civetweb/civetweb

Health v2 · maintenance only

Flags: no_license

Adoption not part of the score

3443 stars · 1039 forks observed · 2026-08-28

What it is AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, 2026-08-29, confidence not recorded

CivetWeb is an easy-to-use, powerful embeddable C/C++ web server with optional CGI, SSL, and Lua support. It can be linked as a library to add web server functionality to an existing application, or run as a standalone single-executable web server on Windows or Linux.

Use cases

• embed a web server into a C/C++ application
• serve a REST API from a native desktop or embedded program
• run a lightweight standalone web server without installation
• add HTTPS/SSL support to an embedded HTTP server
• handle WebSocket connections from a C++ backend
• use Lua server-side scripting in a small web server

When to choose

• you need a small, dependency-light HTTP server embedded in C/C++ code
• you want a single-executable web server with no installation
• you need MIT-licensed code for commercial embedding
• you want optional CGI, SSL, or Lua support in a compact server

When to avoid

• you need a full-featured application server or middleware ecosystem
• your stack is Node.js, Python, or another managed runtime with native frameworks
• you need async I/O at massive scale better served by nginx or Envoy
• you require first-class HTTP/2 or HTTP/3 support

Facets

library · maturity stable

http-server web-framework websocket web-development backend embedded-systems developer-tools windows cross-platform c cpp embeddable-web-server cgi lua-support standalone-server c-cpp ssl linux macos

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markdown · JSON · MCP: product_card(name="civetweb/civetweb")