Data refreshed 5 October 2026, 22:59 UTC
Top 100 C repositories on GitHub, ranked by stars
C's top 100 is systems software: the Linux kernel, screen mirroring tools, Windows utilities and the embedded and database projects that everything else is built on.
GitHub reports 4,362,575 repositories whose detected primary language is C. The 100 most-starred of them are listed below, ranked by stargazers_count. torvalds/linux leads with 251,204 stars, and the bar for 100th place is 14,165 stars. The median repository in this top 100 has 22,463 stars, and the most common licence is NOASSERTION (38 of 100 repositories).
- 100 repositories ranked
- 251,204 stars for #1
- 14,165 stars to enter the top 100
- 22,463 median stars in the top 100
- 4,362,575 repositories GitHub reports
- 547.7 KB JSONL file
The 100 most-starred C repositories
| # | Repository | ★ Stars | Forks | Open issues | Licence | Last push | Description |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | torvalds/linux | 251,204 | 66,845 | 3 | NOASSERTION | Linux kernel source tree | |
| 2 | Genymobile/scrcpy | 151,101 | 13,877 | 2,916 | Apache-2.0 | Display and control your Android device | |
| 3 | microsoft/PowerToys | 139,241 | 8,621 | 7,718 | MIT | Microsoft PowerToys is a collection of utilities that supercharge productivity and customization on Windows | |
| 4 | ventoy/Ventoy | 79,729 | 4,959 | 1,039 | GPL-3.0 | A new bootable USB solution. | |
| 5 | obsproject/obs-studio | 77,005 | 10,457 | 1,149 | GPL-2.0 | OBS Studio - Free and open source software for live streaming and screen recording | |
| 6 | redis/redis | 76,605 | 24,842 | 3,002 | NOASSERTION | For developers, who are building real-time data-driven applications, Redis is the preferred, fastest, and most feature-rich cache, data str… | |
| 7 | colbymchenry/codegraph | 73,269 | 4,708 | 497 | MIT | Pre-indexed code knowledge graph, auto syncs on code changes, for Claude Code, Codex, Gemini, Cursor, OpenCode, AntiGravity, Kiro, CoPilot,… | |
| 8 | FFmpeg/FFmpeg | 64,775 | 14,316 | 3 | NOASSERTION | Mirror of https://git.ffmpeg.org/ffmpeg.git | |
| 9 | git/git | 63,680 | 28,482 | 402 | NOASSERTION | Git Source Code Mirror - This is a publish-only repository but pull requests can be turned into patches to the mailing list via GitGitGadge… | |
| 10 | tmux/tmux | 49,769 | 2,933 | 39 | ISC | tmux source code | |
| 11 | DeusData/codebase-memory-mcp | 45,835 | 3,771 | 638 | MIT | High-performance code intelligence MCP server. Indexes codebases into a persistent knowledge graph — average repo in milliseconds. 158 lang… | |
| 12 | curl/curl | 43,094 | 7,400 | 72 | NOASSERTION | A command line tool and library for transferring data with URL syntax, supporting DICT, FILE, FTP, FTPS, GOPHER, GOPHERS, HTTP, HTTPS, IMAP… | |
| 13 | php/php-src | 40,435 | 8,163 | 2,121 | BSD-3-Clause | The PHP Interpreter | |
| 14 | wg/wrk | 40,418 | 3,030 | 203 | NOASSERTION | Modern HTTP benchmarking tool | |
| 15 | JustVugg/colibri | 39,764 | 4,367 | 71 | Apache-2.0 | Run frontier MoE models on hardware you already own — pure C, zero deps, experts streamed from disk. Tiny engine, immense model. 🐦 | |
| 16 | pbatard/rufus | 37,859 | 3,176 | 8 | GPL-3.0 | The Reliable USB Formatting Utility | |
