A list of open source C++ libraries
http://en.cppreference.com/w/cpp/links/libs
The objective of this page is to build a comprehensive list of open source C++ libraries, so that when one needs an implementation of particular functionality, one needn't to waste time searching on web (DuckDuckGo, Google, Bing e.t.c).
If you know a library that might be useful to others, please add a link to it here. There are no restrictions on what can be included except that the source of the library must be readily available to download.
The page is provided 'as is' - with the hope of being useful, but without any warranties. Outdated, misleading or wrong links might appear here. If you've noticed one of these, it would be great if you fixed the error.
Generic
- Boost - large collection of generic libraries (Boost License)
- BDE - The Bloomberg Development Environment core libraries from Bloomberg L.P. (Apache License)
- Dlib - networking, threads, graphical interfaces, data structures, linear algebra, machine learning, XML and text parsing, numerical optimization, Bayesian nets, and numerous other tasks (Boost License)
- JUCE - An extensive, mature, cross-platform C++ toolkit (GPL License)
- Loki - design patterns
- Reason - xml, xpath, regex, threads, sockets, http, sql, date-time, streams, encoding and decoding, filesystem, compression (GPL License)
- Yomm11 - Open multi-methods for C++11 (Boost License)
- Folly - Facebook Open-source LibrarY. Library of C++11 components designed with practicality and efficiency in mind.
- cxxomfort - Backports of C++ features (C++11 to C++03 and C++1y proposals to C++11/C++03).
- libsourcey - Cross-platform C++11 library for high speed networking and media encoding. HTTP, WebSockets, TURN, STUN, Symple and more...
- OnPosix - C++ library providing several abstractions (e.g., threading, networking, logging, IPC, etc.) on POSIX platforms.
- Ultimate++ - Cross-platform rapid application development framework
- CAF - The C++ Actor Framework (CAF) is an open source C++11 actor model implementation featuring lightweight & fast actor implementations, pattern matching for messages, network transparent messaging, and more (BSD License).
- cpp-mmf - A C++98 library that encapsulates memory-mapped-files for POSIX or Windows
- CommonPP - Multi-purpose library with a strong emphasis on getting metrics out of a project. (BSD)
- Better Enums - Reflective enums (enum to string, iteration, etc.) with constexpr support. (BSD)
- Smart Enum - "to_string", "from_string" and more for your enums. (Boost License)
- nytl - C++11 header-only template library for maths, functions (callbacks) and general utility.
- SaferCPlusPlus - SaferCPlusPlus - Safe compatible substitutes for unsafe C++ primitives, including pointers, int and std::vector. (Boost License)
- fcppt - Freundlich's C++ Toolkit (fcppt) is a collection of libraries focusing on improving general C++ code by providing better types and making use of functional programming.
- bitfield.h - Bit field structure facility, more portable/flexible than the base language facility.
- composite_op.h - Basic class data member introspection, cumbersome and often non-re-entrant, but sometimes useful.
- Abstract Intrusive Containers - More flexible than boost::instrusive, but not STL-compatible.
- Yato - Modern C++(11/14) cross-platform STL-styled and STL-compatible library with implementing containers, ranges, iterators, type traits and other tools and experiments (MIT License)
Communication
- libnavajo - a light but powerful API including http server for web and RESTful application development, supporting SSL, authentification, cookies and session management, including Websocket server support... (LGPL License)
- C++ RESTful framework - C++ micro-framework designed to be embedded into a wide range of applications.
- C++ REST SDK - asynchronous HTTP client and listener, asynchronous Stream, URI, JSON
- cpr - a modern C++ HTTP requests library
- cpp-netlib - cpp-netlib: The C++ Network Library
- Boost.Asio - asynchronous and synchronous networking, timers, serial I/O
- gsoap - C/C++ development toolkit for XML data bindings, fast WSDL/SOAP/XML Web services, WS-Security, JSON/XML-RPC RESTful services
- POCO - networking: encryption, HTTP; Zip files
- omniORB - the fastest, complete and portable CORBA ORB implementation in C++
- ACE - asynchronous networking, event demultiplexing, messaging, CORBA
- wvstreams
- Unicomm - asynchronous networking, high-level TCP communication framework
- restful_mapper - ORM for consuming RESTful JSON APIs in C++
- zeromq - fast message queue
- curlpp - C++ wrapper for CURL library
- Apache Thrift - The Apache Thrift software framework, for scalable cross-language services development, combines a software stack with a code generation engine to build services that work efficiently and seamlessly between C++, Java, Python, PHP, Ruby, Erlang, Perl, Haskell, C#, Cocoa, JavaScript, Node.js, Smalltalk, OCaml and Delphi and other languages.
