# lpereira/lwan

Experimental, scalable, high performance HTTP server

Repository: https://github.com/lpereira/lwan
Canonical: https://ross.abutalabs.com/products/lwan
Homepage: https://lwan.ws
Language: C
License: GPL-2.0
License Family: copyleft
Topics: lwan, http, c, library, experimental
Last push: 2026-08-25T15:26:16+00:00

## Health v2 (maintenance only)
Score: 67/100 (v2, computed 2026-09-03T02:20:16.233290+00:00)
- activity 99, release rhythm 8, longevity 100
- inputs: {"age_days": 5332, "days_push": 8, "days_rel": 443, "gap_med": null, "n_releases_24m": 1}
- flags: none
- formula: round(0.45*activity + 0.35*rhythm + 0.20*longevity); archived -> min(score, 10)

## Adoption (not part of the score)
Stars 6034, forks 552 (observed 2026-08-28T04:09:34.480542+00:00)

## What it is
Lwan is a high-performance, scalable HTTP server written in C that can serve both static and dynamic content, and can also be embedded as a library. It uses coroutines with a per-CPU cooperative scheduler and has very low memory and disk footprints, making it suitable from embedded devices to robust servers.

## Use cases
- serve static files with a lightweight high-performance web server
- embed an HTTP server into a C application as a library
- write dynamic web handlers in C or Lua
- run a web server on embedded or resource-constrained devices
- benchmark and study high-performance HTTP server design
- serve precompressed content with gzip, zstd, or Brotli

## When to choose
- you need extremely low memory and disk footprint
- you want a small, readable C codebase to learn from or embed
- you need high requests-per-second throughput with low latency
- you want to write handlers in C or Lua with coroutine-based I/O

## When to avoid
- you need a feature-rich server with extensive module ecosystems like nginx or Apache
- you require long-term production stability guarantees
- you need first-class Windows support
- you prefer not to work with GPL-2.0 licensing or C-level development

## Facets
- artifact type: application
- maturity: experimental
- function: http-server, web-framework, routing, templating
- domain: web-development, backend, performance, developer-tools
- platform: bsd, c, cli, self-hosted
- tags: high-performance, coroutines, embedded, http, static-file-serving, lua-scripting, lightweight, linux

## Member repositories
- lpereira/lwan (main) score 67

## Provenance
- Observed fields: from GitHub, fetched 2026-08-28T04:09:34.480542+00:00.
- Health v2: computed from the inputs above; adoption is never an input.
- Inferred fields (summary, facets, guidance): AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, on 2026-08-29T17:49:08.204536+00:00, confidence not recorded.
  - readme: https://github.com/lpereira/lwan (fetched 2026-08-28T04:09:34.480542+00:00, sha 0808e59a970c)
  - homepage: https://lwan.ws (fetched 2026-08-29T08:45:18.313907+00:00, sha 7c9f2e038120)
- Data as of 2026-08-30T08:39:29.467469+00:00.