| 17 | mpv-player/mpv | 37,248 | 3,561 | 1,179 | NOASSERTION | 🎥 Command line media player | |
| 18 | jqlang/jq | 35,749 | 3,606 | 428 | NOASSERTION | Command-line JSON processor | |
| 19 | raysan5/raylib | 34,986 | 3,323 | 13 | Zlib | A simple and easy-to-use library to enjoy videogames programming | |
| 20 | nothings/stb | 34,791 | 8,098 | 433 | NOASSERTION | stb single-file public domain libraries for C/C++ | |
| 21 | valinet/ExplorerPatcher | 34,033 | 1,379 | 376 | GPL-2.0 | This project aims to enhance the working environment on Windows | |
| 22 | bilibili/ijkplayer | 33,210 | 8,245 | 2,904 | GPL-2.0 | Android/iOS video player based on FFmpeg n3.4, with MediaCodec, VideoToolbox support. | |
| 23 | kingToolbox/WindTerm | 32,385 | 2,475 | 2,453 | — | A professional cross-platform SSH/Sftp/Shell/Telnet/Tmux/Serial terminal. | |
| 24 | lizongying/my-tv | 31,967 | 3,588 | 146 | — | 我的电视 电视直播软件，安装即可使用 | |
| 25 | nginx/nginx | 31,798 | 8,308 | 453 | BSD-2-Clause | The official NGINX Open Source repository. | |
| 26 | coolsnowwolf/lede | 31,589 | 19,107 | 1 | NOASSERTION | Lean's LEDE source | |
| 27 | openssl/openssl | 30,892 | 11,505 | 1,527 | Apache-2.0 | General purpose TLS and crypto library | |
| 28 | cfenollosa/os-tutorial | 30,746 | 3,554 | 128 | BSD-3-Clause | How to create an OS from scratch | |
| 29 | asmvik/yabai | 29,708 | 778 | 260 | MIT | A tiling window manager for macOS based on binary space partitioning | |
| 30 | ValdikSS/GoodbyeDPI | 28,734 | 2,228 | 154 | Apache-2.0 | GoodbyeDPI — Deep Packet Inspection circumvention utility (for Windows) | |
| 31 | openwrt/openwrt | 28,649 | 13,074 | 4,571 | NOASSERTION | This repository is a mirror of https://git.openwrt.org/openwrt/openwrt.git It is for reference only and is not active for check-ins. We wi… | |
| 32 | facebook/zstd | 27,979 | 2,621 | 399 | NOASSERTION | Zstandard - Fast real-time compression algorithm | |
| 33 | xiaojieonly/Ehviewer_CN_SXJ | 27,454 | 722 | 556 | NOASSERTION | ehviewer，用爱发电，快乐前行 | |
| 34 | valkey-io/valkey | 27,376 | 1,346 | 920 | BSD-3-Clause | A flexible distributed key-value database that is optimized for caching and other realtime workloads. | |
| 35 | libuv/libuv | 27,225 | 3,941 | 244 | MIT | Cross-platform asynchronous I/O | |
| 36 | ggreer/the_silver_searcher | 27,124 | 1,436 | 564 | Apache-2.0 | A code-searching tool similar to ack, but faster. | |
| 37 | hashcat/hashcat | 26,946 | 3,571 | 240 | — | World's fastest and most advanced password recovery utility | |
| 38 | pjreddie/darknet | 26,510 | 20,983 | 1,978 | NOASSERTION | Convolutional Neural Networks | |
| 39 | robertdavidgraham/masscan | 26,062 | 3,244 | 414 | AGPL-3.0 | TCP port scanner, spews SYN packets asynchronously, scanning entire Internet in under 5 minutes. | |
| 40 | taosdata/TDengine | 25,151 | 5,021 | 438 | AGPL-3.0 | High-performance, scalable time-series database designed for Industrial IoT (IIoT) scenarios | |
| 41 | radareorg/radare2 | 24,932 | 3,336 | 788 | NOASSERTION | UNIX-like reverse engineering framework and command-line toolset | |
| 42 | fastfetch-cli/fastfetch | 24,917 | 912 | 95 | MIT | A maintained, feature-rich and performance oriented, neofetch like system information tool. | |
