally wrote within a five minute time frame, it's an hour at least every time, just to remind myself how it works:

    https://github.com/zephyrproject-rtos/zephyr/blob/main/lib/u...

    Now maybe this is "bad code", and "good code" could exist for this problem that still meets your requirements. But... if so that's an awfully celestial definition if it's so hard to find.

  • A Web based Broadcast Assistant
    2 projects | dev.to | 5 Mar 2025
    As mentioned in an earlier post on building a broadcast audio source, the Zephyr RTOS contains some awesome Bluetooth LE Audio related samples. It also contains a Bluetooth LE Audio stack with great API support available to build a functioning broadcast assistant.
  • A simple Broadcast Audio Source
    4 projects | dev.to | 3 Mar 2025
    The Zephyr RTOS contains some great Bluetooth LE Audio related samples. One of them is the Basic Audio Profile (BAP) Broadcast Source sample.
  • Moving to a RTOS on the RP2040
    6 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 4 Jul 2024
    the pi pico is 100% supported in Zephyr. https://github.com/zephyrproject-rtos/zephyr/tree/main/board... Did the author not check the docs? https://docs.zephyrproject.org/latest/boards/raspberrypi/rpi...
  • Broadcast Audio URI
    3 projects | dev.to | 6 Jun 2024
    In the Zephyr repo, there is a Broadcast Audio Source sample that was used as a starting point.
  • Ask HN: Anyone Waiting on BT Auracast?
    1 project | news.ycombinator.com | 16 Dec 2023
    Hey folks. Anyone out there waiting for BT Auracast? It was announced June 2022, and immediately struck me as must have.

    I lost my earbuds, but it seems ridiculous to get a replacement without Auracast, seems like surely if I'm going to make a decent sized purchase like that it needs to support group playing. I want to tune into the radios of other people on the metro or on the bus, want to be able to watch a movie on the plane with someone.

    Auracast was announced in June 2022. Anyone else out there struggling with expectations here? I'm really hoping the product announcement season that's right around the corner had a good number of Auracast announcements.

    Side note, a ton of it is over my head but it's been so so fun tuning in every once and again to see how Zephyr's Bluetooth Audio work is going. Just wild now much has gone into this! https://github.com/zephyrproject-rtos/zephyr/commits/main/subsys/bluetooth/audio

  • VisionFive 2 ROM addresses for Zephyr RTOS
    3 projects | /r/RISCV | 5 Dec 2023
    I am working on adding support for VisionFive 2 in Zephyr RTOS. I have created a device tree by referencing the starfive linux, patches of hifive_unmatched FU740 SoC and patches of BeagleV Starlight.
  • Adding support for visionfive2 in zephyr rtos
    2 projects | /r/embedded | 24 Nov 2023
    We are unsure on how to proceed further with this error. We have opened a github discussion regarding the same issue.
  • Zephyr (small footprint realtime OS) supported boards
    1 project | news.ycombinator.com | 4 Aug 2023
  • Learning to write device drivers using C/C++ in Zephyr OS
    2 projects | /r/embedded | 11 Jul 2023
    Then there are samples. Look through it for anything useful. RC522 uses SPI, so getting that to work would be a good first step.

What are some alternatives?

When comparing RIOT and zephyr you can also consider the following projects:

FreeRTOS-Kernel - FreeRTOS kernel files only, submoduled into https://github.com/FreeRTOS/FreeRTOS and various other repos.

nuttx - Apache NuttX is a mature, real-time embedded operating system (RTOS)

pico-sdk

HomeSpan - HomeKit Library for the Arduino-ESP32

mbed-os - Arm Mbed OS is a platform operating system designed for the internet of things

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