Top 23 C Lightweight Projects

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1. libwebsockets

   1 13 5,030 9.4 C

   canonical libwebsockets.org networking library

   

2. Stream

   getstream.io featured

   Stream - Scalable APIs for Chat, Feeds, Moderation, & Video. Stream helps developers build engaging apps that scale to millions with performant and flexible Chat, Feeds, Moderation, and Video APIs and SDKs powered by a global edge network and enterprise-grade infrastructure.

   

3. libaco

   2 3 3,591 10.0 C

   A blazing fast and lightweight C asymmetric coroutine library 💎 ⛅🚀⛅🌞

   

4. axel

   3 8 3,195 5.0 C

   Lightweight CLI download accelerator

   

5. JankyBorders

   4 2 2,382 4.2 C

   A lightweight window border system for macOS

   

6. FlashDB

   5 24 2,140 6.2 C

   An ultra-lightweight database that supports key-value and time series data | 一款支持 KV 数据和时序数据的超轻量级数据库

   

7. microsocks

   6 2 1,784 4.1 C

   tiny, portable SOCKS5 server with very moderate resource usage

   

8. librg

   7 1 1,391 4.5 C

   🚀 Making multi-player gamedev simpler since 2017

   

9. InfluxDB

   www.influxdata.com featured

   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.

   

10. gunslinger

    8 10 1,350 5.2 C

    C99, header-only framework for games and multimedia applications

    

11. uTox

    9 2 1,055 3.2 C

    µTox the lightest and fluffiest Tox client

    

12. RGFW

    10 11 1,029 9.9 C

    A cross platform lightweight single-header simple-to-use window abstraction library for creating graphical programs or libraries.

    

    Project mention: Is it possible to write plain C iOS app in 2025? | news.ycombinator.com | 2025-04-14

    I’ve written a pure C Mac desktop app in 2024 that called the objective-c bindings directly. It is using a modified version of this library https://github.com/ColleagueRiley/RGFW

    While I don’t think that library does iOS specifically, you can have a look at the code to see how you can call objective-c from c. Spoiler: doing so kind of sucks, and also the library code isn’t the most elegant thing I’ve seen.

13. Performance Co-Pilot

    11 5 1,008 9.9 C

    Performance Co-Pilot (by performancecopilot)

    

14. herbe

    12 11 530 0.0 C

    Daemon-less notifications without D-Bus. Minimal and lightweight.

    

15. lwmem

    13 1 378 7.7 C

    Lightweight dynamic memory manager library for embedded systems with memory constraints. It implements malloc, calloc, realloc and free functions

    

16. dao

    14 1 198 2.6 C

    Dao Programming Language (by daokoder)

    

17. polybar-spotify-module

    15 4 144 0.0 C

    A collection of lightweight programs for use with a Polybar Spotify Module

    

18. cgif

    16 1 127 5.8 C

    GIF encoder written in C

    

19. jobflow

    17 1 98 3.6 C

    distribute and coordinate work using parallel processes (like GNU parallel, but much faster and memory-efficient)

    

20. libe131

    18 1 88 2.7 C

    libE131: a lightweight C/C++ library for the E1.31 (sACN) protocol

    

21. kcs

    19 1 52 0.0 C

    Scripting in C with JIT(x64)/VM.

    

22. fbgl

    20 1 48 8.7 C

    Lightweight 2D Framebuffer Library for Linux

    

    Project mention: Fbgl: Lightweight 2D Framebuffer Graphics Library for Linux | news.ycombinator.com | 2024-11-28

23. Newtrodit

    21 2 44 5.0 C

    A console text editor written in C.

    

24. RFont

    22 2 39 7.2 C

    Simple-to-use single header modular font rendering library written in C.

    

25. imd

    23 1 14 0.0 C

    Rebuild of my md program. It's better looking, working, and has better features. The Improved terminal MarkDown file reader / viewer / styler / tui.

    

26. SaaSHub

    www.saashub.com featured

    SaaSHub - Software Alternatives and Reviews. SaaSHub helps you find the best software and product alternatives

    

C Lightweight related posts

• Show HN: Neco – Coroutine Library for C

  7 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 8 Apr 2024

• RFont | Simple-to-use single header modular font rendering library

  1 project | /r/cprogramming | 19 Sep 2023

• Is there a way to configure docker (or podman) to use axel while pulling images from docker hub on linux?

  1 project | /r/docker | 7 Jul 2023

• Splitting the stack - is there a library for this?

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• using tmux with st (auto close session on exit)

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• are these wget downloads always around 100 kbps?

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• I now have a minimalistic server

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• A note from our sponsor - Stream
  getstream.io | 14 Jul 2025

  Stream helps developers build engaging apps that scale to millions with performant and flexible Chat, Feeds, Moderation, and Video APIs and SDKs powered by a global edge network and enterprise-grade infrastructure. Learn more →

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