| 43 | arendst/Tasmota | 24,800 | 5,181 | 12 | GPL-3.0 | Alternative firmware for ESP8266 and ESP32 based devices with easy configuration using webUI, OTA updates, automation using timers or rules… | |
| 44 | lvgl/lvgl | 24,796 | 4,379 | 144 | MIT | LVGL is a free, full-featured embedded UI library for devices from small MCUs to 3D-capable MPUs, enhanced by LVGL Pro, a professional edit… | |
| 45 | HandBrake/HandBrake | 24,571 | 1,712 | 295 | NOASSERTION | HandBrake's development repository | |
| 46 | timescale/timescaledb | 23,644 | 1,168 | 425 | NOASSERTION | A time-series database for high-performance real-time analytics packaged as a Postgres extension | |
| 47 | antirez/ds4 | 23,568 | 2,266 | 759 | MIT | DeepSeek 4 Flash and PRO local inference engine for Metal, CUDA and ROCm | |
| 48 | pgvector/pgvector | 23,248 | 1,341 | 17 | NOASSERTION | Open-source vector similarity search for Postgres | |
| 49 | iovisor/bcc | 22,695 | 4,078 | 1,079 | Apache-2.0 | BCC - Tools for BPF-based Linux IO analysis, networking, monitoring, and more | |
| 50 | TheAlgorithms/C | 22,501 | 4,777 | 22 | GPL-3.0 | Collection of various algorithms in mathematics, machine learning, computer science, physics, etc implemented in C for educational purposes. | |
| 51 | DarkFlippers/unleashed-firmware | 22,425 | 1,953 | 29 | GPL-3.0 | Flipper Zero Unleashed Firmware | |
| 52 | SamyPesse/How-to-Make-a-Computer-Operating-System | 22,404 | 3,445 | 86 | Apache-2.0 | How to Make a Computer Operating System in C++ | |
| 53 | postgres/postgres | 22,293 | 5,931 | 0 | NOASSERTION | Mirror of the official PostgreSQL GIT repository. Note that this is just a *mirror* - we don't work with pull requests on github. To contri… | |
| 54 | micropython/micropython | 22,108 | 8,986 | 1,534 | NOASSERTION | MicroPython - a lean and efficient Python implementation for microcontrollers and constrained systems | |
| 55 | jarun/nnn | 22,044 | 826 | 1 | BSD-2-Clause | n³ The unorthodox terminal file manager | |
| 56 | gentilkiwi/mimikatz | 21,887 | 4,177 | 198 | — | A little tool to play with Windows security | |
| 57 | julycoding/The-Art-Of-Programming-By-July-2nd | 21,507 | 6,953 | 64 | — | 本项目曾冲到全球第一，干货集锦见本页面最底部，另完整精致的纸质版《编程之法：面试和算法心得》已在京东/当当上销售 | |
| 58 | jart/cosmopolitan | 21,350 | 782 | 229 | ISC | build-once run-anywhere c library | |
| 59 | allinurl/goaccess | 21,002 | 1,200 | 450 | MIT | GoAccess is a real-time web log analyzer and interactive viewer that runs in a terminal in *nix systems or through your browser. | |
| 60 | qmk/qmk_firmware | 20,744 | 44,348 | 546 | GPL-2.0 | Open-source keyboard firmware for Atmel AVR and Arm USB families | |
| 61 | ish-app/ish | 20,532 | 1,549 | 641 | NOASSERTION | Linux shell for iOS | |
| 62 | karpathy/llama2.c | 20,150 | 2,639 | 191 | MIT | Inference Llama 2 in one file of pure C | |
| 63 | Awesome-HarmonyOS/HarmonyOS | 19,980 | 3,258 | 52 | — | A curated list of awesome things related to HarmonyOS. 华为鸿蒙操作系统。 | |
| 64 | videolan/vlc | 19,878 | 6,228 | 2 | GPL-2.0 | VLC media player - plays everything, runs anywhere. Code here: https://code.videolan.org/videolan/vlc | |
