Top 20 C++ single-header Projects

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1. indicators

   1 3 3,391 5.2 C++

   Activity Indicators for Modern C++

   

2. SaaSHub

   www.saashub.com featured

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

   

3. tabulate

   2 1 2,163 1.4 C++

   Table Maker for Modern C++ (by p-ranav)

   

4. cr

   3 6 1,747 4.4 C++

   cr.h: A Simple C Hot Reload Header-only Library

   

   Project mention: Making Video Games in 2025 (without an engine) | news.ycombinator.com | 2026-03-02

   I see `dotnet watch` being mentioned for code hot reload which is such a great feature for quickly iterating on a game. Not having to restart the whole game just because one has changed a few if statements and values really helps staying in the flow.

   But I'm still not too enthusiastic about having GC in C# which is why ideally I'd like to start making a small 2D game just with SDL3 and C++ but how could I get this nice hot reload workflow there? I don't have the money to pay for expensive proprietary tools like https://liveplusplus.tech so what can I do? I guess there's the "game as dynamic library" trick from Handmade Hero (see https://www.youtube.com/shorts/seWAIURXxH0) so maybe that would work good enough? Maybe https://github.com/fungos/cr would do most of what's needed here?

   Also, how does one even do modern C++ these days? Is it possible to have big C++ code bases that still compile fast these days? Is CMake 4 good™ now? Are modules really there yet? I rely on clangd as LSP for working with C++ but I read that clangd still fundamentally struggles with C++ modules https://chuanqixu9.github.io/c++/2025/12/03/Clangd-support-f... and it's so bad that there has even been some effort going into making a new C++ LSP https://github.com/clice-io/clice

5. nanobench

   4 13 1,680 2.5 C++

   Simple, fast, accurate single-header microbenchmarking functionality for C++11/14/17/20

   

6. watcher

   5 18 796 8.9 C++

   Filesystem watcher. Works anywhere. Simple, efficient and friendly. (by e-dant)

   

   Project mention: Detecting file changes on macOS with kqueue | news.ycombinator.com | 2026-03-28

   Since there are comments below asking about benchmarks, others noting or expressing interest in other projects, I'll drop the one I made: https://github.com/e-dant/watcher

   There are benchmarks in there, and comparisons with all the other watchers out there I could find at the time I made it (see "Comparison with Similar Projects" at the very bottom of the readme).

7. matchit.cpp

   6 7 644 0.0 C++

   match(it): A lightweight single-header pattern-matching library for C++17 with macro-free APIs.

   

8. csv2

   7 1 619 4.3 C++

   Fast CSV parser and writer for Modern C++

   

9. leaf

   8 0 339 7.6 C++

   Lightweight Error Augmentation Framework (by boostorg)

   

10. itoa

    9 2 245 0.0 C++

    Fast integer to ascii / integer to string conversion (by jeaiii)

    

11. x86RetSpoof

    10 1 179 0.0 C++

    Invoke functions with a spoofed return address. For 32-bit Windows binaries. Supports __fastcall, __thiscall, __stdcall and __cdecl calling conventions. Written in C++17.

    

12. fkYAML

    11 4 143 8.4 C++

    A C++ header-only YAML library

    

13. meta.hpp

    12 2 139 7.5 C++

    C++20 Dynamic Reflection Library

    

14. ramen

    13 1 73 6.8 C++

    Real-time Actor-based Message Exchange Network 🍜

    

15. Heady

    14 3 63 0.0 C++

    A utility for creating amalgamated single-header C++ libraries

    

16. Tachyon.JSON

    15 1 13 3.7 C++

    Discontinued Tachyon JSON v6: The World's Fastest JSON Library. 5.5 GB/s throughput via AVX2 ASM kernels & Lazy Indexing. C++20 header-only, nlohmann-like syntax, 160x faster than standard DOM parsers. [GET https://api.github.com/repos/wilkolbrzym-coder/Tachyon.JSON: 404 - Not Found // See: https://docs.github.com/rest/repos/repos#get-a-repository]

    

    Project mention: Show HN: Tachyon – A C++ JSON parser matching simdjson's throughput via AVX-512 | news.ycombinator.com | 2026-01-08

17. curl4cpp

    16 3 13 2.6 C++

    Single header cURL wrapper for C++ around libcURL

    

18. iface

    17 1 6 0.0 C++

    Anonymous, non-intrusive interfaces in C++

    

19. Conex

    18 1 3 - C++

    C++ single-header library for condition-based binary pattern matching. (by DanielCohen197)

    

    Project mention: Conex – single-header C++20 library for condition-based binary pattern matching | news.ycombinator.com | 2026-05-20

20. command

    19 1 3 1.8 C++

    Command, ::process::Command like syscalls in C++. (by ferhatgec)

    

21. EventSystem

    20 1 1 5.2 C++

    a single header event system that im using in my game

    

C++ single-header related posts

• how do you properly benchmark?

  2 projects | /r/cpp | 20 Feb 2023

• Much Faster than std::string, fmt::format, std::to_chars, std::time and more?

  1 project | /r/cpp | 6 Oct 2022

• I don’t know which container to use (and at this point I’m too afraid to ask)

  2 projects | /r/cpp | 3 Feb 2022

• C++20 std::format is 2x slower than std::fstream?

  13 projects | /r/cpp_questions | 19 Nov 2021

• Nanobench: Fast, single-header microbenchmarking functionality for C++

  1 project | news.ycombinator.com | 9 Nov 2021

• Curl4cpp – single header C++ cURL wrapper around libcURL

  1 project | news.ycombinator.com | 1 Aug 2021

• curl4cpp - single header c++ cURL wrapper around libcURL

  1 project | /r/linux | 31 Jul 2021
• A note from our sponsor - SaaSHub
  www.saashub.com | 12 Jun 2026

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