msgpack/msgpack-c

Health v2 · maintenance only

Flags: no_license

Adoption not part of the score

3343 stars · 936 forks observed · 2026-08-28

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

MessagePack is an efficient binary serialization format, like JSON but smaller and faster, and this repository is its official implementation for C and C++. It lets applications encode and decode compact binary data that can be exchanged across many programming languages.

Use cases

• serialize structured data to a compact binary format in C or C++
• exchange data between services written in different languages
• reduce payload size compared to JSON for network communication
• encode and decode MessagePack messages in embedded or performance-sensitive C++ code
• replace JSON with a faster, smaller wire format

When to choose

• you need a fast, compact binary serialization format in C or C++
• you want cross-language data interchange with a mature, widely supported format
• payload size and encoding speed matter more than human readability

When to avoid

• you need human-readable output or easy debugging of payloads
• your ecosystem already standardizes on JSON or protobuf
• you need schema definition and evolution features like those in Protocol Buffers

Facets

library · maturity stable

serialization developer-tools files cpp c cross-platform messagepack binary-format data-exchange c cpp algorithms

Member repositories

For agents

markdown · JSON · MCP: product_card(name="msgpack/msgpack-c")