| 65 | ExistentialAudio/BlackHole | 19,871 | 846 | 11 | NOASSERTION | BlackHole is a modern macOS audio loopback driver that allows applications to pass audio to other applications with zero additional latency. | |
| 66 | sandboxie-plus/Sandboxie | 19,615 | 2,072 | 760 | GPL-3.0 | Sandboxie Plus & Classic | |
| 67 | brunodev85/winlator | 19,308 | 1,813 | 403 | LGPL-2.1 | Android application for running Windows applications with Wine and Box86/Box64 | |
| 68 | espressif/esp-idf | 19,159 | 8,513 | 1,729 | Apache-2.0 | Espressif IoT Development Framework. Official development framework for Espressif SoCs. | |
| 69 | nicbarker/clay | 18,220 | 730 | 279 | Zlib | High performance UI layout library in C. | |
| 70 | reactos/reactos | 18,154 | 2,230 | 199 | GPL-2.0 | A free Windows-compatible Operating System | |
| 71 | ffmpegwasm/ffmpeg.wasm | 17,833 | 1,115 | 460 | MIT | FFmpeg for browser, powered by WebAssembly | |
| 72 | sumatrapdfreader/sumatrapdf | 17,697 | 2,051 | 63 | GPL-3.0 | SumatraPDF reader | |
| 73 | UberGuidoZ/Flipper | 17,641 | 3,919 | 8 | GPL-3.0 | Playground (and dump) of stuff I make or modify for the Flipper Zero | |
| 74 | ImageMagick/ImageMagick | 17,604 | 1,666 | 167 | NOASSERTION | ImageMagick is a free, open-source software suite for creating, editing, converting, and displaying images. It supports 200+ formats and of… | |
| 75 | NVIDIA/open-gpu-kernel-modules | 17,439 | 1,901 | 566 | NOASSERTION | NVIDIA Linux open GPU kernel module source | |
| 76 | swaywm/sway | 17,390 | 1,304 | 1,390 | MIT | i3-compatible Wayland compositor | |
| 77 | tursodatabase/libsql | 17,257 | 538 | 459 | MIT | libSQL is a fork of SQLite that is both Open Source, and Open Contributions. | |
| 78 | woltapp/blurhash | 17,082 | 379 | 50 | MIT | A very compact representation of a placeholder for an image. | |
| 79 | skywind3000/kcp | 16,928 | 2,631 | 199 | MIT | :zap: KCP - A Fast and Reliable ARQ Protocol | |
| 80 | semgrep/semgrep | 16,888 | 1,089 | 941 | LGPL-2.1 | Lightweight static analysis for many languages. Find bug variants with patterns that look like source code. | |
| 81 | systemd/systemd | 16,783 | 4,726 | 3,545 | GPL-2.0 | The systemd System and Service Manager | |
| 82 | libsdl-org/SDL | 16,738 | 3,039 | 864 | Zlib | Simple DirectMedia Layer | |
| 83 | zephyrproject-rtos/zephyr | 16,695 | 10,110 | 4,153 | Apache-2.0 | Primary Git Repository for the Zephyr Project. Zephyr is a new generation, scalable, optimized, secure RTOS for multiple hardware architect… | |
| 84 | flipperdevices/flipperzero-firmware | 16,672 | 3,485 | 250 | GPL-3.0 | Flipper Zero firmware source code | |
| 85 | davatorium/rofi | 16,440 | 698 | 113 | NOASSERTION | Rofi: A window switcher, application launcher and dmenu replacement | |
| 86 | bol-van/zapret | 16,226 | 1,132 | 3 | — | DPI bypass multi platform | |
| 87 | shadowsocks/shadowsocks-c | 16,180 | 6,211 | 31 | GPL-3.0 | Self-contained Shadowsocks implementation in C with libuv, asynchronous DNS, and portable static builds for Linux, macOS, Windows, and Free… | |
| 88 | winsiderss/systeminformer | 16,161 | 1,795 | 303 | MIT | A free, powerful, multi-purpose tool that helps you monitor system resources, debug software and detect malware. Brought to you by Winsider… | |
