SaaSHub helps you find the best software and product alternatives Learn more →
Top 23 C JSON Projects
-
> I'm assuming your statement would be meant to apply to other common languages without s-expressions, but maybe I've misunderstood.
It was meant for C specifically. Take a JSON document. Define it in C. Here's what I see on a random cJSON GitHub project:
https://github.com/DaveGamble/cJSON/blob/master/README.md#ex...
Now do that in JavaScript:
```
-
InfluxDB
InfluxDB – Built for High-Performance Time Series Workloads. InfluxDB 3 OSS is now GA. Transform, enrich, and act on time series data directly in the database. Automate critical tasks and eliminate the need to move data externally. Download now.
-
-
So json is reliable and powerful though not as fast as some other community json libraries like ujson or orjson which are further optimized for speed.
-
-
JSMN
Jsmn is a world fastest JSON parser/tokenizer. This is the official repo replacing the old one at Bitbucket
If you want to go extremely lightweight, there’s jsmn: https://github.com/zserge/jsmn
It does no dynamic memory allocation, which is a plus in constrained IoT/embedded applications. But it’s really only a tokenizer. For example, if you want to parse fields out of a map, you have to write your own wrappers to iterate over key/value pairs. Since no data is copied out of the original buffer, all the “tokens” are given as byte offsets and lengths, not null-terminated strings, so you can’t just do printf(“%s”).
If you can’t (or don’t want to) malloc, it gets the job done. Not sure I’d recommend it for other applications though.
-
-
-
SaaSHub
SaaSHub - Software Alternatives and Reviews. SaaSHub helps you find the best software and product alternatives
-
Ah, I figured why on the Oj side `ruby/json` appeared slower: https://github.com/ohler55/oj/pull/949
-
json-c
https://github.com/json-c/json-c is the official code repository for json-c. See the wiki for release tarballs for download. API docs at http://json-c.github.io/json-c/
-
Project mention: Automatically Generate REST and GraphQL APIs From Your Database | dev.to | 2024-12-19
Webdis (Redis)
-
StringZilla
Up to 10x faster strings for C, C++, Python, Rust, Swift & Go, leveraging NEON, AVX2, AVX-512, SVE, & SWAR to accelerate search, hashing, sort, edit distances, and memory ops 🦖
At this point, it doesn’t provide much novel functionality, but it should be faster than the standard libraries of most (or maybe all) programming languages.
https://github.com/ashvardanian/StringZilla
-
-
-
-
ejdb
:snowboarder: EJDB2 — Embeddable JSON Database engine C library. Simple XPath like query language (JQL).
-
Melon
A generic cross-platform C library that includes many commonly used components and frameworks, and a new scripting language interpreter. It currently supports C99 and Aspect-Oriented Programming (AOP).
-
-
Project mention: Pg_flo – Stream, transform, and route PostgreSQL data in real-time | news.ycombinator.com | 2024-11-03
https://github.com/eulerto/wal2json has existed for this purpose for many years, just transform the incoming records into JSON and parse with literally any standard tool that reads the format.
-
-
ucall
Web Serving and Remote Procedure Calls at 50x lower latency and 70x higher bandwidth than FastAPI, implementing JSON-RPC & REST over io_uring ☎️
-
pmacct
pmacct is a small set of multi-purpose passive network monitoring tools [NetFlow IPFIX sFlow libpcap BGP BMP RPKI IGP Streaming Telemetry].
-
ulfius
Web Framework to build REST APIs, Webservices or any HTTP endpoint in C language. Can stream large amount of data, integrate JSON data with Jansson, and create websocket services
-
mlib
Library of generic and type safe containers in pure C language (C99 or C11) for a wide collection of container (comparable to the C++ STL).
-
SaaSHub
SaaSHub - Software Alternatives and Reviews. SaaSHub helps you find the best software and product alternatives
NOTE:
The open source projects on this list are ordered by number of github stars.
The number of mentions indicates repo mentiontions in the last 12 Months or
since we started tracking (Dec 2020).
C JSON discussion
C JSON related posts
-
Making C and Python Talk to Each Other
-
OpenBSD Upgrade 7.6 to 7.7
-
jq VS rcl - a user suggested alternative
2 projects | 15 Mar 2025 -
JSON for Classic C++
-
Sq.io: jq for databases and much more
-
orjson: Fast, correct Python JSON lib supporting dataclasses, datetimes, NumPy
-
CJSON: An Ultralightweight JSON Parser in ANSI C
-
A note from our sponsor - SaaSHub
www.saashub.com | 12 Jun 2025
Index
What are some of the best open-source JSON projects in C? This list will help you:
| # | Project | Stars |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | cJSON | 11,603 |
| 2 | tbox | 5,000 |
| 3 | ultrajson | 4,413 |
| 4 | gravity | 4,392 |
| 5 | JSMN | 3,847 |
| 6 | yyjson | 3,337 |
| 7 | Jansson | 3,194 |
| 8 | Oj | 3,174 |
| 9 | json-c | 3,113 |
| 10 | webdis | 2,900 |
| 11 | StringZilla | 2,582 |
| 12 | facil.io | 2,296 |
| 13 | YAJL | 2,173 |
| 14 | LIBUCL | 1,671 |
| 15 | ejdb | 1,453 |
| 16 | Melon | 1,416 |
| 17 | parson | 1,393 |
| 18 | wal2json | 1,392 |
| 19 | json-parser | 1,303 |
| 20 | ucall | 1,224 |
| 21 | pmacct | 1,118 |
| 22 | ulfius | 1,111 |
| 23 | mlib | 1,000 |
Sponsored
InfluxDB – Built for High-Performance Time Series Workloads
InfluxDB 3 OSS is now GA. Transform, enrich, and act on time series data directly in the database. Automate critical tasks and eliminate the need to move data externally. Download now.
www.influxdata.com