- libashttp - asynchronous HTTP client library
- Simple C++ REST library - Very simple and self documenting library for creating a REST API in your c++ application
- libtins - Network packet crafting and sniffing library
- HTTPP - Simple, production ready HTTP server built on top of Boost and a client built on top of libcurl. (BSD)
- The Silicon C++14 Web Framework - Fast and Robust Web APIs (MIT).
- ngrest - Fast and easy in use JSON RESTful Web Services Framework (Apache2).
Graphic user interface
- FLTK
- nana[doc] - GUI programming in modern C++ style (Boost License)
- WxWidgets[src][doc]
- OWLNext - Modern update to OWL for writing GUI applications in standard C++ on Windows
- tiny file dialogs - a single C C++ cross-platform file (no init, no main loop, 6 modal function calls)
- GTK+
- Qt
- Qt[src][doc]
- qwtplot3d
- qwt5 - Qt Widgets for Technical Applications
- libdbusmenu-qt
- QuickQanava - C++14 library for drawing directed graphs in a Qt/QML application; project homepage: http://www.qanava.org
- QuickProperties - C++/QML library for QObject/QtObject properties edition; project homepage: http://www.qanava.org
General Multimedia
- SFML (Simple and Fast Multimedia Library)
- SDL (Simple DirectMedia Layer) - cross-platform, low level access to audio, keyboard, mouse, joystick, and graphics hardware via OpenGL and Direct3D (zlib license)
- SIGIL (Sound, Input, and Graphics Integration Library) - mind-bogglingly simple, cross-platform, minimalist library for text, shapes, input, audio, and 2D images
- Cinder
- openFrameworks
Graphics
- cairomm
- nux
- pangomm
- gegl
- stb
- Adobe/boost GIL - high-level generic library, focused on algorithms that operate on 2D images. Very limited I/O options.
- GraphicsMagick - Reading, writing, and manipulating images in over 88 major formats. Forked from ImageMagick in 2002
- Skia Graphics Engine - Google's core graphics library as of 2005, used in Chrome, Chrome OS, Android, and also in Firefox and Sublime Text enwiki:Skia_Graphics_Engine
- Plotting
- Formats
Audio
- soundtouch
- KFR - Fast, modern DSP framework, DFT/FFT, Audio resampling, FIR/IIR filters, Biquad
- Fingerprinting
- Formats
- Tagging
- CD
Image Processing
Video
3D Graphics
- Vulkan
- OpenGL
- bgfx Cross-platform, graphics API agnostic, "Bring Your Own Engine/Framework" style rendering library.
- Ogre3D
- GLEW OpenGL function loading
- Epoxy Modern successor to GLEW. Abstracts difference between some kinds of GL contexts, which makes it sometimes simpler to use than GLEW. Used by GTK+ project since 2015.
- GLFW OpenGL window manager
- GLM Header only C++ mathematics library for rendering
- assimp 3D model loading
- VTK
- Magnum C++11 and OpenGL/GLES/WebGL graphics engine
- Irrlicht
- Horde3D
- Visionaray A C++ ray tracing template library
Game Engine Architecture
Internationalization
- IBM ICU
- gettext
- spirit-po - A small, header-only library which parses po-files and provides an interface similar to GNU libintl. Based on boost::spirit.
Math
- alglib
- ArrayFire High Performance Computation Library
- GNU MP bignum C++ interface
- Boost.Multiprecision
- Boost.Math.Special Functions and Statistical Distributions
- Boost.Random
- NTL - A Library for doing Number Theory
- cpp-measures - A header-only C++11 library to handle physical measures
- G+Smo cross-platform library for isogeometric analysis
- Linear algebra
- Graph theory
- Boost.Graph
- LEMON
- OGDF - Open Graph Drawing Framework
- NGraph - a simple (Network) Graph library in C++
- GTpo - C++14 generic graph topology library with Protocol Buffer serialization; project homepage: http://www.qanava.org
- Class Library for Numbers
- Machine Learning
- liblinear
- Dlib - machine learning tools
- MLPACK - machine learning package
- Shogun - large scale machine learning toolbox
- Computational geometry
- CGAL - Computational geometry algorithms library
- Wykobi - Computational geometry library
- PCL - Point Cloud library
- Automata theory
Financial Calculations
Concurrency
- Intel TBB
- OpenMP
- RaftLib C++ stream like concurrent actors
- Thrust STL-like algorithms and data-structures for CUDA
- ViennaCL Linear algebra and algorithms with OpenMP, CUDA, and OpenCL backends
- VexCL C++ expression templates library for OpenCL and CUDA
- Boost.Compute (unofficial) STL-like algorithms and data-structures for OpenCL
- Boost.Interprocess
- Boost.Thread
- Boost.Atomic
- Boost.Lockfree
- Boost.MPI
- Boost.Context
- libopenmpi
- libsimdpp
- HPX A general purpose C++ runtime system for parallel and distributed applications of any scale
- SObjectizer A small framework for simplification of development of concurrent and event-driven applications in C++ by using actor and publish-subscribe models.
