By language

Top C projects

The most-starred MIT projects written mainly in C.

How it's ranked: Sorted by GitHub stars, using GitHub's primary-language detection. Data from GitHub as of 2026-11-02.

1. 1PowerToysA set of Windows utilities for customizing the desktop and speeding up everyday tasks.microsoft · C★ 140k
2. 2codebase-memory-mcpA local tool that maps your code, docs and infrastructure into a graph so AI coding agents can query it.DeusData · C★ 48k
3. 3yabaiA tiling window manager for macOS that arranges windows automatically using a command line.asmvik · C★ 29.8k
4. 4libuvA C library that handles asynchronous input/output and event loops across operating systems.libuv · C★ 27.3k
5. 5FastfetchA fast command-line tool that shows system information next to a logo, similar to neofetch.fastfetch-cli · C★ 25.2k
6. 6LVGLA free C library for drawing graphical user interfaces on small microcontrollers and embedded screens.lvgl · C★ 25.1k
7. 7DwarfStarLocal inference engine for running a few large open-weight models on consumer hardware.antirez · C★ 24.2k
8. 8GoAccessOpen-source log analyzer that shows live web traffic stats in your terminal or a browser dashboard.allinurl · C★ 21.1k
9. 9llama2.cA small C program that runs small Llama 2 language models, with training done in PyTorch.karpathy · C★ 20.2k
10. 10ffmpeg.wasmFFmpeg compiled to WebAssembly so you can convert, record and stream video and audio inside a web browser.ffmpegwasm · C★ 17.9k
11. 11swayA Wayland window manager for Linux that works with i3 configs.swaywm · C★ 17.5k
12. 12libSQLAn open-source fork of SQLite that accepts outside contributions.tursodatabase · C★ 17.3k
13. 13BlurHashA compact text string that encodes a blurred placeholder image.woltapp · C★ 17.1k
14. 14KCPA small C library that adds fast, reliable retransmission on top of UDP.skywind3000 · C★ 17k
15. 15System InformerA free Windows tool for watching system resources, finding what locks files, and checking suspicious programs.winsiderss · C★ 16.4k
16. 16skynetA Lua-based actor-model framework for building multi-user servers, often used for games.cloudwu · C★ 14.2k
17. 17RPi OSA step-by-step tutorial for building a tiny operating system kernel on Raspberry Pi 3.s-matyukevich · C★ 14k
18. 18mimallocA small, fast general-purpose memory allocator (malloc replacement) written in C.microsoft · C★ 13.5k
19. 19cJSONA small, single-file JSON parser and writer library for C programs.DaveGamble · C★ 13.1k
20. 20RobotJSNode.js library for controlling the mouse and keyboard and reading the screen.octalmage · C★ 12.8k
21. 21Atomic Red TeamA library of portable security detection tests mapped to MITRE ATT&CK techniques.redcanaryco · C★ 12.8k
22. 22ttydA command-line tool that shares a terminal session in a web browser.tsl0922 · C★ 12.6k
23. 23chibiccA small C compiler written for readability, able to build Git, SQLite and libpng.rui314 · C★ 12k
24. 24H2OA fast web server for HTTP/1.x, HTTP/2, and HTTP/3 (experimental), written in C.h2o · C★ 11.6k
25. 25TiniA tiny init process for containers that reaps zombies and forwards signals.krallin · C★ 11.3k