| 89 | duixcom/Duix-Avatar | 15,657 | 2,665 | 422 | NOASSERTION | 🚀 Truly open-source AI avatar(digital human) toolkit for offline video generation and digital human cloning. | |
| 90 | peng-zhihui/Dummy-Robot | 15,594 | 3,204 | 123 | — | 我的超迷你机械臂机器人项目。 | |
| 91 | acidanthera/OpenCorePkg | 15,505 | 2,312 | 13 | BSD-3-Clause | OpenCore bootloader | |
| 92 | gojue/ecapture | 15,487 | 1,647 | 11 | Apache-2.0 | Capturing SSL/TLS plaintext without a CA certificate using eBPF. Supported on Linux/Android kernels for amd64/arm64. | |
| 93 | glfw/glfw | 15,384 | 5,942 | 779 | Zlib | A multi-platform library for OpenGL, OpenGL ES, Vulkan, window and input | |
| 94 | haiwen/seafile | 15,306 | 1,676 | 102 | NOASSERTION | Beyond file syncing and sharing, a new way to organize your files with extensible file properties and flexible views | |
| 95 | SpacehuhnTech/esp8266_deauther | 15,007 | 2,783 | 100 | NOASSERTION | Affordable WiFi hacking platform for testing and learning | |
| 96 | OpenVPN/openvpn | 14,643 | 3,405 | 223 | NOASSERTION | OpenVPN is an open source VPN daemon | |
| 97 | coturn/coturn | 14,455 | 2,273 | 310 | NOASSERTION | coturn TURN server project | |
| 98 | memcached/memcached | 14,290 | 3,350 | 110 | BSD-3-Clause | memcached development tree | |
| 99 | libretro/RetroArch | 14,230 | 2,257 | 2,968 | GPL-3.0 | Cross-platform, sophisticated frontend for the libretro API. Licensed GPLv3. | |
| 100 | cloudwu/skynet | 14,165 | 4,270 | 27 | MIT | A lightweight online game framework |
Fork counts include open pull requests in
open_issues_count, because that is how GitHub's API reports it.
Descriptions are truncated to 140 characters; the full text is in the JSONL
download.
Download the C data
- JSONL — raw GitHub Search API objects (547.7 KB, 100 lines)
- Markdown table of the same ranking
- All 30 JSONL files
curl -sSL -o c.jsonl \
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/havaianasdestruido/top100/main/data/JSONL/c.jsonl
jq -r '.full_name + " " + (.stargazers_count|tostring)' c.jsonl | head -10How this list is built
A single GitHub Search API request per language —
?q=language:c&sort=stars&order=desc&per_page=100
— refreshed hourly by a scheduled GitHub Actions workflow and committed back to
the repository. The records are never reshaped: every field GitHub returned is
preserved. The methodology page covers the query,
the rate limits, the fields the Search API omits and the known limitations, and the
field reference documents every JSON key.
Frequently asked questions
What is the most-starred C repository on GitHub?
torvalds/linux is the most-starred C repository with 251,204 stars as of 5 October 2026, ahead of Genymobile/scrcpy (151,101) and microsoft/PowerToys (139,241).
How many C repositories are on GitHub?
GitHub reports 4,362,575 public repositories whose detected primary language is C. Top100 ranks the 100 most-starred of them; 100th place currently needs 14,165 stars.
How do I download the top 100 C repositories as JSON?
Download data/JSONL/c.jsonl — 100 lines, each the complete GitHub Search API object for one repository, including topics, licence, every count and every timestamp. A readable Markdown table of the same ranking is also published.