Containers
- Boost.Any
- Boost.Array
- Boost.Bimap
- Boost.Container
- Boost.Fusion
- Boost.Heap
- Boost.Pointer Container
- Boost.Tuple
- Boost.Variant
- cpp-btree - btree_map, btree_set, btree_multimap, btree_multiset.
- TdhLists
- strict_variant - A fast, never-empty variant targetting C++11. Prevents many undesirable implicit conversions.
- eggs::variant - Eggs.Variant is a C++11/14 generic, type-safe, discriminated union. It is notable in particular for having very good `constexpr` support.
Metaprogramming
- Boost.MPL - Original metaprogramming library, targeted at C++03, slow
- Boost.Hana - New metaprogramming library for both types and values
- Metal - Uses lazy metafunctions (like MPL), 100% SFINAE-friendly, optimized for SLOC
- Brigand - Uses eager metafunctions, optimized for best performance
- Meta - Uses eager metafunctions, middle ground between metal and brigand wrt performance
- Boost.Metaparse - Compile-time parser library, producing types, values, and metafunctions from compile-time strings
- Boost.Proto - A library for building expression template-backed EDSLs
- CoMeta - Lightweight, header-only C++14 metaprogramming library
- visit_struct - A miniature reflection library, providing structure visitors for C++11. Self-contained, 100-200 lines of code depending how you count.
Serialization
- Boost.Serialization
- libs11n
- sweet_persist
- protobuf
- gSOAP
- C++ XML objects
- yaml-cpp
- YAS (Yet Another Serialization)
- cereal (C++11 serialization)
Testing
- Boost.Test
- cppunit
- Google Test
- Catch
- jest - A sane and minimal C++14 unit test framework
- doctest - The lightest feature-rich C++ single-header testing framework for unit tests and TDD
- liblittletest - Portable, one file header-only testing framework
Benchmarking
- Celero
- gperftools - 'Google Performance Tools' includes a high-performance, multi-threaded malloc implementation plus tools for benchmarking heap allocation and CPU utilization.
XML
JSON
- ArduinoJson - ArduinoJson
- json - JSON for Modern C++
- jsonme--
- ThorsSerializer
- JsonBox
- jsoncpp
- zoolib
- JOST
- CAJUN
- libjson
- nosjob
- rapidjson
- jsoncons - jsoncons is a C++ library for the construction of tree structured json values. It also supports an event-based streaming API.
- JSON++
- qjson
- json-cpp
- jansson - Jansson is C library for encoding, decoding and manipulating JSON data.
- json11 - json11 is a tiny JSON library for C++11, providing JSON parsing and serialization.
- JSON Voorhees - Killer JSON for C++
- jeayeson - A very sane (header only) C++14 JSON library
- ujson - µjson is a small, C++11, UTF-8, JSON library
- minijson - C++ DOM-less and allocation-free JSON parsing and serialization
Web
- libmusicbrainz5
- liblastfm
- libkcddb
- Chromium Embedded
- QtWebApp HTTP(s) Server in C++ inspired by Java Servlets
- Wt[src][doc]
- Tufão
- libhttpserver
GPS
Databases
- DTL
- libpqxx
- lmdb++ - C++11 wrapper for the LMDB embedded B+ tree database library.
- mongocxx - C++11 driver library for MongoDB
- mysql++
- ODB - C++ Object-Relational Mapping (ORM)
- QUINCE: QUeries IN C++ Expressions (ORM+EDSL)
- QxOrm - C++ Qt Object-Relational Mapping (ORM)
- SOCI
- sqlpp11
Cryptography
File metadata
Text
- Parse
- PEGTL - Parsing Expression Grammar Template Library
- Search
Terminal
Configuration
Embedded languages bindings
- ChaiScript
- ExprTk
- lua
- AngelScript - a scripting language like C++.
- mozjs
- muparser
- PythonQt
Embedded/realtime
- QP/C++ - RTOS kernel, dual GPL
- FreeRTOS C++ Handler - handler, looper, state machine, CLI, portable
- ETL - Embedded Template Library - C++ 03, Portable template library tailored for low resource platforms
- distortos - RTOS for high-end microcontrollers written in C++11